Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/131

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126

CHAPTER XVI.


THEIR IGNORANCE OF INTOXICATING FLUIDS. OF A SWEET BEVERAGE WHICH THEY MANUFACTURE FROM taarp.[1] Taarp AND HOW PROCURED. OF THEIR SONGS AND CORROBERIES.


Unlike most savage races these aborigines do not compound intoxicating drinks of any kind wherewith to muddle their unsophisticated brains or to induce false spirits; they, however, make a sweet and luscious beverage by mixing taarp with water, and this taarp is so highly esteemed by them they will go almost any distance, and put up with endless privations to procure it.

As an instance of the extreme fondness evinced by the aborigines for this sweet, we may say that even those employed on stations who can command abundance of sugar, will throw up their various occupations upon the least hint being promulgated that taarp has made its appearance, and walk themselves off with their belonings to the taarp grounds. Nothing in the shape of a bribe will tempt them to forego a chance of obtaining taarp, and no


  1. Taarp is the excrement of a small green beetle wherein the larvæ thereof are deposited. These insects at certain times congregate in myriads ana make their deposits on the young shoots of eucalyptus scrub, which has grown up from stumps, being the residue of a previous season's bush fire. The deposits are made in such large quantities that an aboriginal can easily gather forty or fifty pounds weight of it in one day. During the taarp season the natives do very little else but gather and consume this substance, and they thrive on it most amazingly. In appearance the taarp is not unlike the manna which some of the eucalyptus tribe shed in the summer months. The taste is also something similar, with the addition of a slightly sub-acid flavour. These taarp deposits are made in the dry summer weather, and are procurable from their first appearance until the early autumn rains commence, when it is at once all dissolved and washed away.