The Wiradjuri called the Milky Way Gular, by which name they also call the Lachlan River. The Corona Australis is Kukuburra, the Laughing Jackass; and a small star in Argus is the Bidjerigang, the Shell Parakeet.
The seasons are reckoned by the Bigambul[1] according to the time of the year in which the trees blossom. For instance, Yerra is the name of a tree which blossoms in September, hence that time is called Yerrabinda. The Apple-tree[2] flowers about Christmas-time, which is Nigabinda. The Ironbark tree flowers about the end of January, which they call Wo-binda.[3] They also call this time, which is in the height of summer, Tinna-koge-alba, that is to say, the time when the ground burns the feet.
Connected with the Kulin belief in a flat earth of limited extent, there was another. They thought that when the sun disappeared in the west it went into a place called Ngamat, which has been described to me as like a hole out of which a large tree has been burned by a bush-fire.
A legend in one of the tribes near Maryborough (Queensland) also tells of a hole into which the sun retired at night. It says that when Birral had placed the blackfellows on the primitive earth, "which was like a great sandbank," they asked him where they should get warmth in the day and fire in the night. He said that if they went in a certain direction they would find the sun, and by knocking a piece off it they could get fire. Going far in that direction, they found that the sun came out of a hole in the morning and went into another in the evening. Then rushing after the sun, they knocked a piece off, and thus obtained fire.[4]
Beyond the sky there is another country, which may be called the sky-land. This belief is indicated in one of the Dieri legends, which tells how Arawotya, "who lives in the sky," let down a long hair cord, and by it pulled up
- ↑ J. Lalor.
- ↑ In Mr. Maiden's work, The Useful Native Trees of Australia, London and Sydney, 1898, I find that "Angophoras are called Apple-trees in the colonies, from a fancied resemblance to those trees."
- ↑ The following trees are noted as being called Ironbark in New South Wales and Queensland: Eucalyptus leucoxylon; E. siderophloia, Benth.; E. largiflorens; E. melanophloia.—[[Author:J. H. Maiden|]], op. cit.
- ↑ H. E. Aldridge.
