CROCODILE ISLAND

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3939, 18 March 1930, Page 7

CROCODILE ISLAND

In the Crocodile Islands, scattered over the Arafura Sea, off the Northern Territory of Australia, the men are all teetotallers ; a man with seventeen wives is the rule; women do all the work, while men smoke. , ... This is part of the picture of life on the islands drawn by Mr W. Lloyd Warner, who has been studying the aborigine for the Australian National Research Council (says a message from Sydney). The aborigines have no religion, but have an elaborate code of tribal etiquette. Among other things. Dr Warner found that custom required that a youth should marry his mother’s mother’s brother’s daughter s daughter. But no manage ceremony is required. Food is cooked in holes heated by hot stones. The tribesmen have not even invented bows and arrows, and have no knowledge of firearms or their uses. The only weapon is a stone-headed spear. Although women do all the work, they live on nuts and vegetables, men only eating meat. “Children,” declares Dr Warner, obey their parents in the Crocodile Island, for incorrigible youths are taken out by the old men and killed. . . .

There are about 400 of these primitive people left, living almost naked. They do not know the art of weaving. They have no liquors, and do not know what intoxication is.” Dr Warner, who also made a study or life in the remote portions of the Northern Territory, had to travel for a month from Port Darwin to reach the Crocodile Islands.