In many of the more arid parts of Australia there are permanent water-holes round which groups gathered in seasons of drought or for the performance of ceremonies which necessitated the presence of greater numbers than the usual family groups, but there was no permanency in these gatherings, and no other bond of unity than that of thirst and hunger or ceremonial observance, and when the drought broke up, and ceremonies ended, what might have been a community relapsed into its family groups, each group wending its way by its appointed roads to its own waters.

Yuria Water was one of these gathering places. It is a huge granite outcrop, situated some fifty or more miles north of Fowler’s Bay, South Australia, and is the only watering-place in the district that may truly be called permanent. Its waters never run dry.

All permanent native waters have legends attached to them, legends of the “dream” times, which go back to the days when birds and animals possessed human attributes, or were human beings, or were human groups of which the bird or animal was the representative, or were magic animals and birds possessing the power of human speech. The natives cannot say that the “founders” of the various permanent waters were altogether human, altogether birds or beasts, or half-bird half-human, but the bird or animal name only is always given in the legend, never a human name.

In the legend of Yuria Gabbi (water), the walja (eaglehawk) was the water-bringer.[ In a book that is not yet published I deal at greater length with the strange legends of the Aborigines. As an interesting example, however, I have included this legend as an Appendix to this book.]

All roads led to Yuria, which might be called “The White Rock of the Star,” for the red roads radiated from the gleaming white boulder like the points of the star. All round the granite grew mallee and myall and sandalwood, which provided the materials for weapons, the sandalwood yielding the gum with which the flints were fastened in the throwing-sticks. Many luscious roots and fruits were to be gathered at Yuria in their season, and there were certain sure haunts of the silver-grey and white kangaroo and emu, and the mallee hen, which made hunting easy. During ceremonial gatherings in Boogoomarl’s time he sometimes gave permission to good hunters among the visitors to go and hunt the big game, or his own people hunted and fed the visitors. The wombat went away with Boogoomarl, and now there are no more at Yuria.

Each visiting group came along its own road, and camped beside it during the ceremonies, and thus the visiting groups kept apart from each other, each in his own prescribed position. The groups from the north could only camp on the allinjerra warri (north road), those from the east on the koggararra warri, those from the west on the weelurarra warri. The south [Yool’bareri] men were the nearest relatives of Boogoomarl, and he was not afraid of them, so they camped close by his own ngoora.

Many a grave and many a human oven were dug at Yuria Gabbi in those far-off days. When a fight ended fatally, the victim was cooked and shared, unless he was an important or very old member of a group, then he would be carried back for burial to his own ground. The bones of the cooked person were taken back to his own waters, for each must be buried in his own country, or his spirit would find itself in a strange place and be very unhappy. When their little growing boys showed signs of decline or weakness, a baby brother or sister was killed and cooked, laid on its face upon the hot cinders, and the fat of the baby was rubbed all over the weakling boy, and he ate of its flesh in the morning and the evening until it was all finished, and he had become strong again, and grew fat and big. Boogoomarl’s grave lay in a hollow some distance from Yuria Water, and on top of the grave his yeenma (Churinga, of Spencer and Gillen) which held the spirit as well (for it showed the markings of the dreamtime eaglehawk), was laid flat upon the grave. With the long, long years during which it had lain there untouched and ungreased it was but a shred of wood when I came upon it in my wanderings over Yuria ground, but the markings were still faintly discernible, though the grave had long ago fallen below the level of the surrounding earth. Dhoogoor times begin at the great-grandfather period. Beyond “grandfather’s time” is dhoogoor, or dreamtime.

The walja-eagle-hawk-have now entire possession of Yuria Gabbi, for its owners and their relations have long since gone to the “spirit of Yuria Gabbi.” Near the granite is an old dead tree, shaped like a rough cross, and upon its branches a walja is always to be seen sitting in the early morning. Sometimes his wife sits beside him, but the dead sandalwood has always one occupant upon its branches. The rabbit has come to Yuria, and dug burrows close by the water, and three of these burrows are near the dead sandalwood, so walja waxes fat and lazy since food is now to be got without hunting. And only the cutting flints [These, by their colour and nature, tell the direction from which they were brought. There are black, grey, brown, red, yellow, white and many other coloured flints amongst them, but all are roughly chipped palaeoliths, the weapon of early man. The upper millstones were rounded, water-worn stones, of which a small pan w............