MIND TO MIND

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 August 1936, Page 12

MIND TO MIND

ABORIGINALS’ STRANGE POWER

The Australian black is not rated very high, in the scale of humanity, but according to lon L. ddriess, the well-known author, they possess powers which put such modern wonders as wireless and television completely to shame. The author relates two remarkable instances of telepathy in the Sydney Morning Herald.

For a month we had lived on wild pig and pigeons, then two months on beef and manioc, he writes. We were hungry for flour. A slice of damper, lathered with jam was a luscious dream at night. Thera were only a score of white men and several half-castes, with down at the river mouth a picturesque colony of coloured sea roamers, and a then large tribe of aborigines. Our only method of news was the fortnightly mailman, otherwise an eighty mile mountain ride up the notorious Stuckey’s Gap into Cooktown, or a more uncertain trip by sea. One evening Big Jack and a greybeard aboriginal stepped silently into the firelight. Big Jacky, in “lingo” told the half-castes that Osmundson’s Pearl Queen, loaded with tucker, had left Cooktown that afternoon, and would be at the river mouth with the tide the following night. There was no faintest possibility of us receiving such news by telegraph (there wasn’t any), letter, horseman, native runner, or word of mouth. According to the old aboriginal, a tribesman seaman on the Pearl Queen had “told him” the news. My half-caste friends explained to me that certain ajnong the natives have the power of Sending and receiving mental messages over any distance. This message proved perfectly true. The ketch arrived at the time specified.

In that country of mountain, scrub and jungle, smoke signals are not used, except hunting signals across the small grass plains, which are really only large forest pockets. Neither are drum signals used, except up and down the river and across a plain, so that no ordinary methods of native signalling could have been used.

It took me twenty years to learn that these “mental televisionists” are of two degrees: one man will receive the words of a thought message, whereas another will receive, his message in “thought pictures.” He will then translate his message from the mental pictures received. Though I believe that practically every native in each wild tribe has the rudiments of this power, it is only a minority trained by hereditary laws who can receive a clear message. These are again gifted in degree, for certain men can receive a message, while others can send; yet again it is only the minority among these favoured few who can both clearly send and receive.

I well remember a night in what was then wild country 100 miles north of Cooktown, a tangle of rocky spurs towards the head of the Jennie River. My mate, Dick, and I had penetrated nearly to the headwaters of the Jennie, and a wild maze of country it is. It looked decidedly auriferous. Having nearly exhausted our supplies after a long trip, we decided that Dick should return to Cooktown with the horses and horseboy to load up with tucker, while I with “Bully” would stay with an aboriginal tribe of about 200 that we had ridden upon in a gorge.

ALONE IN WILD COUNTRY Dick, my mate of years, fairly hated my “darned curiousity about niggers!” But as usual, with gloomy foreboding and a voiceless warning to Bully,; he and the horse-boy rode away. They would be absent at least a month. - I was fairly safe, for the simple reason that we were working on the black man’s strongest cupidity, his love ? of iron tomahawks and tobacco. We had promised them a dozen of the shining “whiteman axe” when Dick returned from Cooktown, and a box of nigger twist as well. To handle their reward, they would guard me as their most cherished possession. Then, I had Bully, a huge dog that we had trained dh a pup throughout our harUm scarum trips. We could sleep soundly in Bully’s company, no matter how “bad” the country was. He could smell a nigger a mile away night or day, and his life’s ambition was to kill snakes and chew unfriendly natives to pieces. He was intensely admired but feared by all aboriginals we came in contact with throughout years of wanderings.

These 200 odd natives were living object-lessons of jirimitive man, for they were wild, and even in those days it was hard to get in contact with actually wild natives. Only two of these warriors had a smattering of pidgin English; their weapons were still of the stone age; they lived and loved, fought ail’d hunted as their ancestors had thousands of years ago. They had their genuine old witch doctor. a wrinkled old heathen whose faded, watery eyes had looked on strange things, on weird and primitive ■ scenes. His grass-plaited dillybag Held all the superstitious authority of his profession. No man dared touch that dillybag, while the women averted their face from horror should ever it come within their line of vision. It held the dreaded Death-bone in its sheath of human bone corded with htitnan hair. He lived in an isolated majesty. The tribe feared him as if he were Satan, but they obeyed his slightest command. He could? get things done without a word, without a nod. He would just squat there in his gunyah hidden to view, when suddenly warriors would leap up and Jiifrry to obey some unspoken order. It'.was uncanny. Should a piccaniny persist in howling in a way that annoyed him, it would suddenly ceaSe al some voiceless, unsigned message, mother and father bending over it with hands over its mouth, their faces very fearful. v One glorious mornihg the whole tribe started walkabout to the cioast, for it was the time when the tides go several miles out to sea, leaving the huge mud flats bare, with their easy prey of innumerable shellfish, welcome diet after land animals. The boast there is a maze of mangrove arms of the sea, creeks, and swamps. We camped On a sword grass mound between two gloomy tidal creeks, sea mangroves before us, a tropical swamp behind. The powerful and hostile Barrow Point and Cape Melville tribes were 60 or more miles further along the coast; it all depended just where they might for the moment be wandering or camped. Thrbb family groups, headed by Mundaroo, waded the shark and crocodile infested creek on our eastern side, and pushed on. 10 miles further along the coast. Mundaroo, with his wife and piccaniny, was the leader, their corporal, in fact. These three families would separate, and each would camp in some strategic position,

in the path of a possible enemy raid Good native strategy.

A night came, very dark and quiet, only the murmur of a dreamy sea sighing through the mangroves. We had each scooped out warm holes in the sand that smothered the almost man-high sword grass. Presently, to a low accompaniment of grunts, scratchings, and patting more evenly the sand, in ones and twos they began rolling over and coiling up in the native sleeping position. Soon all the family groups and their dogs were huddled around one another; all fell asleep as comfortably as animals. Low talk, a little stifled laughter from the young men and girls as snores broke out from the elders. Then all slept. I was awake on the instant feeling Bully’s paws on my chest, the weight of his crouching body. A warrior crouched nearby, hissing urgently, spears to hand. He pressed fingers to his lips, beckoned, and vanished. All around were swiftly crouching shadows, lubras slinging babies to their backs, warriors squeezing arms of awaking boys, dogs silent and ready. By dawn we had nearly reached the foothills. Daylight found us entering them, still pressing on to the safety of the rugged peaks behind. It was only when in safety that I learned particulars. Mundaroo land his family had been wiped out by the Cape Melville men coming to attack the camp. With three spears through his body, he had bounded away into the darkness. As he lay dying, he had “told” the witch doctor. Mundaroo died ten miles from where we camped. When Wychetee woke the camp, lie also “told” the two family groups who had accompanied Mundaroo to their different posts. These two families (ten miles away) thus warned, hurried straight inland, and later rejoined us by a circuitous route around the great swamp. These sentinels were men who could both send and receive a telepathic message.