A STRANGE ADVENTURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23160, 5 October 1938, Page 5

A STRANGE ADVENTURE

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES WOMAN ADMITTED. TO TRIBE A woman who has been fully admitted to a tribe of Australian aborigines is Mrs. Xavier Herbert, wife of the author of "Capricornia," the novel which won the sesQui-centenarv prize, who reached Sydney from Darwin recently. A Polish Jewess, four and ahalf years married, she has had some unusual experiences among the wild blacks of the Northern Territory, and was for nine months matron of the Darwin Aboriginal Compound since arriving in Australia less than five years ago. Mrs. Herbert "went bush" with her husband two days after arriving in Darwin for the first time and lived for six months with a tribe on Cox's Peninsula. She entered fully into the customs and ceremonials of the blacks and ate their food prepared in her own way. The diet consisted of buffalo and kangaroo meat, snake and goanna, lily root, yams, and palm nuts. Mrs. Herbert prepared the meats in the Jewish way. / One of the few concessions which the Herberts, demanded was the use of a mosquito net at night. They slept under this net while the blacks near by "swotted" at" mosquitoes and other troublesome insects. ■■ Mrs. Herbert set out to study the customs of the women and took part in ceremonials .which no man,black or white, has ever seen. Sometimes she was apart from her husband for a week at a time. / The purpose of this strange adventure was .to share with her husband a unique anthropological survey, and both-Mr. and Mrs. Herbert have certain tokens, regalia and knowledge which they will not share with one another.

The tribe accepted Mr. and Mrs. Herbert as brother and sister in their strange freemasonry. Mrs. Herbert was given the name of Noala and Mr. Herbert Chulama. They soon found that all the aborigines who bore these names were brothers and sisters respectively, and came under a highly involved* and rigidly observed code of relationship. As a tribal wife Mrs. Herbert had to observe the multitudinous conventions of an aboriginal woman, and there were even members of the tribe who were "taboo" and at whom she must never look. Some she even had to protect and feed; others simply required a severe respect.