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Updated: September 7, 2025
The women and children who, in the mean time had been making a considerable circuit, now begin to beat amongst the bushes with the wind, shouting and driving the wallabies before them towards the nets, where they are caught and killed. Other species of the wallabie burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are dug out.
Getting the party away about five o'clock this morning, I persuaded one of the natives, named "Wilguldy," an intelligent cheerful old man, to accompany us as a guide, and as an inducement, had him mounted on a horse, to the great admiration and envy of his fellows, all of whom followed us on foot, keeping up in a line with the dray through the scrub, and procuring their food as they went along, which consisted of snakes, lizards, guanas, bandicoots, rats, wallabies, etc. etc. and it was surprising to see the apparent ease with which, in merely walking across the country, they each procured an abundant supply for the day.
Oh, that shoemakers had only to wear the boots they send to missionaries! Early on Sunday morning, a great many natives went out with their spears, nets, and dogs, to hunt wallabies. A goodly number attended the forenoon service, when Mr. Lawes preached. A good many strangers were present from an inland village on the Astrolabe side. There is not yet much observance of the Sabbath.
The Old Man noticed, as they walked, that a track through the thickest part of the jungle opened up a beaten, straight track, which he, for all his wanderings, had never before seen. The country was dry, too. Scrub hens and scrub turkeys, cassowaries, wallabies, huge carpet snakes, pigeons, fruits and nuts, bees' nests, and decayed trees full of great white grubs were there in plenty.
That was the burden of the grief with which I sobbed myself to sleep on the first night after our arrival. Mother felt dubious of her husband's ability to make a living off a thousand acres, half of which were fit to run nothing but wallabies, but father was full of plans, and very sanguine concerning his future. He was not going to squat henlike on his place as the cockies around him did.
While the bird life of our island is plentiful and varied, mammalian is insignificant in number. Although across a narrow channel marsupials are plentiful, there is no representative of that typical Australian order here, and the Dunk Island blacks have no legends of the existence of either kangaroos, wallabies, kangaroo rats or bandicoots in times past.
"That's one wallaby on the wheat, anyway," Dave muttered, and we giggled. WE understood Dave; but Dad did n't open his mouth. We lost no time lighting the fires. Then we walked through the "wheat" and wallabies! May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by one solitary pair of ears but from the row and scatter they made there were a MILLION.
My eyes were swollen and very sore, and altogether I was scarcely able to attend to any thing or employ myself in any profitable way. August 20. Some slight showers during the night made the weather cool and pleasant, the day too was cloudy, and I was enabled to occupy myself in charting, working out observations, etc. whilst Mr. Scott, by shooting, supplied us with some wallabies.
In netting the wallabies, a party of seven or eight men go in advance, with each a net of from twenty to forty feet long, and when they arrive near the runs, usually made use of by these animals, a favourable spot is selected, and the nets set generally in a line and nearly together, each native concealing himself near his own net.
Those who partook of the last of the wallabies have gone the way of all flesh, and the incident is instructive only as an illustration of the manner in which animals may suddenly disappear from confined localities, leaving no relic of previous existence. Though the drawings in caves depict lizards, echidna, turtle and men, there is no representation of kangaroo or wallaby.
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