Yuwaaliyaay technology

A number of features of Yuwaaliyaay technology were distinctive. One was the use of several kinds of net, some very large, for catching fish, birds and animals. Second was the construction of large, stone fish-traps on the river; while a third was the exploitation of grass and other seed on a large scale, using seed grinding technology. Their Paakandji neighbours lower down the Darling-Barwon River employed a very similar range of tools, implements and facilities to Yuwaaliaay speakers. (See Parker 1905; Teulon in Curr 1886).

Portability

Some Yuwaaliyaay technologies come higher up the portability scale than Sandbeach ones - only five types of spear appear in the ethnographic records. However, the variety of facilities, including nets and stone fish traps, are at the lower end of portability.

Energy          

Again, of course, fire was the main technology for the conversion of energy. In this region men used a hardwood fire-saw in conjunction with a split piece of soft wood, rather than a fire drill. Parker describes the Yuwaaliyaay the fire saw:

The implements for fire-making are a little log about as thick as a man’s arm, of Nummaybirah wood – a rather soft white wood – and a split flat piece about a foot long and three inches wide. The little log was split open at one end, a wedge put in it, and the opening filled up with dry grass broken up. This log was laid on the ground and firmly held there; the fire-maker squatted in front, and with the flat piece rubbed edgeways across the opening in the log. The sawdust fell quickly into the opening. After about a minute and a half’s rubbing a smoke started out. After rubbing on a little longer the fire-maker took a handful of dry grass, emptied the smoking sawdust and dry grass into it, waved it about, and in three and a half minutes from starting the process I have seen a blaze. (Parker 1905:61-2)

Raw materials         

People drew a very wide range of raw materials from the environment: shaped and manipulated in various ways. Yuwaaliyaay imported stone axes from outside rather than making them from local materials. Grass-tree gum was traded in from the Narrabri mountains, and used as a mastic (Parker (1905:124). Yuwaaliyaay people used string and rope for net bags, nets for fishing and hunting, lures, snares etc. They made them from the bark of Kurrajong, or a grass they called “burraungah”. The bark was stripped, beaten, chewed and teased, and spun on the thigh. The grass was steamed in an earth oven to soften, before being chewed and spun (Parker 1905:107).

Manufacturing tools and techniques

Yuwaaliyaay manufacturing tools have not been very comprehensively described in the literature. The ones that are include stone knives, green stone axes, and a possum tooth (presumably attached to the jaw bone). Paakandji people used two kinds of stone “chisels” (adze?) as well as axe and stone knife. (See Parker 1905; on Paakandji see Teulon in Curr 1886:191-3).
Paakandji people used two types of stone “chisel”, the “mundooba” and “moollee” Teulon writes that the axe (tomahawk), knife and chisels were all ground rather than retouched (“chipped”) (Teulon in Curr 1886:191-3).
            The green stone axe was hafted with the handle folded, crossed-over and bound with sinew, the head fixed with gum. The axe-heads were traded into the region. Presumably Yuwaaliyaay also used adzes of a kind described for Paakandji (Teulon in Curr 1886:191-3).
Manufacturing techniques included the mastication of Kurrajong bark into fibre for spinning fibre into rope and string, looping and knotting techniques for nets and bags, the carving of dishes, bark preparation for canoes and shelter, and various timber construction techniques including lashed poles. A possum tooth served as a carving tool for wood, such as boomerangs (Parker 1905:115, 123).

Transport

Women carried babies in a net “hammock” across the back.
Teulon describes the canoes of the neighbouring Paakandji people. They were made of Eucalpyt bark (“gum” or “box”), bowed at each end and sealed with clay, which was also used for caulking leaks. The sides were spread with sticks as thwarts. A lump of clay served as a central fireplace. People propelled them with a long pole (Teulon in Curr 1886:201).

Containers

The main containers for moving food and resources, and for carrying infants, were dishes of carved wood and ready-shaped tree excrescences, as well as net-bags. People stored seed and carried water in animals skins in this region, inflating a skin and drying it into shape for this purpose.
            Bags included a “dillee” net bag, and a net worn on the back, described as a “hammock” (“goolay”) by Parker, in which women carried a baby or possessions.
            The coolamon (“bingie”) was carved of solid wood, or made from a tree excrescence (“wirree”). A larger bark vessel was used for water and other liquids (1905:120).

Shelter and clothing

As shelter Yuwaaliyaay people built wind-breaks of branches etc. for summer, and made substantial domed huts with timber frames and grass thatch for winter. Their Wangaaybuwan neighbours smoothed the floor and surrounded the hut with a ditch. They also made a lean-to, with a flat sheet of bark. People used a wind-break of branches in summer, dome-shaped grass-thatched huts over light timber frame in winter; people also built a lean-to of a single sheet of bark over forked poles and a ridge pole (Allen 1968:51, Parker 1905: 121). Mitchell saw a dome hut with a porch on the Gwydir river (1839:76).
            Yuwaaliyaay people wore minimal clothing in hot weather. Around the waist women wore a “goomillah” string of possum sinew, with a possum-hair pubic covering, and a bone or green twig through the nasal septum, and greased skin. Men wore a “waywah” sinew and hair belt, some 300mm wide, with tassels of kangaroo or paddymelon skin front and back. In cold winter weather they wore skin cloaks, usually of red-kangaroo skin with designs cut on them. People also sometimes wore pine-gum beads in the hair, and a cord (“wongin”) round the neck and across the chest, with a prized shell pendant, and sometimes a head-band of kangaroo skin. Catherine Parker is unclear whether men, women or both wore the latter. In the Bora ceremony body decoration and apparel were more elaborate (Parker 1905:120).

