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Updated: May 16, 2025
Having listened to the words of Gooloo, the women decided to do as she said, and, leaving their children with her, they started forth with empty comebees, and armed with combos, with which to chop out the bees' nests and opossums, and with yam sticks to dig up yams. When the women had gone, Gooloo gathered the children round her and fed them with durrie, hot from the coals.
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.
They hastened to tell the black fellows when they came, how Gooloo had persuaded them to go hunting, promising if they did so that she would feed the hungry Wahroogahs, and care for them while they were away, but and here they wailed again for their poor Wahroogahs.
Then wroth were the men, saying: "What mothers are ye to leave your young to a stranger, and that stranger a Gooloo, ever a treacherous race? Did we not go forth to gain food for you and our children? Saw ye ever your husbands return from the chase empty handed? Then why, when ye knew we were gone hunting, must ye too go forth and leave our helpless ones to a stranger?
They told how they had listened to her words and gone; truth had she told of the plenty round, their comebees and goolays were full of fruits and spoils they had gathered, but, alas! they came home with them laden only to find their children gone and Gooloo gone too. And no trace could they find of either, though at times they heard a sound as of children wailing.
One day the men all went out hunting, leaving the women and the children in the camp. After the men had been gone a little while, Gooloo the magpie came to their camp to talk to the women. She said, "Why do you not go hunting too? Many are the nests of the wurranunnahs round here, and thick is the honey in them.
If a gooloo, or magpie, did the same, the child had to be laid flat on her moobil stomach: for the passing of a cawing crow, a child had to be laid on the right side. As these birds are not night birds, it is evident that they are evil spirits abroad in bird form, hence the precautions.
"If it really is going on " said Redwood, staring up at the remote ceiling. From far away came a sound like the bellowing of a Mafficking bull, almost as if in answer. "It's going on all right," said Redwood. "Evidently." There followed resounding blows upon a table, followed by a vast crowing shout, "Gooloo! Boozoo! Bzz ..."
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.
"They are playing wahgoo," they said, "and have hidden themselves." The mothers hunted all round for them, and called aloud the names of their children and Gooloo. But no answer could they hear and no trace could they find. And yet every now and then they heard the sound of children wailing. But seek as they would they found them not.
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