Spear and woomera

Names

Kalka is 'fishing spear, also generic term for spear'^[1]. Roth found the same word for spear at Princess Charlotte Bay, Cape Bedford, the Bloomfield and the middle Palmer, and even among the Gunanni of the Gulf coast between the Mitchell and Staaten rivers^[2]. The dictionary's example sentence is nyulu kalkabu kuyu daman, 'he speared a fish with a spear', and the verb is damal 'to spear'^[1]. To make a spear is balkal: nyulu kalka balkan, 'he made a spear'^[1].

The spears by name. Fishing spears are yinba 'fish spear', yirrmba 'many-pronged fish spear' and jindal 'spear with three prongs'^[1]. Roth's Bloomfield yirmbua, the many-pronged fish spear, is yirrmba in his 1909 spelling, and his Cape Bedford yin-ba is yinba^[2]. Duwar is both the black palm and the 'black palm spear' made from it^[1]. Dara and wulburr are bamboo spear sticks, the light butts^[1]. The fighting spears are dajal 'fighting spear', dikarra 'war spear, has a stingray barb', kuyan 'war spear with quartz head' and the shovel-headed murrangkal, 'fighting spear (shovelhead), made from black palm'^[1]. Yingkan is the 'knife spear'^[1]. Kukuni is 'the big spear used for spearing turtle, used as a harpoon'^[1].

The parts. Barbs are jinil or manbir 'barb of a spear'^[1]. A turtle-spear point is kurajan in Yalanji and biyul in Nyungkul, and kurrajan is 'a spear point made from wattle and used for turtle spearing. It was put in the fire until it was hard enough to pierce through a turtle shell'^[1]. Muji is the 'name given to a person who has spear marks on him'^[1].

The woomera. The spear-thrower is balur 'spear thrower', Milbayarr 'woomera' or mirrba, 'a wooden instrument to help throw spears more powerfully'^[1]. Its hook is mingu, 'the hook of the woomera that enters the end of the spear', and its decorated butt is ngurmu^[1]. Mumal is 'to throw a spear with a woomera'^[1]. Roth's Bloomfield ballur is balur, and the moon-shaped thrower carried that name on the Bloomfield and south along the coast to Cape Grafton^[2]. Anderson, writing from Wujal Wujal in the 1970s and 1980s, used balur for the curved fishing thrower and milbayarr for the straight ironwood hunting thrower^[3]. The Cape Bedford name of the straight ironwood thrower was milbir, and on the middle Palmer, Laura and Maytown it was borna^[2].

Names recorded by Anderson but not in the dictionary. Anderson's table of twelve Bloomfield spears also has wurrbuy, bukul-bukul and bandi, which are not headwords in the dictionary^[3]. Roth's 1909 Cape Bedford and Bloomfield names wur-poi, nambar, ta-chal, do-war, mu-rongal, mon-gil mon-gil and o-worn are in his own spelling^[2]; wur-poi is plainly Anderson's wurrbuy, and nambar may be the dictionary's nambarr, 'stick of flexible bamboo used in nose piercing', but that is a guess for the contribution box^[1]. In the Guugu Yimithirr language of Cape Bedford, just north of Yalanji country, Roth recorded kalka balkal-baka, 'spear-maker, the one who makes nothing else but spears'^[5].

What a spear and a woomera are

A Kuku Yalanji spear is a machine of two or more pieces. Roth treated the spears of Princess Charlotte Bay, Cape Bedford, the Bloomfield and the middle Palmer as one family, with the well-documented Cape Bedford spears as the type. Every one of them is a hard shaft (Roth's 'distal' piece) morticed into a light butt (the 'proximal' piece), 'the one extremity of the barb invariably forming the very tip of the completed spear'^[2]. The butt gives length and straightness for little weight; the shaft gives the mass and the hardness at the business end. The joint is bound with sinew or twine and sealed under gum cement, which is levelled with a greased smoothing-board^[6]. The extreme butt end of a woomera-thrown spear, unless it is bamboo, is also bound and cemented before the little cup for the woomera peg is picked out of it^[6]. On the Bloomfield the stingray barbs and the prongs 'were held in place by wallaby sinew and resins made from Canarium australasicum, E. chlorostachys or grasstree', and the wooden points 'were fire hardened after sharpening'^[3]. Bloomfield spears in the Queensland and Australian museums are between 2,300 and 2,915 mm long, and Le Souef in 1894 put them at up to nine feet six inches^[3].

The twelve Bloomfield spears. Anderson's informants sorted spears 'according to the number of prongs, the nature of the prongs, whether or not a barb or stone tip was present and what the spear handle was made of', and he tabulated twelve, while noting that 'most spears could be used for any purpose if necessary'^[3]. Set beside Roth's 1909 descriptions, which were gathered on the Bloomfield in 1898 with R. Hislop's help, they are^[3][2][1]:

• Jindal: hunting, three prongs. The dictionary's 'spear with three prongs'.
• Wurrbuy (Roth's wur-poi): hunting, one point. A long grass-tree butt with a short wattle (Acacia) tip and a wooden barb. Roth's nambar is 'similar to preceding, but the grass-tree is replaced by reed'.
• Murrangkal (Roth's mu-rongal): Anderson lists it as a one-point hunting spear; the dictionary calls it a 'fighting spear (shovelhead), made from black palm'. Roth's Cape Bedford version had a short grass-tree butt and a long Acacia or Erythrophleum (ironwood) shaft with a wooden barb. Both can be true: a long black-palm or ironwood shaft with a broad head is as good for a wallaby as for a fight.
• Yingkan: hunting, one point. The dictionary's 'knife spear'. No source describes the blade; it is a question for the contribution box.
• Bukul-bukul: hunting, one point. Not described anywhere in print.
• Duwar (Roth's do-war): hunting, one point. 'Long proximal portion made of reed, the timber used being immaterial, and a short black-palm distal end, the latter giving the particular name to the spear'. The same name and weapon at Cape Bedford and on the Bloomfield.
• Yinba: fishing, three to four prongs. Roth's four-pronged fish spear, 'usually four prongs (distal pieces) morticed into the proximal, with a wooden barb on each prong'.
• Yirrmba (Roth's yirmbua): fishing, four to seven prongs. 'Made of some light wood, preferably Xanthorrhoea (grass-tree)'; said to have been brought in from elsewhere but made on the Bloomfield 'for some time previous to 1885'. Anderson: 'with a grasstree or bamboo handle and a hardwood or bone point', the most common fishing spear.
• Dikarra (Roth's dikara): fighting, three to five barbs. Stingray barbs 'placed one behind the other, pointing backwards', on a short grass-tree butt and a long black-palm or bloodwood shaft. The dictionary's 'war spear, has a stingray barb'.
• Kuyan (Roth's ku-yan): fighting, one point. Small white quartz flakes set in gum on opposite sides of the tip 'like the teeth of a lady's small hair-comb', on a long butt and short shaft. The dictionary's 'war spear with quartz head'.
• Dajal (Roth's ta-chal): fighting and hunting, one point. A single stingray barb pointing forward, on a short grass-tree butt and a long black-palm or bloodwood shaft. The dictionary's 'fighting spear'.
• Bandi: fighting, one point. Not described anywhere in print.

To these add the kukuni, the big turtle spear 'used as a harpoon'^[1], which Anderson describes as a detachable-headed harpoon thrown from the prow of a canoe^[3], and the toy spears of dry grass-tree stems that boys threw at a rolling target^[3] (see games).

The woomera. A spear-thrower is a lever. The hook at its far end sits in the cup at the butt of the spear, the thrower's arm and the blade swing together, and the spear leaves the hook at the speed of the blade's tip rather than the speed of the hand. Spear-throwers 'can readily impart speeds of over 150 km/h' to a projectile and give the dart more momentum than an arrow from a bow^[7]. Woomeras are between 61 and 91 cm long, and across Australia there is 'much diversity in design'^[8]. The parts, in the words of the dictionary and of Roth, are the blade, the peg or hook (mingu), the handle, which may be plain or hafted, and the decorated butt (ngurmu)^[1][2]. Yalanji people had two kinds:

• The straight ironwood thrower (Anderson's milbayarr; the dictionary's Milbayarr), 'a linear or ovate lath spear thrower of E. chlorostachys', 'very plain, usually with no shell attachment or handle', 0.9 to 1 m long and 60 to 90 mm wide, used for hunting^[3]. Roth's description for Cape Bedford, the Endeavour and Bloomfield rivers and Butcher's Hill: 'a comparatively long blade, even width throughout, and a short peg with a slight nick. The peg, which is cut from Petalostigma quadriloculare, is neither flattened nor drilled, but tied with tendon, etc., on to two holes drilled into the blade, the cement covering the back of the peg. The cement used is usually that of the iron-wood, but the Grevillea is preferable when obtainable, as it lasts better. The handle is either haftless or else hafted with two pieces of Melo shell fixed on with beeswax, or else with a thin lath bent on itself'^[2].
• The moon-shaped ballur (the dictionary's balur), 'a curvilinear lath 650 mm to 800 mm in length and 50 mm to 70 mm wide', used for fishing and found nowhere but the Bloomfield and the short coast south of it^[3][2]. Roth: 'comparatively short, made of a light timber, is haftless, and generally decorated with red and white pigment at its distal extremity. It is thrown in a manner different from all other wommeras, in that the blade rests in the fork between the first finger and the thumb, instead of, as in the ordinary style, between the first and second fingers'^[2]. The Museums Victoria example from the Bloomfield River, X 94769, is 790 mm long and 180 mm wide, curved, with a wooden peg bound on at an acute angle and a rounded handle end; the museum notes that Roth collected fourteen of them in 1898^[4]. Anderson saw them in use at Bloomfield in the late 1970s and noted that 'the peg at the end for holding the spear was varied in length and angle according to distance and the personal requirements of the thrower'^[3]. Robins identified the timber as Argyrodendron, a rainforest tree^[3].

