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They are places of refuge in time of danger; no one save the wirreenun, whose spirit-tree it was, would dare to touch a refugee at a Minggah; and should the sanctuary be a Goomarh, or spirit-stone, not even a wirreenun would dare to interfere, so that it is a perfectly safe sanctuary from humanly dealt evil.
These Minggah and Goomarh spirit trees and stones always make me think, perhaps irrelevantly, of one of the restored sayings of the Lord, which ends 'Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood, and I am there. Blacks were early scientists in some of their ideas, being before Darwin with the evolution theory, only theirs was a kind of evolution aided by Byamee.
But a refugee at a Minggah or Goomarh runs a great risk of incurring the wrath of the spirits, for Minggah are taboo to all but their own wirreenun. There was a Minggah, a great gaunt Coolabah, near our river garden. Some gilahs build in it every year, but nothing would induce the most avaricious of black bird-collectors to get the young ones from there.
As the water rises it rises, always keeping its top out of the water. This is the Goomarh, or spirit-stone, of Bahloo. No one would dare to touch this stone where the baby girls' spirits are launched into space. In the same neighbourhood is a clear water-hole, the rendezvous of the snakes of Bahloo.
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