Communication

Message sticks served as memory aids, and tokens of authority. Interestingly, messengers who carried news of an impending Bora ceremony dispersed the information in relays, from community to community (Parker 1905).

Production technology

Tools and weapons
The digging stick and spear were again characteristic female and male implements.

Extractors
As in other regions, the digging stick or yam stick was the main tool for women, used for digging yams and other roots, as well as other purposes. Women used the yam stick to extract echidna from hollow trees and logs, and to dig crayfish and mussels out from the mud (Parker (1905:115). Teulon (in Curr 1886:191)  mentions a “spade” as a Paakandji implement.
            To harvest grass-seed, people pulled up the grass, and in some parts of the region, stooked it, so storing it in the field for a couple of months (Allen 1972:75-8; see Teulon in Curr 1886 on Paakandji tools.).
            Green stone axes were used for extracting echidna, possums etc. from hollow trees (Parker (1905:115).

Immobilisers
Yuwaaliyaay men employed a range of spear types for hunting, but not the large variety used by Sandbeach or Yolngu people. Parker describes five types of hunting spear, including a special spear for emu. Spears were made of swamp oak (“belah”) or gidya wood (Parker 1905:123-4). They had wooden heads:

plain, painted at both ends, sometimes poison-tipped;

barbed one side;

barbed both sides
barbed in both directions.

The emu spear (“moornin”) was distinct, and the fish-spear had long, thin, barbed tines.
            Spear throwers are said not to have been used in the region (Parker 1905:109, 123-4). However, Parker’s drawing of a man carrying a message stick appears to show him holding an oval, dish-shaped spear thrower, although this may have been a throwing stick (p.63). Men used non-return boomerangs (“bubberah”) for hunting, and they used plain throwing sticks (“moorelah”, waddy) (Parker 1905:124).  Men threw boomerangs to bring down ducks, pigeons, galahs and to kill bustards and other birds (Parker 1905:109, 123). The return boomerang of gidya or myall wood was used more for games. Boomerang manufacture involved repeated soaking and shaping, and finally carving with a possum tooth. The return boomerang was heated, straightened and greased before use.

Immobilisers/retrievers
Parker describes going fishing with a girl companion, using a line and bait. Other sources indicate that fishhooks were not used in this region before colonisation; men speared fish with fish-spears, or people fished with nets (see Teulon in Curr 1886:201).

Entrainers (concealors, attractors)
Men used pit-hides when netting by a lagoon, and bough disguises when stalking emu (Parker 1905:107).  A woman acted as a lure for shrimps by sitting in water to let the shrimps bit her, then catching them (Parker 1905:114). Men employed a number of lures: a bark cornet to mimic the emu’s boom, a bunch of emu feathers attached to a rope in a guide trench, or attached to a spear, to lure the bird before spearing it, or onto a noose (Parker 1905:106-7).

Facilities
Parker describes net-hunting using several techniques for different kinds of game. No hand-net used solo is recorded. Men caught fish with a two-metre net with a pliable stick at each end, held across shallow water where a tributary fed into a larger creek or river, while others frightened the fish from upstream. The two men folded the net to catch the fish (Parker 1905:1110). Mitchell observed a similar arrangement on the Gwydir River but using a net across the gap in a trellis and brushwood dam (Mitchell 1839 Vol I:100-1). Yuwaaliyaay may have used fixed nets along the bank, like those of their Wangaaybuwan neighbours, weighted with stones to form a crescent along the bank (Allen 1972:46; Sturt 1833 Vol. I:92).
            Men used a ground-net laid out by a water-hole trapped birds and small mammals; men hid in pits at either end, and folded the net over when covered with game.
Hunters had to take game to camp alive on the first day to ensure success on ensuing days. Hunters drove duck into a high net fixed vertically across a creek between bough breaks, keeping the birds low by throwing pieces of bark thrown high in the air and mimicking the sound of hawks to bring them down, or whistling like ducks to attract them to the net. Emu nets of kurrajong or grass fibre were very long – some 200-300 metres; men set a net (or else a brush fence) in a v-shape near a sitting emu. Forming a semi-circle they stalked the emu while carrying branches as hides, driving the bird into the net. They killed the emu and took the eggs. The “murrahgul” trap consisted of a yard made round a waterhole with brush, and with a single opening. Nooses were fastened across the opening to catch the leg of an emu or kangaroo, or was hung from a cross-bar to strangle the emu. (See Parker 1905:105-111, Newland 1887-8:23, cited in Allen 1972:46, Sturt 1833 Vol. I:92.)
            Yuwaaliyaay and their neighbours built extensive stone fishtraps in the Barwon River at Brewarrina, arranged so as to fill at varying water-levels. Parker writes that “many thousands of Murray cod and other fish” were caught in the traps. Some stone traps were 200m in length, made of stones and large boulders. The current swept the fish into the yards, where they were speared or caught by hand. The areas of varies sizes and levels caught fish at different states of the river. According to local doctrine Byamee and his sons made the traps (Parker 1905:109-10).
People also made fish weirs of timber and/or brush across streams (Dargin 1976, Parker 1905:109-10). Elsewhere on the Darling people used pens of mud as well as stone (Newland 1883).