The woomera as a guard. The dictionary's definition of mirrba adds that the woomera 'was used as an instrument of defence. After being found guilty, a man used to be given a woomera with which to ward off the spears thrown by a group of men. The aim was not to kill except for a capital offence'^[1]. Anderson: 'in the "trial" the defendant was given the longer, straight spear thrower and he was allowed to block or deflect the spears thrown at him'^[3]. Nganya-burra is that 'old time Aboriginal trial. The one on trial has spears thrown at him. If he is able to dodge them, he goes free'^[1].

The neighbours' throwers, for comparison. The Koko-minni of the middle Palmer, Laura and Maytown, the people nearest to Western Yalanji country in Roth's records, had an ironwood thrower with a long, comparatively narrow blade, wider at the centre, and 'the long peg, which has a deep transverse nick in it to catch into the extremity of the spear-butt, is formed from an Acacia and fixed on to the blade by tendon passing through two holes in it, this portion of the peg being accordingly flattened from side to side, into two holes correspondingly drilled into the blade; the ligature is covered with Grevillea cement, the back of the peg remaining free of it'; the haft was Melo shell traded from the Musgrave River or 'a lath of wood doubled upon itself'^[2]. At Princess Charlotte Bay the blade was longer and wide at the centre; north-west of the bay the Koko-olkulo thrower was short and almost leaf-bladed, with a long beefwood peg, and threw a very short spear of about six feet^[2]. On the Pennefather River, far to the north-west, the thrower was made of five different timbers, among them ironwood, and 'to prevent the timber from splitting after being cut from the tree it may be buried in the ground for two or three months'^[2]. Far away in the Boulia district the thrower was a thin straight lath of gidgee, 'the thinner the lath, the better is the weapon considered'^[9].

Which spear, which woomera?

Which spear is it? Pick it up and look at four things: the butt, the joint, the head and the paint.

• The butt tells the thrower. A woomera spear has a small cup at the butt end, usually inside a collar of twine and cement, for the peg to sit in; a bamboo butt has the cup cut straight into the cane^[6]. A hand spear has no cup. The hand spears of the lower Tully (the chukaji) and of Rockhampton and Brisbane had butts that tapered to a point, and no spear-throwers were known 'all up the coast-line certainly as far north as Townsville'^[2]. Every Yalanji spear in the records is a woomera spear, except the turtle harpoon, which was thrust and let go by hand^[3].
• The butt material tells the type. A hollow reed or bamboo butt: duwar (short black-palm tip), the reed-butted nambar, a middle-Palmer fish spear, or a quartz kuyan (long butt, short shaft). A pithy, light grass-tree stalk: the long butt of the wurrbuy and of most fish spears, or the short butt of the fighting spears^[2]. A grass-tree stalk is ribbed and papery outside and pith inside; a reed is hollow with hard nodes.
• The head tells the job. One forward-pointing stingray barb: dajal. Three to five stingray barbs in a row, pointing back: dikarra. Quartz chips in a comb on both sides: kuyan. Four or more light prongs, each with its own wooden barb: yinba or yirrmba. One hardwood point with a small wooden barb: wurrbuy or nambar. A broad, flattened black-palm head: the shovel-headed murrangkal^[2][1]. A broad head on a one-piece hardwood spear belongs further south: the Westwood spears Roth saw at Rockhampton had a flattened head 'twenty inches long and three inches wide' with barbs cut out of the solid^[2].
• The paint tells the owner's district. Bloomfield spear handles were 'usually painted with red and white stripes'^[3]. On the lower Tully a stingray-barbed spear carried red and white rings at the tip, and an unbarbed one a plain red smear; on the Pennefather the butt end ran white, then red, then a long black^[2]. In the Boulia district a spear that had 'been proved to aim true' was fluted along its whole length^[9].

Which woomera is it?

• Bent like a new moon, light, short, no haft, red and white at the far end: the Bloomfield balur, and nothing else looks like it. In 1897 one washed up on the beach at Cape Bedford, thirty miles away, and the local people 'could not give it a name, but they told [the missionary] that the person who made it must have been mad'^[2].
• Straight, even width, heavy dark ironwood, short peg with a slight nick, peg tied through two holes drilled in the blade only, cement over the back of the peg: the Cape Bedford, Endeavour, Bloomfield and Butcher's Hill thrower, the Yalanji Milbayarr^[2][3].
• Straight, wider at the centre, sloping handle end, long Acacia peg flattened and drilled, tendon through peg and blade, Grevillea cement with the back of the peg left bare: the middle Palmer, Laura and Maytown thrower^[2].
• A yellow timber: Butcher's Hill throwers of Roth's nga-til, the dictionary's ngadil, 'hickory, good timber for woomeras'^[2][1].
• Shell haft of two oval pieces of baler shell, fixed with beeswax, at any angle: optional on all the straight types; the hunting throwers Anderson saw at Bloomfield usually had none^[3][2].
• Carved zig-zags: 'small zig-zags and other designs were carved into spear throwers to personalise them'^[3].
• Clapsticks: a pair of woomeras was also the Bloomfield rhythm instrument, 'spear throwers used as clapping sticks'^[3]. A worn pair with no peg may be that.

Spear or harpoon? The kukuni turtle spear has a short, fire-hardened wattle point, kurrajan, that comes away from the pole on a rope: a harpoon^[1][3]. See sea turtle and dugong.

Spear or fire-drill? A dry grass-tree flower stalk is also the fire-drill of the whole region^[6]. A spear butt is cut long and has a mortice or a cemented end; a firestick is short and charred at the tip.

Signs of spear-making and spear-makers

• Scarred ironwood trees. 'There are numerous scarred trees in the Bloomfield area where wood for these spear throwers has been cut out'^[3]. A long, narrow rectangular scar on an ironwood trunk, roughly a metre by a hand's width, is a woomera blank taken out. On Cape York 'virtually all culturally modified trees in Eucalyptus tetrodonta woodland are Cooktown ironwoods', most of them sugar-bag scars where honey was cut out^[10]; a woomera scar is longer and straighter than a honey scar.
• A trimmed stick is a claim. Roth, quoted by Anderson: 'the leaves trimmed from a stick that will eventually become a spear shaft; all will establish such a thing as personal property and will be respected as such even though the one who made the sign may be unknown'^[3]. A sapling with its side shoots cut off and left standing is somebody's spear.
• The spear-maker's kit. Men carried in their net bags 'a small stick with ironbark or other gum attached to the end, firesticks wrapped in paperbark, spare spear barbs'^[3]. The bone awl for mortising 'is carried in the men's dilly-bags'^[6]. A flat palm-sized ironwood board with 'traces, sometimes even a blob, of the sticky substance' is a smoothing-board^[6].
• Spears and woomeras are personal. 'The net-bags, spear throwers and spears for men, were all considered personal items and would not normally be lent to others'^[3]. Spears, woomeras, dilly-bags, gum cements and red ochre were the Bloomfield's trade goods, bartered 'for stingaree-spears, shell-ornaments, yellow ochre'^[11].
• On the hunter. Muji is a person with spear scars^[1]. In a fight people 'squat down so you cannot hit them with your spear', which is mingki-janay^[1].
• On the ground. A spare spear standing in the ground beyond a mob of kangaroos is the Palmer and Musgrave hunter's scent trick, described under uses^[12]. A tussock of grass moving slowly down a lagoon against the wind is a man with a woomera spear^[12]. For tracks, scats and the reading of game, see tracks and signs.

Where every material comes from

Every spear is a map of the country it was made in, because each part came from a different place and some parts came by trade. This section lists the materials by plant and animal; the how-to section gives the working instructions for each.

Woods of the open forest.

• Ironwood, jujabala 'ironwood tree'^[1]: 'exceptionally hard and dense as well as being highly termite resistant', growing 'from north-eastern Queensland to the Kimberley' in everything 'from arid savanna to tropical rainforest'^[10]. On the Bloomfield it made the hunting woomera^[3]; at Cape Bedford, on the Endeavour and Bloomfield and at Butcher's Hill, and on the middle Palmer, Laura and Maytown, the thrower blade^[2]; on the Bloomfield 'sometimes the point and distal end instead of the black palm'^[3]; at Princess Charlotte Bay the shaft of the quartz spear^[2]; and everywhere a root gum^[6].
• Grass tree, nganjirr 'grass tree', with its resin kanunjul, 'used to make pitch to seal spear bindings'^[1]: the light butt of the wurrbuy, the preferred wood of the yirrmba fish spear, the short butt of the fighting spears, the boys' toy spears and the fire-drill^[2][3][6]. The Endeavour and Bloomfield people carried 'grass-tree spears' up toward the Laura to trade^[11].
• Wattle, yalngkal 'white wattle', yarun 'black wattle (yellow flower)', yumba 'wattle tree'^[1]: short tips with a wooden barb (Roth's Acacia holocarpa, Guugu Yimithirr o-yur), the fire-hardened turtle point kurrajan, the long shaft of the mu-rongal, the woomera peg of the middle Palmer, and on the middle Palmer the turpentine wattle Acacia lysiphloia (Koko-minni urr-te) for fighting spears^[2][1]. The turpentine wattle is 'a spreading, multi-stemmed, often sticky shrub' of northern Australia^[13]. The candelabra wattle A. holosericea is 'a shrub or tree that typically grows to 3–8 m'^[14]. See wattles and grevilleas.
• Bloodwood, kawarr, babajaka and kuji-kuji, all 'species of bloodwood'^[1]: the long shaft of the Bloomfield ta-chal and dikara fighting spears^[2]. The inland bloodwood's wood 'was used by indigenous peoples to make spear-throwers'^[15].
• Quinine bush (Petalostigma): the short nicked woomera peg at Cape Bedford, on the Endeavour and Bloomfield and at Butcher's Hill, which Roth gives as Petalostigma quadriloculare (Guugu Yimithirr 'ekn, dun-jo)^[2]. Petalostigma quadriloculare var. pubescens is now P. pubescens, the quinine bush, a small tree of Queensland, the Territory and New Guinea^[16]. No Kuku Yalanji name for it is in the dictionary.
• Beefwood (Grevillea striata), the 'bastard beefwood' of Roth: root cement, 'the strongest and most durable of all their cements' in the consensus of the people he asked, used 'along the same areas as the Erythrophleum', though at Cooktown 'all the trees in the close vicinity' had been destroyed by 1904^[6]. It is 'an erect, spindly shrub or robust tree with dark, fissured bark', 3 to 15 m tall^[17]. Anderson's Bloomfield informants rated grass-tree and Grevillea striata gum as 'not having very good bonding qualities', against Roth's middle-Palmer and Cape Bedford informants who preferred Grevillea on a woomera 'as it lasts better'^[3][2].
• Brown cedar (Canarium australasicum), jalnji, a poison-nut tree whose 'gum from this tree is not poisonous, used for making spears'^[1]: the Bloomfield spear and axe cement, Roth's Bloomfield t-chaln-ji, and yikari, which the dictionary defines as 'hardened beeswax, hardened with ironwood root juice' and Roth as the traded resin of Canarium muelleri^[6][1]. See brown cedar. The related scrub turpentine Canarium australianum is a tree of up to 30 m with 'rough grey bark'^[18].
• Reed: the long light butt of the nambar, the dikara at Cape Bedford and the duwar, 'the timber used being immaterial'^[2]. On the Mitchell River, E. Palmer recorded Phragmites communis stems 'used for reed-spears', and on the Mitchell and Gilbert Thryptomene oligandra 'for the points of reed-spears only'^[2]. The common reed, Phragmites australis, 'is a wetland grass that can grow up to 2–6 metres tall'^[19].
• Cabbage palm: on the Endeavour and Normanby rivers the wood of the cabbage-tree palm 'is split and made into spear-heads'^[2].
• Hickory and water gum: ngadil, 'hickory, good timber for woomeras', dilbal, a 'species of hickory', and jinajina, 'water gum tree; this tree is good timber for woomeras (yalanji dialect)'^[1]. Roth's yellow nga-til throwers at Butcher's Hill are the same word^[2]. Neither tree has been matched to a scientific name here: for the contribution box.
• Durral: 'spears made from this wood'^[1]. Also unidentified.

