Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 26, 2025
As a rule, only sufficient food was obtained to last from day to day; but on the occasion of one of the big battues I have described there would be food in abundance for a week or more, when there would be a horrid orgy of gorging and one long continuous corroboree, until supplies gave out.
First, we may have the kangaroo corroboree, in which a man hops towards the musicians and back again, to be followed in turn by every other dancer and finally by the whole lot, who advance hopping together, ending up with a wild yell, in which all join.
She whispered to Dot that it would be nice for a little Human to see some other Humans after being so long amongst bush creatures, and said, also, that there would be no great danger in hopping to a rock that would command a view of the open ground where the corroboree was being held.
Forward they come, singing each her own brumboorah, for every oldest woman relation of each of the boys makes a song for him. They corroboree a few steps behind the men, chanting a farewell, then corroboree back a few steps, then hasten to join the younger women in the bough sheds, which are now pulled down on top of them by the men, that they may see nothing further.
Here we are no longer confined to shores which, at the time when we are concerned with them, were the abode of desolation and the nursery of a solitude uninterrupted for untallied ages, save by the screams of innumerable sea-birds, or, occasionally, here and there, by the corroboree cries of naked savages, whose kitchen-middens, feet thick with shells, still betray the places where they feasted.
But a corroboree, like the ball of civilized life must have an end, and at length the tired dancers sought their several lairs, leaving the whites to watch the watery moon and lurid stars, and listen to the dull plashing of the tide through the mangroves, whilst waiting for daylight. 'March' 2.
The twinkle and beauty and symmetry of this was admirable, and, strange as it may appear, not only were the savages now wrought up to frenzy at this climax of the dance, but the wonderful magnetic influence these children of Nature have learned to create and launch in the corroboree so stirred the white men's blood, that they went half mad too, and laughed and shouted and danced, and could hardly help flinging themselves among the mad fiends and jumping and yelling with them; and when the jump was at its fiercest and quickest, and the great frenzy boiling over, these cunning artists brought it to a dead stop sharp upon the climax and all was still.
Surely buttons were never designed to resist such strain. Coloured ladies generally sit meekly among the audience and chatter and maintain the drum-beats, lacking which no corroboree could be successful. During the intervals they may emboss pictures in the impressionable sand with cunning forefinger and giggle, for the subjects are often quaint.
ACT III. Each of the noisy players came suddenly into the glare carrying a rotund, compact bundle, and, squatting down, began with grunts and sighs the great "coco-nut" act, obviously one of the masterpieces of the corroboree. In perfect time the sham coco-nuts were beaten with hands in lieu of sticks or tomahawks, while the accompaniment became faster and faster.
The instant this sound was heard by the Kangaroo, she made an immense bound, and as she seemed to fly through the bush, Dot could hear the sounds of the corroboree give place to a noise of shouting and disorder: the dingo dogs and the Blacks were all in pursuit, and Dot's Kangaroo, with little Dot in her pouch, was leaping and bounding at a terrific pace to save both their lives!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking