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Look ye, I have a durrie made of fresh doonburr seed, cooking just now on that bark between two fires; that shall your children eat, and swiftly shall I make them another. They shall eat and be full ere their mothers are out of sight. See, they come to me now, they hunger for durrie, and well will I feed them.
She used to crush it on a big flat stone with small flat stones the big stone was called a dayoorl. Gooloo ground a great deal of the doonburr seed to put away for immediate use, the rest she kept whole, to be ground as required. Soon after she had finished her first grinding, a neighbouring tribe came along and camped near where she was.
One day the wives asked their husband to lend them the dayoorl stone, that they might grind some doonburr to make durrie. But he would not lend it to them, though they asked him several times. They knew he did not want to use it himself, for they saw his durrie on a piece of bark, between two fires, already cooking.
They saw two black fellows on the other side, who, when they saw the runaway wives and the two children, swam over to them and asked whence they had come and whither they were going. "We are running away from our husband Goomblegubbon, who would lend us no dayoorl to grind our doonburr on, and we ran away lest we and our children should starve, for we could not live on meat alone.
The young men of the Noongahburrah murmured among themselves, at first secretly, at last openly, saying: "Did not our fathers always say that the Wirreenun could make, as we wanted it, the rain to fall? Yet look at our country the grass blown away, no doonburr seed to grind, the kangaroo are dying, and the emu, the duck, and the swan have flown to far countries.
Then Byamee knew that indeed the Wondah were about, and he too clutched his fire stick and went back into his camp. In the morning it was seen that not only were all the dayoorls gone, but the camp of the Dummerh was empty and they too had gone. When no one would lend the Dummerh dayoorls, they had said, "Then we can grind no doonburr unless the Wondah bring us stones."
And what Byamee said has come to pass, as the Narran Lake shows, with its large sheet of water, spreading for miles, the home of thousands of wild fowl. Gooloo was a very old woman, and a very wicked old woman too, as this story will tell. During all the past season, when the grass was thick with seed, she had gathered much doonburr, which she crushed into meal as she wanted it for food.
A feeling of wonder and awe fell on the various camps as they watched Byamce march back to his tribe. When Byamee was seated again in his camp, he asked the women why they were not grinding doonburr. And the women said: "Gone are our dayoorls, and we know not where." "You lie," said Byamee. "You have lent them to the Dummerh, who came so often to borrow, though I bade you not lend."
The so-called improvident blacks actually used to have a harvest time, and a harvest home too. When the doonburr, or seed, was thick on the yarmmara, or barley-grass, the tribes gathered this grass in quantities. First, they made a little space clear of everything, round which they made a brush-yard. Each fresh supply of yarmmara, as it was brought in by the harvesters, was put in this yard.
Then he asked some of the other blacks to give him some doonburr seeds that he might make durrie for himself, But no one would give him anything. He flew into a rage and he said, "I will go to a far country and live with strangers; my own people would starve me." And while he was yet hot and angry, he went. Gathering up his weapons, he strode forth to find a new people in a new country.
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