Woods of the rainforest and the coast, which came by trade to the inland.

• Black palm, duwar^[1]: the Bloomfield spear wood above all others, used for the short tip of the duwar, the long shaft of the dajal, dikarra and murrangkal, and the prongs of the Princess Charlotte Bay fish spears, where 'the latter material [is] bartered into these parts from the McIvor River'^[2][3]. Normanbya normanbyi is a rainforest palm endemic to Queensland^[20].
• Bamboo, dara and wulburr 'bamboo spear stick'^[1]: the butt of the stingray-barbed spears at Cape Bedford and of the middle Palmer fish spear, 'which is bartered from the Princess Charlotte Bay Blacks'. The Princess Charlotte Bay people got their bamboo 'from the Hann and Kennedy Rivers, and [it] forms a staple barter, e.g., to the Koko-minni of the Middle Palmer River'^[2]. In the Peninsula the bamboo's 'natural hollow of the stem is availed of' as the mortice^[6].
• Alexandra palm (Archontophoenix alexandrae): a rainforest palm whose timber Roth listed 'for spears'^[12].
• Argyrodendron: the light rainforest timber of the ballur^[3]. Trees of this genus are 'tall trees, usually with buttress roots'^[21].
• Stingray barbs: from the coast. On the middle Palmer they 'are bartered into the district from the Musgrave River on the east coast, or from down the Mitchell, etc., on the Gulf coast'^[2]. On the Bloomfield, stingray 'was important not only as a meat source, but for the supply of spear barbs', and its spearing was restricted to adult men under rules Anderson recorded and this page does not repeat^[3]. See stingrays.
• Baler shell for woomera hafts: Melo shell traded from the Musgrave River to the middle Palmer^[2]. See bailer shells.
• Quartz for the kuyan head, from the stone country; Cape Bedford received quartz-tipped spears in trade, along with 'kangaroo-tail sinew' and 'kangaroo bones (of a certain kind to be specially used for making bone awls)'^[11].

Animal materials. Wallaby-tail sinew, biyal, 'gristle, sinew, string, blood vessel (especially wallaby tail sinew)'^[1], binds barbs, prongs and pegs^[3]. Kangaroo tendon is 'very commonly used throughout the North: especially for fixing the peg to the blade of the wommera, and for strengthening the morticing of the spear-shaft into the butt'^[6]. Kangaroo-bone pencils were the barbs on the Pennefather, bone barbs the middle Palmer fish-spear barbs, and a marsupial or bird leg-bone the mortising awl^[2][6]. Beeswax, nyumbirr 'wax made by bees' and jila, fixes the shell haft and, hardened with ironwood juice, becomes yikari^[1][2]. Cassowary fat greased the pounding stones at Bloomfield, and the Calophyllum nut did the same at Cooktown^[3][6]. Candlenut oil fixed the ochre^[6]. Forehead sweat greased the smoothing-board^[6].

What the spear kit takes from the country

A spear is where the tree kit, the animal kit and the trade kit of the country meet, and each joint in it is a relationship.

What the spear takes. The woomera takes a lath out of a living ironwood and leaves a scar that outlasts the thrower^[3]. The hunting spear takes a wallaby's tail for its sinew, and Roth says of kangaroo tendon that 'other things equal, this is the first economic use to which the kangaroo is put'; the tail tip is nicked or bitten and 'steadily but firmly pulled off, the tendinous threads or films coming away with it', then dried and carried about, sometimes wrapped in tea-tree bark for trade, and moistened in the lips when needed^[6]. The fighting spear takes the serrated spine from a stingray's tail, which the ray regrows^[3][22]. The gums take the roots of young ironwoods and beefwoods, 'that from the older ones not being removable', and Roth already saw the beefwoods around Cooktown 'destroyed' by 1904^[6]. The paint takes red ochre, white clay, candlenut oil and bloodwood kino^[6]. The haft takes a baler shell from the coast and wax from the sugarbag^[2].

What the spear gives back. It is the tool that turns the country's animals into food: fish at the muddied waterhole, eels in the drowned grass after a flood, mullet in the late-dry shoals, turtle and dugong from the canoe, wallabies between the fires, kangaroos stalked from downwind, goannas in the open, ducks on the lagoon, bustards and emus on the plain^[12][3]. Fire drives for wallabies and kangaroos were run with 'the older men' waiting with spears at the gaps in the fire, and the burning that went with hunting is one of the reasons the open forest is open; see hunting with fire^[3][12].

Who lives with the spear woods. The ironwood is the tree of the sugarbag: Cape York's modified ironwoods are mostly honey scars, and the big hollows in old ironwoods are where the native bees nest, so the woomera blank and the beeswax that hafts it often come from the same tree^[10]. Its foliage 'contains toxic levels of alkaloids and has been responsible for numerous deaths of both cattle and horses'^[10]. The grass tree's dead flower stalks are the spear butts and the fire-drills, and its living flower spikes feed honeyeaters and native bees; the dictionary notes kuru, a 'grub found in dry grass tree'^[1][23]. The stingray that gives the barb works the mud and the oyster beds of the estuaries^[3]. The wallaby that gives the sinew grazes the flats that the fire drives cleared^[3].

The trade web. Nobody had all the materials. The Bloomfield exported dilly-bags, spears, woomeras, 'several varieties of gum-cements, and red ochre', and imported 'stingaree-spears, shell-ornaments, yellow ochre'^[11]. The Endeavour and Bloomfield people took red ochre, white clay and grass-tree spears up to the Koko-warra toward the Laura, and were paid in baler shell, grass-reed spears, nautilus necklaces, stingray spears and fishing nets^[11]. The Princess Charlotte Bay people passed bamboo on to the middle Palmer, and the middle Palmer got its stingray barbs from the Musgrave or from down the Mitchell^[2]. Black palm went from the McIvor to Princess Charlotte Bay^[2]. The ballur went from the Bloomfield as far south as Cape Grafton, where Yarrabah people before the mission traded 'bent or moon-shaped spear-throwers' northwards^[11]. 'The principal time of barter was during the laying-season at King's Lake country', the scrub-hen egg season on the King's Plains, 'whenever there happened to be a sufficient supply of food to attract them'^[11]. See scrub hen.

Time and labour. Roth: 'as to how much labour is entailed in the manufacture of a spear depends largely upon the nature of the timber employed according as to whether this is a bamboo or a thin sapling, or whether the implement is cut out of a tree en bloc ... or split out of the solid'^[2]. A reed-butted duwar with a short palm tip is a day's work with the materials to hand; a woomera blank buried for months to stop it splitting, or a beefwood cement hammered and heated 'for some considerable time', is a season's project^[2][6].

Seasons

The spear kit follows the seasons of its materials and of its quarry. The months are a rough guide; the Kuku Yalanji seasons are on the seasons page.

• After the wet, in the cool dry (April to August). Cut and season wood. Roth's general rule is that mortising wants 'the wood perfectly dry', and that some timbers 'unless immediately tackled after removal, become too hard to work upon'^[6]. The grass-tree flower stalks that flowered after the fires are dead and dry; choose them now. Fire drives for wallabies and kangaroos are a dry-season hunt, when 'the whole camp will go and start a long line of bush-fires'^[12] (see hunting with fire). Sugarbag is cut in the dry, so beeswax for hafts and for yikari comes now^[3] (see native bees).
• The late dry and the build-up (September to December). On the Bloomfield 'in the late dry, shoals of mullet ... came into the creeks and up the river', and mullet 'could be obtained only by spearing'^[3]. Low water concentrates fish in the waterholes for muddying and for striking at random in the muddy holes^[12]. The barter meetings at the King's Plains fell in the scrub-hen laying season, which begins with the build-up^[3][11]. Spear fishing 'could only be done in relatively clear water', and the build-up storms end that until the rivers settle^[3].
• The wet (January to March). 'In any streams after the floods have gone down, or in any eddy where dead leaves, water-grass, etc., have collected', men waded in for eels with single-pointed spears^[12]. On the lower Tully 'in flood-time [people] drive the wallabies from off the higher levels into the water, and there soon dispose of them with sticks and spears'^[12]. Big fish lie 'in and among the snags' and were stalked in the water^[12]. Wet-season storms bring down the dead grass-tree stalks and the reeds grow; cut reed butts once they have hardened and dried.
• Any time. Sinew comes with every wallaby and kangaroo^[6]. Gum lumps are gathered off the brown cedar whenever found and keep indefinitely, since every native gum 'only requires heat to soften it again'^[6]. Ironwood and beefwood roots are dug whenever a cement is needed, from young trees^[6]. A spear is repaired at the fire the night it breaks.