Food processing      
Seed gathering, threshing and winnowing were important techniques in the region.
            Seed of “barley grass” was gathered when green, piled in a brush-fence yard, the grass burned and turned, and the seed knocked out. People gathered the seed onto skin rugs, and took it to camp. There it was trodden in a square pit, then threshed in a round pit with a broad wooden paddle. Large bark vessels (“wirrees”) were used to winnow the seed, which was stored in skin bags (Parker 1905:117-8).
            To extract Panicum seed the grass was stacked and burnt, the seed trodden in one pit and threshed in another pit with a wooden paddle, and finally winnowed in large bark dishes before storing in skin bags. Portulaca was pulled up, heaped, and turned, the seed falling to the bottom of the heap. People ground the seed (including acacia seed) using  a flat grindstone (“dayoorl”) and muller, they made the seed into flat dampers with a little water, baked by the fire to harden then cooked in hot ashes (Allen 1972:75-8, Parker 1905:117).
            Men prepared meat with shell, emu bone and kangaroo bone knives. This is inferred from Paakandji technology as described by Teulon who describes the use of shell knives, a knife of emu bone, and of kangaroo bone among Paakandji people (in Curr 1886:193).
            Yuwaaliyaay people cooked on the open fire, in the ashes, and in earth ovens to steam or cook with hot stones Kangaroos were singed, gutted, filled with hot stones, placed on top of and covered with hot ash. Emus were plucked, gutted, filled with hot stones, box leaves, and feathers. Men made a fire in a hole, placed the emu, leaves and feathers inside, then covered it with a layer of hot ash and earth. Small animals such as echidna and birds were cooked in holes by the fire; while duck were plucked. Yams and other roots were steamed in a pit with hot stones and damp grass. People rolled emu eggs in hot ashes to cook them (Parker 1905:115-6).

Storage
Ethnographers have recorded two forms of storage in this region: the storage of foods “in the field” by stooking, which kept the plants green for some months after harvesting, and of grain in skin bags (see above).

Medical technologies

Yuwaaliyaay possessed an extensive pharmacopoeia. Folk-remedies used by lay people included plant infusions and poultices of ground and pounded leaves for pain, swelling and insomnia. The plants included aromatics such as pennyroyal, saltbush, pine and eucalyptus species. The fat of goanna, echidna, fish and emu was applied to help cure head pain and stiffness, dress the hair and skin, and prevent chapping (Parker 1905:37-8).
            Steaming played a major part in child-birth and nursing – over saltbush to increase the milk supply, over eucalyptus leaves to help expel the placenta. For about three months after the birth a woman was goorerwon, polluted, and had to remain away from the camp, her food brought by an older woman (Parker 1905:39). Healers employed their own magical and other techniques, which I don’t describe here (but see Parker 1905).

Military technologies

Yuwaaliyaay and their neighbours employed the same technology for military purposes as for hunting – using spears, clubs, and boomerangs, and the yam-stick as a weapon. The “billah” war spear was larger than the hunting spears. Parker describes three kinds of club: a hatchet-shaped one (“woggarah”) of myall, gidya or other wood, carved with the owner’s personal design; a heavy “boondie” war-club; and a fighting stick. Men had three kinds of shield for defence: a narrow hardwood parrying shield; a medium shield of kurrajong; and broad, flat whitewood shield, traded from outside. Fighting spears (“billah”) were larger than hunting spears. A small waddy (“boodthul”) was used in throwing games (Parker 1905:124). (Parker 1905:124). (Yuwaaliyaay played many games, including competitions with return boomerangs.)
            The three varieties of shields included  narrow  hardwood shields, a medium size shield of kurrajong, and a broad, flat shield of “birah”  white wood.

References

Allen, H., ‘Western Plain and Eastern Hill: a Reconstruction of the Subsistence Activities of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Central Eastern Australia’ (BA diss., University of Sydney 1968).

Allen, H., ‘Where the Crow Flies Backwards: Man and Land in the Darling Basin’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 1972).

Curr, E. M., The Australian Race, John Ferres, Melbourne, 1886, vols. 1, 2.

Mitchell, T. L., Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Boone, London, 1839, vol. 2 vols.

Parker, K.L. The Euahlayi Tribe: a Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia, A. Constable, London, 1905.

Sturt, C., Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, During the Years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831, with Observations on the Soil, Climate, and General Resources of the Colony of New South, Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1833, vol. 1.

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