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Updated: May 15, 2025
Farther still, two bark humpies stood, back to back. Tettawonga, a bent old black fellow, lived in one, and did little else than smoke and give his opinion on the weather every morning. Twenty years ago he had helped to make a steady foundation for the red cottage that had arrived ready built on a bullock-dray.
First he would go into one nyunnoo, or humpy, and cry like a baby, then to another and laugh like a child, then in turn, as he went the round of the humpies he would sing like a maiden, corrobboree like a man, call out in a quavering voice like an old man, and in a shrill voice like an old woman; in fact, imitate any sort of voice he had ever heard, and imitate them so quickly in succession that any one passing would think there was a great crowd of blacks in that camp.
It was eight o'clock in the morning, and Jimmy Ah San, a fat, pleasant-faced Chinaman, dressed in European costume, came outside his tent, and filling his pipe, sat down on the ground, and with his hands clasped on his knees, saw six of the white men emerge from two or three humpies, and walk down to the new shaft to begin work.
This night, when the Borah corrobboree began, all the women relations of the boys to be made young men, corrobboreed all night. Towards the end of the night all the young women were ordered into bough humpies, which had been previously made all round the edge of the embankment surrounding the ring. The old women stayed on.
Usually the bear slaps the salmon out of the stream, then goes up on the bank and eats it. The "humpies" were so plentiful here, however, that they were tossed out on the bank, but not eaten, the bear preferring to capture one while in the water then wade about on his hind legs while he held the fish in his arms and devoured it.
Lizzie got ten shillings a week and she had a brother about fourteen who earned five shillings. That was about all they had to live on often, nine in the family with me and the rent seven shillings for a shell of a place that was standing close up against other humpies in a sort of yard.
"The township" was one of the usual Queensland mining type, a dozen or so of bark-roofed humpies, a public-house with the title of "The Digger's Best," a blacksmith's forge, and a quartz-crushing battery.
Lonely men in their tents and three or four mothers of families in their slab humpies looked out vainly for him for three days, anticipating necessary vegetables, and, being disappointed, slandered him courageously, while they found consolation in the reflection that if he ever came his round again they would distress and vex him by withholding payments for the vegetables of the past.
All bone, no more meat." Eyes of fire were added as finishing touches. The parents of our domesticated blacks not only never wore clothes, but hardly knew what clothes were. They needed none for warmth. Not every one possessed even a fig-tree blanket. During inclement weather they squatted in their humpies, or braved the elements "with honour clad."
But Moira's case was insistent and called for immediate attention. If there had been any shelter handy, even the rudest of bark humpies, I would have known what to do, and, what is more, I would have done it on the instant.
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