What was speared, and how

Each quarry had its own spear and its own approach. Roth's accounts are labelled by district; Anderson's are Bloomfield. The Kuku Yalanji animal names are the dictionary's.

Fish, kuyu. Kalka is first of all a fishing spear^[1].

1. Muddy the water. 'Muddying or puddling of the water by the feet, in small shallows, and hitting or spearing the fish as they come up, is a common procedure everywhere'^[12].
2. Strike blind in a deep hole. 'Especially in deep or muddy waterholes where the fish cannot actually be seen, for [people] to strike here and there promiscuously on the off chance, and every now and again they may prove successful'; Roth often watched this in muddy waterholes at Princess Charlotte Bay with the four-pronged fish spear^[12][2].
3. Stand still and wait. On the Bloomfield spearing 'was done out on the reef at low tide, from the edges of a creek bank, in the water or while standing on an overhanging branch'^[3]. Low tide is ngajal and the reef dulngku^[1].
4. Fish at night from a canoe. 'One person sat at the front of the boat holding aloft a burning paperbark torch. As the fish were attracted to the light, another person would spear them'^[3]. A paperbark torch is jidi^[1]. See canoes.
5. Mullet in the late dry. 'Shoals of mullet, particularly Mugil cephalus and Valamugil seheli, came into the creeks and up the river' and were speared; 'at other times rock cod, coral cod, red emperor, black-tip shark and stingrays were commonly speared'^[3]. Mullet is ngalkun, small mullet kalngkan^[1].
6. Big fish among the snags. On the Tully, for 'barramundi, black bream, etc., lying in and among the snags', men 'will creep very stealthily, or even dive, into the water, and, with a spear, strike the creature from the sides or from underneath'^[12]. See barramundi and black bream.
7. Which spear. Multi-pronged spears, most often the yirrmba, were the normal fishing spears^[3]; a pronged spear clogs in weed, so a single point is used in grass^[12]. On the Bloomfield the ballur was the fishing thrower, 'especially anything at very close quarters'^[2].

Eels, kubarr, dandarrbina, mawul. Lower Tully method, after the floods: 'some fifteen to twenty men will wade in, up to the waist if necessary, and job the points of their spears vertically down (single-pointed spears are used for this: the three or four-pronged ones would get clogged and caught in the tussocks). The twisting and twirling of the spear will be the immediate indication that an eel has been "pinked."' Before wire, the man then bent down and grabbed the eel with his hand 'before it could slip or wriggle off, a practice which often entailed his being severely bitten'; with a wire spear he could push it further down, pass his hand under the eel and bend the wire up^[12]. On the Bloomfield 'in freshwater creeks and waterholes, eelfish were sometimes speared from underwater'^[3].

Sea turtle, ngawiya, and dugong, kirbaji. Men's work from the canoe, with the harpoon kukuni and its fire-hardened wattle point kurrajan^[1]. 'It took at least two and generally three men ... One or two were needed to paddle the canoe and watch for turtles, while the other man stood on the prow of the boat with harpoon in hand and guided the boat with hand signals ... When a good-sized turtle was sighted, the prow man let fly with the harpoon, one hand pushing the end of his whole body weight behind it'^[3]. Dugong 'are either harpooned or speared, more generally the former'^[12]. Dalbarril is the spear glancing off the turtle's shell^[1]. The full hunt is on the sea turtle page.

Crocodiles, bilngkumu and ngawurr-ngawun. 'Crocodiles are usually speared, a favourite spot appearing to be just behind the arm. As a rule the larger-sized ones can only be caught when stranded in the smaller water-holes after flood by letting fly dozens of spears into them'^[12]. See freshwater crocodile and saltwater crocodile, and the safety section.

Goanna, jadi, kalajarr, walkarr. 'Speared, out in the open, or else hunted for in hollow logs, or in their burrows'; Princess Charlotte Bay people 'can always tell by the tracks whether it is in its ground-burrow or not'^[12].

Kangaroos and wallabies: mayarriji, julmbanu, nyarrkali, kadar, darrba, bimbarrbay.

1. Stalk from downwind. 'On the Palmer, Musgrave, and back of Princess Charlotte Bay generally ... kangaroos are speared, being tracked from the windward, these animals having a very sensitive appreciation of [the hunter's] scent'^[12]. Karangaji is 'stalk', karangal 'sneak around to see, reconnoiter', and nyungun-bungal 'to see and know someone before he sees and knows you'^[1].
2. Push it with a scented spear. 'Sometimes, in order to make the marsupial approach into closer quarters, or else to get it out of some brush-wood, etc., so as to make surer of his aim and yet not to run the risk of exposing his presence, the hunter will throw a spare spear well over its head into the ground beyond. This spear, having been well smeared with the perspiration from under the arm-pits or crutch ... the wind carries the scent and drives the kangaroo from apparent into real danger. (Wallabies are similarly hunted in these same districts.)'^[12].
3. Drive with fire. At Bloomfield 'fires were carefully lit to create a "wall" of fire going in one direction with only a few openings. Young people, starting within a forested area, walked in a long line beating the bush and shouting. This drove kangaroos, wallabies and other smaller animals towards the gaps in the fire, where the older men waited with spears'^[3]. At Cape Bedford 'the men will then form in line at intervals, and so circle round, spearing the kangaroos in between them and the row of fires'^[12]. See hunting with fire.
4. Flood drive. Lower Tully: wallabies driven off the high ground into the water^[12].
5. Midday. North-west central Queensland: 'tracked and sneaked upon during the extreme midday heat, and caught while resting in the shade by means of spear or boomerang'^[12].

Bustard, kurrbal. 'This so-called turkey may be speared, the commonest method, as a general rule, everywhere'; elsewhere birds were surrounded by a ring of fires and knocked over^[12].

Emu. 'All over North Queensland emus may be speared, only the method of stalking varying.' In the hinterland of Princess Charlotte Bay 'the hunter wears a collar-like head-dress, made of a thick sheaf of long grass doubled and tied behind, and holds some bushes in front of him'. 'The Palmer River [people] either hide in amongst the Owenia trees, or conceal themselves in pits dug in their close proximity, and spear the bird either as it comes to feed on its favourite fruit or passes by'^[12]. No emu word is in the dictionary.

Cassowary, kurranji. Lower Tully: 'the only bird which is speared, [the hunters] imitating its "call," and hiding behind a tree, etc., as it passes along to water'^[12].

Ducks and geese, nili-nili, jamarbina. 'In the hinterland of Princess Charlotte Bay, on the Palmer River, etc., ducks, geese, and similar game are all stalked and speared, usually with the ordinary simple-point spear if on land, but commonly with a pronged one if on water. In either case, [the hunter] covers his head with a bundle of long grass, tied about near to its extremities into something like a horse-collar, the ends falling over onto the back of the wearer's shoulders', holding 'a bunch of leafy switches in front, and with the other his wommera spear, as he glides forward in the water after the unsuspecting birds. Viewed from the front, the individual so concealed looks for all the world like a tussock of grass floating down the stream, so slow and silent are all his movements.' On the plains '[the hunter] ... stalks his prey more or less on all fours, under cover of any intervening bushes'. 'In the neighbourhood of the Laura, also at Cape Bedford and elsewhere, ducks can be caught by silently diving under them in the water and pulling them down'^[12]. Pelicans on the east coast were crept up on at night and speared^[12].

Fighting and the law. Damaway is 'fight with spears' and mungkil 'spear to kill'^[1]. Anderson lists the forms of conflict at Bloomfield: ambush, formal fights between groups, and the 'trial by spear', in which 'fighting spears and the curved woomeras were used' for the fights and 'the defendant was given the longer, straight spear thrower and he was allowed to block or deflect the spears thrown at him'^[3]. The dictionary's nganya-burra and the definition of mirrba describe the same trial, and add that 'the aim was not to kill except for a capital offence'^[1]. Shields were 'given to individuals for blocking spears during the formal trial'^[3]; see shields, swords and clubs and law.

Play and practice. Boys threw 'toy spears made from dry grasstree stems' at a feathered wheel rolled down a hill, while men threw real ones^[3]. Roth's Cape Bedford boys shaped toy spears 'from light thin withes or else from grasses, reeds, and rushes'^[24]. See games.

The workshop: making and throwing, wood by wood

This is the workshop. It is long because every wood is different. Instructions are Roth's unless marked, and his district is named where it is not the Bloomfield or Cape Bedford. The tools are an axe, a shell or stone scraper, a bone awl, a bone or ironwood stiletto, a smoothing-board, the sandpaper leaves of the fig, fire and your teeth^[6].

