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Updated: May 17, 2025
He said if all the sheep died the white fellows would go away again, and then, as long ago, the black fellows' country would have plenty of emu and kangaroo. We saw a curious coincidence in connection with one of Bootha's witch-poles in my garden, the pole whose falling foretold death of some relative of some one in the house.
That evening a messenger arrived from the sheep station to say my cook's mother had died just before sunset. The camp were firm believers in Bootha's witch-stick after that. It was just as well we did not touch that stick; had we done so, Bootha says we should have broken out in sores all over our bodies.
As we stood waiting for the sun to sink and the afterglow to paint these clouds, as it did, from shrimp pink and heliotrope to vivid crimson, we saw Bootha's pole fall. The air was quite still. 'The damp has loosened its setting, said Matah, 'but we had better leave it alone and let the old girl fix it up again herself; it may be taboo to ordinary mortals like us. We left it.
The whistling voice came from a third direction, though all the time I could see Bootha's lips moving. Guadgee answered all she was asked. She said Adelaide was made ill because she had offended the spirits by bathing in the creek under the shade of a Minggah, or spirit-tree, a place tabooed to all but wirreenuns, or such as hold communion with spirits.
About two inches fell. Within half a mile of each side of the garden the dust was barely laid. Old Bootha's luck stuck to her that time, and I had to give her a new dress and some 'bacca. But during the last drought she failed signally.
One day she gave us a start. We were schooling a new team of four horses. We had to pass Bootha's camp. I looked about as we neared it but saw nothing of her. Suddenly from the ground, as it seemed, out dashed the weird old figure, arms full of things, jabbering away at a great rate. Whiz came a tin plate past the leaders' heads; the offside horse reared and plunged and took some holding.
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