ABORIGINAL MYTHS

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 91, 5 July 1930, Page 8

ABORIGINAL MYTHS

By the mere fact that some of the Australian aborigines have been taken from an island north of the Commonwealth to the mainland, the whole of the basis of their “religion” has been upset, according to Dr. W. B. Kirkland, a. medical officer in the Northern Territory, who has made a study of native mythology. He passed through Auckland recently. Evidently the natives of Bathurst Island did not know the use of boats, because prior to the arrival of the white man they had never been to the mainland. The idea grew among them that that portion of land which they could just see as a faint outline on a clear day must provide an existence as perfect as it was unreal. It became their '“heaven,” the abode of perfect happiness after death. But now that they have visited the mainland, and seen that dim outline become real, they do not know what to believe. The inhabitants of that island, Dr. Kirkland said, are of a superior type. They lived a different life from those on the mainland. Their weapons are different. For example, they do not know the use of the boomerang, a weapon with which the name of the blackfellow is always connected. In its place they use a short throwing stick. Further, they do not have the spear-thrower, which is a thin pole with a hook on the end, into which the ba.se of the spear is fixed. It is used as a sort of lever, which gives added force to the spear. The Bathurst Island natives use the ordinary spear.