1. The general rules of wood

1. Cut it the right way. 'If the sapling or limb permitted, so far as required shape and size were concerned, it would be hacked with a celt or shell and then broken away. When it was necessary to remove a length from out of the trunk or flanges, transverse cuts were made above and below, vertical ones at the sides, and the intermediate portion split off or slowly hacked away'^[6]. Yakal is 'to cut', nyandal 'to chop', yika-damal 'to split, as wood'^[1].
2. Split with a wedge. 'Splitting of timber was practised on rational principles in that a wedge was used'^[6]. Brisbane people picked 'a young straight-grained tree, one that would split well', climbed it, cut a notch above, two vertical cuts down from it and one below, and split the piece off^[2].
3. Work it green or soak it. 'Some kinds of timber, unless immediately tackled after removal, become too hard to work upon, and accordingly had to be soaked for some two or three days in water before anything further could be done'^[6].
4. Stop it splitting. On the Pennefather a woomera blank 'may be buried in the ground for two or three months before anything further is done to it'^[2]; the same people buried timber 'for several weeks'^[6]. Tully shield-makers soaked a blank for a few days, sunned it half a day, dried it slowly in a shady scrub for two or three days, soaked it again and then tied it flat a foot above the water for one to two weeks^[6].
5. Straighten and bend with heat. 'A dry heat in ordinary sand, a moist heat from burning freshly-gathered leaves, or moisture in general, such as soaking in water, is utilised for bending any of their wooden implements into shape as required'^[6]. Jikal is 'stretch, to straighten', ngura-ngura ngal 'straighten, measure, aim', duku 'bent', kurru-kurru 'crooked', junkay 'correct, straight'^[1].
6. Grease it to hold the shape. 'The whole is covered thickly with fat, saurian or mammalian'^[6]. Kiru is 'grease, marrow, drippings from animal fat'^[1].
7. Harden with fire. 'Wood can be hardened by charring in the fire, a great desideratum in the making of digging-sticks and fighting-poles'^[6]. Balnji is doing a thing properly with a fire, 'as in cooking or hardening spears over a fire'^[1]. Fire hardening drives the water out of the wood and changes its structure; one study found it may cut the wood's resistance to fracture by about a third while greatly cutting the time needed to make a point, and 'greasing and polishing with stones to impregnate the wood with fats and oils and silica may improve the effects'^[25]. So: char lightly over coals, scrape the char off to a hard, glassy surface, and grease; do not burn.
8. Trim and polish. 'The trimming-up of a roughly-hewn piece of wood is effected with the agency of various shell- or stone-scrapers, and finally completed with one or other of the different polishers in vogue throughout that particular district'^[6]. Cook at the Endeavour River in 1770: 'For polishing their throwing-sticks, and the points of their lances, they use the leaves of a kind of wild fig-tree which bites upon wood almost as keenly as the shave-grass of Europe', and 'even at the present day, the leaves of the Ficus opposita are used on the Bloomfield and Laura for "polishing" the spear-throwers'^[6]. Yurril is 'scrape', jalngka-bungal 'take the rough off a piece of wood with a tool or a piece of glass', jalngka 'smooth, level', dunju 'coarse, rough'^[1].

2. Wood by wood

Ironwood, jujabala

The woomera wood of the open forest, and a spear-point wood. It is 'exceptionally hard and dense' and termite-proof^[10].

A woomera blade.

1. Choose the tree and the face. You need a straight run of trunk a little longer than the finished blade: 0.9 to 1 m, 60 to 90 mm wide for the Bloomfield hunting thrower^[3]. The Cape Bedford type is 'comparatively long, even width throughout'^[2]. Avoid a trunk with a sugarbag scar on that face.
2. Cut the blank. Two cross cuts and two long cuts into the trunk, then split the slab out with wedges^[6]. This leaves the long scar seen on old ironwoods around the Bloomfield^[3]. The slab should come out thicker than the finished blade; Boulia throwers were about a quarter of an inch thick, 'the thinner the lath, the better'^[9].
3. Work it at once, or soak it. Ironwood is one of the timbers that 'become too hard to work upon' once dry^[6]. Rough it to width with the axe and scraper while green. If it has dried, soak it two or three days^[6].
4. Let it dry without splitting. Bury it, or keep it in the shade and out of the sun for weeks; the Pennefather people buried their ironwood throwers for two or three months^[2]. Check it for straightness as it dries and correct it with heat and sand^[6].
5. Shape and polish. Bring the surfaces to 'slightly and equally convex'^[9], round the free end, and cut the peg end square. Polish with fig leaves^[6].
6. Drill the peg holes. Two holes through the blade near the peg end, bored with a bone stiletto; Roth saw the bone stiletto used for 'boring the holes in the wommera for fixing the peg' on the Endeavour River^[6]. On the Boulia the holes were 'pierced or burnt', drilled with a sharpened emu or kangaroo bone^[9]. Karrngka is 'a hole in something, as in a board'^[1].
7. Make the peg. Cut a short peg from the quinine bush, Petalostigma, and give it 'a slight nick' to catch the spear butt; it is 'neither flattened nor drilled'^[2]. On the middle Palmer the peg was a long Acacia peg with 'a deep transverse nick', flattened side to side and drilled^[2]. Anderson's throwers at Bloomfield had the peg length and angle 'varied in length and angle according to distance and the personal requirements of the thrower'^[3]. A short peg at a low angle throws flat and far; a longer peg at a steeper angle grips a heavier spear.
8. Tie the peg. Lay the peg along the edge of the blade at its far end, nick upward, and lash it on with kangaroo or wallaby tendon through the two holes and round the peg, moistening the tendon in the lips^[6][2]. Kajal is 'to tie', kuna-bungal 'to join something to something'^[1].
9. Cement it. Cover the lashing and the back of the peg with ironwood root gum or, better, beefwood gum, 'as it lasts better'^[2]. Heat the gum, press it on, and level it with a greased smoothing-board^[6]. Janbangal is 'to glue or stick something, using pitch or glue'^[1]. Preparation of both gums is in section 4.
10. Haft it, or not. The Bloomfield hunting throwers were 'very plain, usually with no shell attachment or handle'^[3]. For a hafted one, fix two oval pieces of baler shell to the handle end with beeswax, one on each face, or bend a thin lath on itself round the handle^[2]. On the Pennefather the handle 'is covered with a similar cement, so as to prevent it from slipping through the hand', using a gum 'obtained from the inside of the hollow tree', roasted and hammered, 'only used for the handle of the wommera'^[2][6].
11. Make it yours. Carve 'small zig-zags and other designs' into it^[3], and decorate the butt, the ngurmu^[1].

An ironwood spear point. At Bloomfield ironwood was 'sometimes used as the point and distal end instead of the black palm', 'fire hardened after sharpening'^[3]; at Princess Charlotte Bay it was the shaft of the quartz spear^[2].

1. Split a straight billet from a limb or the outer trunk^[6].
2. Scrape it round and taper it to a point while green.
3. Sharpen, then char the point lightly in the coals and scrape it back to hard wood^[3][6][25].
4. Cut the tongue that will enter the mortice, and go to section 3.

Smaller ironwood tools. The smoothing-board is 'a flat elongate thin piece of iron-wood, etc., with rounded angles, occasionally almost an oval, 5 or 6 inches long, and just wide enough to be conveniently held in the hand'^[6]. The stiletto, 'from 6 to 8 inches long', is 'made either of bone (kangaroo, wallaby, emu) or of iron-wood; when of the latter material, it is usually discarded after use'^[6].

Caution. The timber 'can cause dermatitis' and its splinters cause complications^[26]; the foliage is toxic to stock^[10]. Wear something over your mouth when scraping it and do not chew the shavings.

Black palm, duwar

The spear wood of the Bloomfield rainforest, not of the inland; the Princess Charlotte Bay people had it traded in from the McIvor^[2].

1. Fell and split. The hard black timber is the outer part of the trunk; split it lengthways into long staves^[20].
2. For a duwar tip: a short piece, scraped round, pointed and hardened in the fire, then morticed into a long reed butt^[2]. 'The latter giving the particular name to the spear'^[2].
3. For a dajal or dikarra shaft: a long stave, the whole length of the spear minus a short grass-tree butt, tapered to the tip where the stingray barb or barbs will be bound on^[2].
4. For a murrangkal: a long stave worked to a broad flattened head, the 'shovelhead' of the dictionary^[1].
5. For fish-spear prongs at Princess Charlotte Bay, split thin and straight^[2].
6. Harden every point in the fire after sharpening^[3].

Wattle, yalngkal, yarun, yumba

The tip wood: 'short distal end of Acacia' on the stingray spears at Cape Bedford, the tip of the wurrbuy and nambar, the long shaft of the mu-rongal, and the fire-hardened turtle point kurrajan^[2][1]. On the middle Palmer the turpentine wattle made fighting spears^[2]. On the Pennefather all spear tips but one were Acacia rothii^[2].

1. Choose a straight limb or sapling of the thickness of the finished tip, with no side branches for its length.
2. Strip the bark at once, while green: the Brisbane kannai was 'a young sapling of a certain scrub-wood, chosen to about the size required, the bark must be scraped off, and then pointed'^[2].
3. Straighten over the fire and in hot sand, sighting along it^[6].
4. Point and harden. For the turtle point, 'it was put in the fire until it was hard enough to pierce through a turtle shell'^[1]. Anderson's harpoon point was 'a sharpened and fire-hardened point some 10 cm to 15 cm long'^[3].
5. For a tip with a wooden barb, cut a short splinter of hard wood, lay it along the tip so that its end is the very point, and bind it on^[2]. 'The one extremity of the barb invariably forming the very tip of the completed spear'^[2].
6. For a long wattle shaft, work it like a black-palm stave and char the last span.
7. Optional, from Brisbane: black the whole spear in the fire and harden the point by the same means, then scrape 'the last twelve inches or so' white, 'to enable one to see it coming when thrown'^[2].

Bloodwood, kawarr, babajaka, kuji-kuji

The long shaft of the Bloomfield fighting spears, 'long black-palm or blood-wood shaft'^[2], and a spear-thrower wood inland^[15].

1. Pick a pole, a straight sapling or a straight limb of the shaft's length.
2. Split or trim it to a round shaft, thicker at the tip end than the butt end, since the spear balances forward^[2].
3. Dry it slowly in the shade; bloodwood checks if dried fast.
4. Straighten with heat and grease it^[6].
5. Taper the tip to take the stingray barb, and cut the tongue for the grass-tree butt.
6. The kino that bleeds from the bark is the 'bloodwood' gum that Brisbane people 'warmed for use, and mixed with spittle to make it set'^[6], and on the Bloomfield the bloodroot (Haemodorum) dyed dilly-bags red^[3]; neither is the spear cement.

