SAVED FROM BLACKS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 263, 30 June 1932, Page 6

SAVED FROM BLACKS

GHASTLY CUSTOMS OF FEMALE CANNIBALS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA. VICTIMS COOKED AND EATEN. PORT AUGUSTA, June 18 In a wurlie of leaning boughs, a stone's throw from the passing of the big trans-Australian train at Ooldea, lies a new-born baby that has been saved this week from being eaten by black women, only by the unremitting watchfulness of one white womari. In ten years its mother, Minmilla, has in this way lost four of her progeny — three girls and a boy. Her only living son, Thanana, a child of about nine years, shared in these grisly feasts. Last week, when Minmilla disappeared from camp — another child was expected — the white woman was horror-stricken, anticipating that it, too, would go the way of the others. Day after day inquiries at the blacks' camp brought evasive replies They refused te track her. In desperation, in. the writer's hearing, police intervention was threatened. The only policeman on the line is 130 miles away at Tarcoola. The next day Minmilla was brought back, and two days later her baby was born. It, at least, is safe. Unciad Primitives. Across Australia travellers, with their cameras levelled at those desert sidings, would scarcely believe what every dweller of the line could tell them — that they are filming and tossing sixpences to active cannibals. Into Ooldea, ' which is two days' journey each way from two of the capital cities, are constantly drifting the last of Australia's most primitive savages — nomads of the sandhills and ranges north- and north-west untenanted for thousands of miles; v black men utterly unciad and uncouth, their only earthly possessions a handful of spears, and a waddy to keep the women in order. To every one of these men "merricooga" — dead-man meat — is a eommonplace. Must Have Meat. The natives of the Centre are "coogada" — meat eaters. Far from the fish-rivers and rich jungle country of the north, far from the lilylagoons teeming with nests and game, fruits and berries, theirs is an infinite desert of sand and low scrub. In the great droughts, when the marsupials and emus disappear, they must have meat. Cannibal infantjcide, is confined wholly to the women of the tribe — no grown man will ever consent to eat children. It is no ceremonial rite — rather the horrible Voracity of a perverted cat. Bones to Museum. In recent years at Ooldea, there have been several revolting instances of mothers having killed and eaten their babies. The cooked bones of one child, gnawed and broken, were sent to the Adelaide Museum. From the limitless barren area north and north-west of the railway line, naked savages still appear in Ooldea at all seasons, seeking the only permanent water in more than 1000 miles — a great traditional water of the centre and west. The Soak is now practically dry — pumped to the siding for locomotives, and tampered with by many engineers, but the natives do not kn'ow this. Hastily clad and armed with a few phrases of English, they begin immediately to beg on the train, taking some 50 centuries of civilisation in one stride — from cannibalism to tinned foods. The method of the male cannibal differs from that of the female. A boy is marked down as victim, generally the plump young member of another group or tribe — an orphan if there is one available for the aborigine is a rank coward. Kurdaitcha shoes are made — in aboriginal language, jinna-arbil, the hidden foot. These are sneaking sandals, soft and pretty as a boudoir slipper, fas&oned of curling emufeathers, and tied with human hair. They leave but a faint and formless mark on the sand. For miles the tribe of, the victim is tracked, from tree to tree, sleepcamp to sleep-camp. At last, in the false dawn, the murderers creep in with spear and waddy, and despatch him with one blow. Bone Charm. The camp, taken by surprise, wakes and flies screeching. Ngoora fires are lighted upon the spot, the horrible smell of burning flesh and hair rises on the morning air, the ghastly division is made, and the murderers sit down to gorge. The yambil, or shoulder-bone is invariably carved and polished and worn at the back of the neclc by one of the actual slayers, as a charm against rear attaclc. The most inveterate and gruesome of all the cannibals are those from Hann Ranges, just across the Western Australian border. _ These tribes truss the dead man with chin on chest, as for burial, lift it out of the cooking over witll spear and wanna, spin it about until reasonably cool, and then fall upon it with ferocity. It seems that only with the total disappearance of the , race will this ghastly horror die out.