Grass tree, nganjirr

The butt wood. The long dead flower stalk is light, stiff, straight and pithy, and it also makes the fire-drill and the boys' toy spears^[2][6][3].

1. Find a dead stalk, standing dry on a plant that flowered a season or two ago. Sight along it; take the straightest.
2. Cut it long: the wurrbuy has a 'long grass-tree proximal', and the fish spears were 'made of some light wood, preferably Xanthorrhoea'^[2]. For a dajal or dikarra, cut it short: 'a short Xanthorrhoea butt, and long black-palm (Acacia) or blood-wood shaft'^[2].
3. Straighten any bend with dry heat in sand^[6]. Keep it out of the fire; it is resinous and burns.
4. Bind the tip end before you mortice it. 'Having tied some twine tightly round the proximal portion of the spear, about 4 or 5 inches from its extremity, the operator splits it up with a piece of shell, and keeps the wedge open by means of a peg'^[6]. The twine stops the split running.
5. Pick out the mortice (section 3).
6. Bind and cement the butt end and pick the cup for the woomera peg (section 3).
7. Gather the resin from among the roots for the pitch: kanunjul, 'resin of grass tree, used to make pitch to seal spear bindings'^[1]; it 'only requires heating before use'^[6].

Reed and bamboo, dara, wulburr

The hollow butt. Reed is the Mitchell River spear butt: Phragmites stems 'used for reed-spears on the Mitchell River'^[2]. Bamboo came from the Hann and Kennedy rivers by trade^[2].

1. Cut dry stems of the right diameter, with a node near the tip end if the stem is thin.
2. Use the hollow as the mortice. In the Peninsula the cut mortice 'is replaced by a species of bamboo, where the natural hollow of the stem is availed of'^[6]. Trim the tongue of the hardwood tip to fit the bore, pack the gap with shavings, and seat it in cement.
3. Bind the joint with tendon or twine, cement it and level it^[6].
4. No cement collar at the butt. The butt end of every woomera spear 'except those made of "bamboo"' was bound and cemented before the cup was cut; a bamboo butt takes the peg in the bare cane^[6].
5. The Cloncurry reed spears, for comparison, ran to over twelve feet with a reed butt 'about half or slightly less than the length of the entire weapon', a gidgee shaft in its hollow fixed with beefwood gum and 'a few turns of tendon'^[9].

Hickory and water gum, ngadil, dilbal, jinajina

'Good timber for woomeras' in the dictionary, and Roth saw throwers of a yellow nga-til at Butcher's Hill that he could not get identified^[1][2]. Work them as ironwood is worked. Which trees these are, and whether they grow on Western Yalanji country, is for the contribution box.

Cabbage palm and the other palms

Cabbage-tree palm wood 'is split and made into spear-heads on the Endeavour and Normanby Rivers'^[2]; the Alexandra palm gave 'timber for spears'^[12]. Split the outer trunk like black palm.

The peg tree: quinine bush

The short nicked peg of the Yalanji-country thrower is cut from Petalostigma^[2], now P. pubescens, the quinine bush, a small tree^[16]. Cut a straight piece of a finger's thickness, shape it to a short point, nick it across near the point, and dry it.

The cement trees: beefwood, ironwood root, brown cedar, grass tree

Full preparation is on the beeswax and gums page; the short form, from Roth and Anderson:

• Beefwood (Grevillea striata) root gum. 'The cement is obtained from the roots of young trees only, that from the older ones not being removable. Convenient lengths, from 10 to 12 inches, having been cut away from the underground saplings, they are heated over a fire, and their outer sticky bark scraped off with a sharp-edged stone. These little scraped-off chips are now tied up in a sheet of tea-tree bark, the bundle being next baked for some ten minutes or so, when it is opened and the sticky bits removed and pressed together with the fingers and hands ... The mass so formed is then ready to be pounded between two stones, which ... are greased with the Calophyllum nut. After the hammering, the mass is stuck onto any convenient stick, whereby it is held over a fire: it is again hammered and heated, and so on for some considerable time, until the required consistency is obtained'^[6]. See wattles and grevilleas.
• Ironwood root gum. Clear the roots of a young tree; test a root by rubbing a firestick on it and trying the melted gum between the closed teeth; strip the sticky covering 'with a bark-strip pulled steadily upwards'; roast lightly, hammer between greased stones, roast and hammer again until soft, then let it cool and harden. 'A defect in this material is its liability to crack'^[6]. At Bloomfield the stones were greased with cassowary fat and the gum applied 'with a small wooden smoothing board (also greased)'^[3].
• Brown cedar (Canarium) gum, jalnji: 'the dry lumps of gum are gathered off the tree ... and are either wrapped in leaves and baked, or just warmed before a fire, and then pounded between two stones till pliable and soft enough for use. To prevent any sticking to the hands or stones, both are rubbed with grease'. 'Used for fixing together the haft and shaft of spears'^[6]. Anderson adds that this gum and C. muelleri resin 'were valuable for trading purposes and thus were not used freely'^[3].
• Grass-tree pitch, kanunjul: lumps from among the roots, heated^[6][1].
• Yikari: 'hardened beeswax, hardened with ironwood root juice. The juice is extracted by heating and is used to make spears'^[1].
• Which to use where. Bloomfield opinion: ironwood root gum 'was readily available and of good quality', the Canarium gums were for trade, and grass-tree and Grevillea 'were said not to have very good bonding qualities'^[3]. Middle Palmer and Cape Bedford opinion: Grevillea 'the strongest and most durable', preferred on woomeras^[6][2]. Use what the country gives and test it.

3. Joining the pieces

The mortice, from the Pennefather, 'a description which holds good for all other districts'^[6]:

1. Tie twine tightly round the butt piece 'about 4 or 5 inches from its extremity'.
2. Split the end up with a piece of shell and 'keep the wedge open by means of a peg'.
3. 'With the help of the awl, the next process is to scrape and pick out the core on either side of the split, so as to leave a circular aperture when the peg and twine are removed.' The awl 'is always of bone, usually from a marsupial or avian leg-bone, from 6 to 12 inches long, and got into shape by chipping and by grinding'^[6]. Bajibay is 'bone'^[1].
4. For a deeper socket, 'some red-hot cinders are next placed on the excavation, and after being blown upon and removed, the surface is again picked out or gouged, and the process thus repeated until the desired depth is obtained'^[6]. Ngunjil is 'charcoal; hot coals or hot ashes'^[1].
5. 'The distal portion of the spear is now fixed in with cement-substance, and the mortice bound round and round either with vegetable-fibre twine or, preferably, kangaroo-tendon, which is fixed in position with more cement, and finally smoothed over with the "smoothing-board"'^[6].
6. The binding ends in 'a plain looping', Roth's name for the way 'the tendon, twine, etc.' is fastened 'round the butt-end of a wommera-spear, the mortice of "compound" spears'^[6].

A pronged head (yinba, yirrmba): 'where the distal portion is multiple, these separate pieces are morticed as one, but, in order to give "springiness," numerous small wood-shavings, etc., are wedged in between their basal interstices, previously to being permanently bound round'^[6]. Roth's drawing of a four-pronged fish spear shows four light prongs, each with a single wooden barb bound near its tip, lashed for a hand's length to the shaft^[2]. On the Wellesley Islands the head of the shaft 'is grooved on three faces to receive the basal ends of the prongs', each prong let in five inches and whipped for eight^[2].

A single stingray barb (dajal): bind the spine along the tip with sinew so that its point is the point of the spear, 'pointing forwards', and cement the binding^[2]. Cut the spine out of the ray with its base whole^[3]. On the Pennefather the whipping 'is bound round and round with twine, the cording finally giving place to a plain looping, the whole of which is ultimately covered with cement substance'^[2].

Several stingray barbs (dikarra): 'the barbs placed one behind the other, pointing backwards'^[2]; set each spine in its own lashing, the first at the tip and the rest stepped back along the shaft.

Quartz flakes (kuyan), from Cape Bedford, 'same name on the Bloomfield River'^[2]:

1. Flake small white quartz chips of decreasing size; see stone.
2. 'A certain length [of gum cement] is applied to the spear-tip, with a slot run longitudinally up it by means of a thumb nail.'
3. Set the flakes by their bases 'oppositely, like the teeth of a lady's small hair-comb', with their axes 'not at right angles with that of the spear, but project[ing] forwards', the smallest nearest the point.
4. Secure them 'with heat and careful manipulation of the fingers'^[2].

Bone barbs: the middle Palmer fish spears used bone barbs; on the Pennefather the barb was 'a kangaroo-bone pencil (nowadays often replaced by thick iron wire) fixed into a longitudinal groove, cut with a tooth-scraper, into the spear tip beyond which it projects'^[2].

The butt cup. 'The extreme butt-end of all the wommera-thrown spears except those made of "bamboo" is covered similarly with twine, etc., and gum-cement (which is retained there) prior to the concavity being made by the awl for the reception of the wommera-peg'^[6]. Bind, cement, let it set, then pick the cup with the awl so that the peg sits in it squarely.

Levelling the cement. The smoothing-board 'is held in the right hand, while the left one does the twirling, and is always greased with fore-head perspiration before use'; 'a small piece of pandanus leaf, face-greased in similar fashion', does the job when the board is not to hand^[6]. The Cooktown people used pandanus leaf 'for smoothing over the gum-cement attaching the barb to the spear'^[27].

4. Paint

1. On the Bloomfield the candlenut 'provides the "oil" used in fixing the ochre for spear-painting'^[6]; see candlenut and red ochre. Murbuy is red ochre and kambar white clay^[1].
2. 'The handles of spears were usually painted with red and white stripes'^[3].
3. On the Pennefather the black band was fixed with Melaleuca gum; there the whole scheme ran white, red, then black from the butt^[2].
4. On the Pennefather a woomera blade 'may be covered with a mixture of resin and fat, producing a polished or varnished appearance'^[2].
5. The ballur was painted red and white at its far end^[2].

5. The ballur, step by step

Nobody has published the making of a ballur; this is assembled from the descriptions^[2][3][4].

1. Take a light rainforest timber, Argyrodendron by Robins's identification^[3].
2. Cut a lath 650 to 800 mm long and 50 to 70 mm wide^[3]; the Museums Victoria example is 790 by 180 mm^[4].
3. Bend it 'like a new moon' with moist heat or soaking, as boomerangs were 'immersed in water for weeks at a time, to allow of their being twisted into the particular curves desired' at Cape Grafton^[6].
4. Round off the handle end; it is haftless^[2].
5. Bind on a wooden peg at an acute angle at the far end^[4], and vary its length and angle to the thrower and the distance^[3].
6. Paint the far end red and white^[2].
7. Keep the thrower short and light; it is for 'spearing fish or birds with, especially anything at very close quarters'^[2].

6. Throwing

Mumal, 'to throw a spear with a woomera'; yilbal 'to throw'^[1].

1. Fit the peg. Set the mingu into the cup at the spear's butt^[1].
2. The ordinary grip, described by Roth for the Boulia district and the same for the straight throwers of the north: 'the weapon is handled by fixing it between the fore-finger and middle digit, clasping its free end on to the palm with the middle, ring, and little fingers, and at the same time guiding, or rather steadying, the spear between the fore-finger and thumb'^[9]. In the north, 'in the ordinary style', the blade rests 'between the first and second fingers'^[2].
3. The ballur grip. 'The blade rests in the fork between the first finger and the thumb'^[2].
4. A heavy reed spear is 'supported on the other, which is extended forward' while the throwing hand holds the woomera (Cloncurry)^[9].
5. A leaf-bladed thrower is held with its plane vertical 'so as to afford least resistance to the air' (Upper Georgina)^[9]; a flat lath is held the same way for the same reason.
6. The throw itself Roth does not describe; the physics does. The blade is a lever that stays in contact with the butt through the whole swing, so the spear leaves at the speed of the hook, well over 150 km/h for a practised thrower^[7]. The arm comes over as in a bowling action, the wrist snaps last, and the peg flicks the butt forward as the point drops onto the target. The spear flexes on release; a Bloomfield spear nine feet long is thrown with a high, flat arc, not a lob. Aim is ngura-ngura ngal, 'straighten, measure, aim'; a miss is jadal-jadal^[1].
7. Practise on the rolling feathered wheel, as the men did beside the boys^[3].
8. Learn from a thrower. 'Roth describes the grips but not the rest of the throwing action, which is best learned from someone who still throws.' That sentence stood on this page's first version and still stands.

7. Repair and care

• A broken spear is cut back and 'subsequently sharpened up again'^[2].
• Every gum 'only requires heat to soften it again'; warm the collar, re-seat the tip, re-level it^[6].
• Re-harden a blunted point over the coals; the leaf woomera of the Upper Georgina carried a flint sharpener in its handle cement for exactly this^[9].
• Grease the shaft against drying and splitting^[6]. Yanday-bungal is 'get ready, prepare'^[1].
• Spears and harpoons were laid on a staging in the hut, off the ground^[11]; see huts and shelters.

Safety

• A thrown spear kills. It leaves the woomera at the speed of a fast car^[7]. Throw only where you can see the whole field, never toward people, dogs or a camp, and walk to collect spears only when everyone has finished throwing. Spears glance: the dictionary has a word, dalbarril, for a spear bouncing off a sea turtle's shell, and Roth records a spear thrown high against a tree at a Tully fight that 'glanced sharply downwards' and killed an old man standing below^[1][24]. Barbed and stingray-tipped points tear on the way out^[2]. Never carry a spear point-forward through camp.
• The trial by spear is law, not a game. The dictionary and Anderson describe it as a judicial procedure of the old days^[1][3]. It is on this page as history. Do not stage it.
• Stingray spines are venomous. The barb on the dikarra is the same spine that causes stingray injuries, which are treated with hot water, and the spine can break off in a wound^[22]. Handle barbs by the base, and cut them from the ray with care; see stingrays. Who may spear stingray is a matter of Yalanji law that Anderson recorded and this page does not repeat^[3].
• Ironwood is poisonous. Its foliage carries 'toxic levels of alkaloids'^[10], its sawdust and splinters cause dermatitis and infected wounds^[26], and its root gum was tested in the mouth by people who knew it. Do not use ironwood for cooking skewers or tongs, and wash after working it.
• Cypress pitch is a poison. Kulbawurr, 'the resin gum of the cypress pine which is poisonous. It was used on spears in the old days, the effect lasts about two hours'^[1]. Keep it off food, skin and the tools that touch either.
• Fire and hot gum. Fire-hardening is done over coals, not in flame; charred wood is weaker than it looks^[25]. Gum is hammered hot between stones and levelled hot; it sticks to skin. Grease your hands as the stones were greased^[6].
• Crocodiles. Spearing crocodiles 'stranded in the smaller water-holes after flood' was done with 'dozens of spears' by many men^[12]. Do not go near a stranded crocodile with a spear or anything else; see saltwater crocodile.
• Wading with a spear after eels or fish means bites, snags, deep holes and crocodiles. Roth's eel-spearers were 'often severely bitten'^[12].
• Firearms. The dictionary adds 'rifle' to the meanings of mirrba^[1]. The hunting law and the firearms law are different; see law.

On Country today

In the museums. Fourteen ballur are in the Queensland Museum and 'a similar number' in the Australian Museum; examples of single- and multiple-pronged, barbed and unbarbed Bloomfield spears are in both, and a quartz-tipped kuyan from the Bloomfield is in the Roth collection of the Australian Museum^[3]. The Museums Victoria ballur, X 94769, is catalogued under its own name^[4]. Roth's 1909 drawings of the spear heads, the woomera pegs and the ballur are reproduced on this page.

The law. Under Queensland's Fisheries Act 1994, traditional fishing applies when the catch is for a personal, domestic or non-commercial communal need, follows the traditional laws and customs of the native title holders or Traditional Owners of the area, and is done by people with a connection to that land or water^[28]. Section 211 of the Native Title Act 1993 gives the same protection against licence and permit requirements for native title holders' hunting and fishing^[29]. Other people spearfishing must follow the ordinary fisheries rules. Native title and park rules differ from place to place; see each place below. Visitors need the Traditional Owners' permission.

For the contribution box. The Western Yalanji words for the spears and the woomera; which trees ngadil, dilbal, jinajina and durral are; what a yingkan knife spear looked like; Anderson's wurrbuy, bukul-bukul and bandi; whether kayil, 'to hook with a hook spear', records a hooked spear like the hooked reed spears of the west^[9]; and the throw itself, which no book has.

Language

Spears and throwers. kalka 'fishing spear, also generic term for spear'; yinba 'fish spear'; yirrmba 'many-pronged fish spear'; jindal 'spear with three prongs'; duwar 'black palm; black palm spear'; dajal 'fighting spear'; dikarra 'war spear, has a stingray barb'; kuyan 'war spear with quartz head'; murrangkal 'fighting spear (shovelhead), made from black palm'; yingkan 'knife spear'; kukuni 'the big spear used for spearing turtle, used as a harpoon'; dara, wulburr 'bamboo spear stick'; balur 'spear thrower'; Milbayarr, mirrba 'woomera'; mingu 'the hook of the woomera that enters the end of the spear'; ngurmu 'decorated butt of woomera'; jinil, manbir 'barb of a spear'; kurrajan, kurajan, biyul turtle spear point and head^[1].

Making. balkal 'make' (nyulu kalka balkan, 'he made a spear'); juku 'tree, wood'; yakal 'to cut'; nyandal 'to chop'; yika-damal 'to split, as wood'; yurril 'scrape'; jalngka-bungal 'take the rough off a piece of wood with a tool or a piece of glass'; nyurrbal 'to grind, sharpen'; jalngkun 'sharp'; dudu 'blunt'; jikal 'stretch, to straighten'; ngura-ngura ngal 'straighten, measure, aim'; duku 'bent'; kurru-kurru 'crooked'; junkay 'correct, straight'; kalbay 'long'; kulka 'short'; kulngkul 'heavy'; dandi 'hard, tough'; wuban 'strong, hard'; jakibiyal 'tough, strong'; kima 'soft, weak'; marral 'dry'; kayal 'green, unripe, raw'; balnji properly with a fire, 'as in cooking or hardening spears over a fire'; waju-l 'to cook, burn'; ngunjil 'charcoal; hot coals or hot ashes'; nulu 'ashes'; baya 'fire'; kiru 'grease, marrow'; kajal 'to tie'; kuna-bungal 'to join something to something'; karra 'rope, cord, string'; biyal 'gristle, sinew, string, blood vessel (especially wallaby tail sinew)'; bajibay 'bone'; karrngka 'a hole in something, as in a board'; janbangal 'to glue or stick something, using pitch or glue'; janbay-manil 'to stick or glue something to something'; kanunjul 'resin of grass tree'; jalnji gum 'used for making spears'; julnji 'tar from a tree used to make spears'; yikari 'hardened beeswax'; nyumbirr 'wax made by bees'; kulbawurr poisonous cypress pitch; murbuy red ochre; kambar 'white clay'; bilar candlenut; dumbarril 'break, tear, rip'; yanday-bungal 'get ready, prepare'^[1].

Using. damal 'to spear'; mumal 'to throw a spear with a woomera'; yilbal 'to throw'; mungkil 'spear to kill'; damaway 'fight with spears'; kayil 'to hook with a hook spear'; balbi 'hunt for, search for'; karangaji 'stalk'; karangal 'sneak around to see, reconnoiter'; nyungun-bungal 'to see and know someone before he sees and knows you'; warringal 'to watch, to see where someone is going'; nguwimalku kunil 'to kill as soon as the thing you kill is seen'; kunil 'to hit, to kill'; kangal 'chase'; jadal-jadal 'missed'; dalbarril 'ricochet'; mingki-janay 'squat, crouch'; nganya-burra 'old time Aboriginal trial'; kunjuri 'shield'; muji a person with spear marks; muja 'wound not yet healed'; wulbar 'scar'; minya 'meat, generic term for animal'; kuyu 'fish'^[1].

Neighbours' words, by district^[2][6][5]: Guugu Yimithirr (Cape Bedford) kalka spear, milbir woomera, nin-lon stingray spear, yin-ba fish spear, ku-yan quartz spear, o-yur the wattle tip, do-war black palm, pungga grass-tree gum, gam bar ironwood gum, mari-mari beefwood gum, dorimggor smoothing-board; Koko-minni (middle Palmer) kalka spear, borna woomera, tikara multiple stingray spear, tural quartz spear, mir-ché-ra fish spear, urr-te turpentine wattle, tchal-nga ironwood gum, otwarla beefwood gum, korta grass-tree gum, torng or ye-cha baler-shell haft; Bloomfield in Roth's spelling ballur, yirmbua, ta-chal, dikara, do-war, wur-poi, t-chaln-ji brown-cedar gum, yikari, tun-ja and kannojó-ol grass-tree gum.

Images

References

1. Hershberger, H. D. & Hershberger, R. (1982). Kuku-Yalanji Dictionary. Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series B, Volume 7. With Toby Bloomfield, Roy Friday, Billy Roberts, Hector and Doris Sykes, Joe Walker and others. www.sil.org/resources/archives/18038
2. Roth, W. E. (1909). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 13: Fighting weapons. Records of the Australian Museum 7(4): 189–211. — Sect. 4 (spears of Princess Charlotte Bay, Cape Bedford, Bloomfield and middle Palmer); sects. 10–11 (spear-throwers); sect. 12 (Princess Charlotte Bay wommera) archive.org/details/biostor-52873
3. Anderson, C. (1996). Traditional material culture of the Kuku-Yalanji of Bloomfield River, North Queensland. Records of the South Australian Museum 29(1): 63–83. Based on fieldwork at Wujal Wujal in the late 1970s and early 1980s. — Hunting (spears, spear-throwers, harpoons); fishing (stupefacients); manufacturing (gums and resins); post-contact bush component archive.org/details/RecordsSouthAus29Sout
4. Museums Victoria Collections. Item X 94769: Ballur, spearthrower, Bloomfield River, East Cape York, Queensland, c.1880. collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/239263
5. Roth, W. E. (1901). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 2: The structure of the Koko-Yimidir language. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Vocabulary, 'mu-rong-al' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
6. Roth, W. E. (1904). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 7: Domestic implements, arts, and manufactures. Brisbane: Government Printer. Bloomfield River information from R. Hislop. — Sects. 2–4 (treatment and polishing of timber, morticing); sect. 13 'Gums, resins, cements' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
7. Wikipedia. Spear-thrower. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower
8. Wikipedia. Woomera (spear-thrower). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower)
9. Roth, W. E. (1897). Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines. Brisbane: Government Printer. Sects. 246–253 (spears and wommeras of the Boulia, Cloncurry and Upper Georgina districts). archive.org/details/cu31924029890328
10. Wikipedia. Erythrophleum chlorostachys (Cooktown ironwood). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythrophleum_chlorostachys
11. Roth, W. E. (1910). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 14: Transport and trade. Records of the Australian Museum 8(1). — Sect. 1, Trade and barter on the Bloomfield River; sect. 2, Princess Charlotte Bay archive.org/details/biostor-52863
12. Roth, W. E. (1901). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 3: Food — its search, capture, and preparation. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Fish capture: muddying, spears; plant list, 'Drymophloeus normanbyi' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
13. Wikipedia. Acacia lysiphloia (turpentine wattle). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_lysiphloia
14. Wikipedia. Acacia holosericea (candelabra wattle, silver wattle). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_holosericea
15. Wikipedia. Corymbia terminalis (inland bloodwood). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corymbia_terminalis
16. Wikipedia. Petalostigma pubescens (quinine bush). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petalostigma_pubescens
17. Wikipedia. Grevillea striata (beefwood). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grevillea_striata
18. Wikipedia. Canarium australianum (scrub turpentine, brown cudgerie). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canarium_australianum
19. Wikipedia. Phragmites australis (common reed). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phragmites_australis
20. Wikipedia, 'Normanbya' (citing Cooper & Cooper 2004, Fruits of the Australian Tropical Rainforest; Roberts, Fisher & Gibson 1995, A Guide to Traditional Aboriginal Rainforest Plant Use, Bamanga Bubu Ngadimunku, Mossman; IUCN Red List; Queensland Government). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normanbya
21. Wikipedia. Argyrodendron. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyrodendron
22. Wikipedia. Stingray injury. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_injury
23. Wikipedia. Xanthorrhoea johnsonii (Johnson's grass tree). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthorrhoea_johnsonii
24. Roth, W. E. (1902). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 4: Games, sports and amusements. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sect. 4 'Realistic games (animals)' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
25. Wikipedia. Fire hardening. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_hardening
26. Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants (RFK8), Erythrophleum chlorostachys. CSIRO / Lucidcentral. apps.lucidcentral.org/rainforest/text/entities/Erythrophleum_chlorostachys.htm
27. Roth, W. E. (1901). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 1: String, and other forms of strand: basketry-, woven bag-, and net-work. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sects. 1–9: animal and vegetable string, plant list ('Ficus', 'Hibiscus', 'Panicum trachyrachis', 'Sterculia quadrifida'), manufacture of fibre-twine, knots, colouring; sect. 22 hour-glass nets archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
28. Business Queensland. First Nations fishing (Fisheries Act 1994). www.business.qld.gov.au/industries/farms-fishing-forestry/fisheries/first-nations
29. Australian Law Reform Commission. Review of the Native Title Act 1993 (DP 82), ch. 8: Relevant provisions in the Native Title Act (s 211). www.alrc.gov.au/publication/review-of-the-native-title-act-1993-dp-82/8-the-nature-and-content-of-native-title/relevant-provisions-in-the-native-title-act/
30. Atlas of Living Australia. Occurrence records of spear and woomera woods in a box of about 90 × 85 km around the middle Hann River, Laura and western Rinyirru (15.6–14.8° S, 143.5–144.3° E), queried 28 October 2026: Corymbia clarksoniana 106 (dated 1968–2026), Erythrophleum chlorostachys 50 (dated 1970–2026), Petalostigma 39 (P. pubescens 22, P. banksii 15, P. quadriloculare 2; dated 1966–2025), Xanthorrhoea 15 (X. johnsonii 14; dated 1968–2024), Livistona muelleri 3 (1975–2015), Grevillea striata 1 (1994); no records of Bambusa, Mullerochloa or Phragmites. biocache-ws.ala.org.au/ws/occurrences/search?q=taxon_name:%22Erythrophleum%20chlorostachys%22&fq=decimalLatitude:%5B-15.6%20TO%20-14.8%5D&fq=decimalLongitude:%5B143.5%20TO%20144.3%5D
31. Ross on behalf of the Cape York United #1 Claim Group v State of Queensland (No 21) (Possum determination) [2023] FCA 1316 (Federal Court of Australia, 2 November 2023). — Determination area (upper Hann and Kennedy rivers); prescribed body corporate; affidavit evidence on hunting and fishing www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2023/2023fca1316
32. Ross on behalf of the Cape York United #1 Claim Group v State of Queensland (No 20) (Thaypan determination) [2023] FCA 1315 (Federal Court of Australia, 2 November 2023). — Determination area and waters; prescribed body corporate (Awu-Laya Indigenous Corporation); affidavit evidence on hunting www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2023/2023fca1315
33. Standley, P.-M. (2019). The importance of campfires to effective conservation. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Records the fire and country knowledge of Kuku Thaypan Elders Dr Tommy George and Dr George Musgrave. researchonline.jcu.edu.au/64274/
34. Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. About Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park (CYPAL) (web page, last updated 1 July 2024; accessed 28 October 2026). Park rules for visitors. parks.qld.gov.au/parks/rinyirru-lakefield/about
35. Atlas of Living Australia. Occurrence records within 60 km of the Karma Waters homestead (16.62° S, 144.60° E) for the spear and woomera woods, queried 11 October 2026: Erythrophleum chlorostachys 39, Xanthorrhoea johnsonii 18, Petalostigma pubescens 24 and P. banksii 14, Grevillea striata 5 and G. parallela 35, Acacia holosericea 36, A. leptostachya 28 and A. flavescens 17, Corymbia clarksoniana 73 and C. terminalis 19, Canarium australianum 10, Livistona muelleri 5, Phragmites australis 1; no records of Normanbya normanbyi, Bambusa moreheadiana, Argyrodendron, Acacia lysiphloia or Clerodendrum (Volkameria) inerme. api.ala.org.au/occurrences/occurrences/search?q=taxon_name%3A%22Erythrophleum%20chlorostachys%22&lat=-16.62&lon=144.60&radius=60&pageSize=0
36. National Indigenous Times (13 August 2026). Western Yalanji determination brings Cape York native title 'to the finish line'. nit.com.au/13-08-2026/25941/western-yalanji-determination-brings-cape-york-native-title-to-the-finish-line
37. Karma Waters Station. About: location, native title (web page, accessed 5 October 2026). www.karmawatersstation.com/about.html
38. Karma Waters Station. Land management (web page, accessed 6 October 2026). www.karmawatersstation.com/land-management.html
39. National Indigenous Times (1 October 2021). Daintree Rainforest handed back to Eastern Kuku Yalanji people. nit.com.au/01-10-2021/2393/daintree-rainforest-handed-back-to-eastern-kuku-yalanji-people

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