I lost my old dog Looloo this week but it turned out she wasn’t dead but hidden under a large plastic trough. Why she had dug under there or why she didn’t bark to let me find her I don’t know. A dog’s lifespan is short compared to ours while our life span is short compared to trees. Looloo worked for me for happily until Allo Tighe started working here. Then she would go & wait in whatever vehicle she thought he may be driving that day. Our working dogs preferred Freddie Walford as well & Peter Hibbot before that when I lived between Carinda & Brewarrina. Working dogs are drawn to Aboriginal stockmen for some reason & dogs are a good judge of character. Allo is back in Walgett hospital atm so Im hoping Byamee intervenes …
At the great Borah of Byamee (Australian Legendary Tales by Katie Langloh Parker, 1895) dogs came as the Mahthi tribe who constantly laughed & chatted amongst themselves. Byamee the great Wirreenun (wizard) told them to show some respect & shut up, but they “heeded him not”. Finally, Byamee does his nut & removes their power of speech forever “From this day forth no mahthi shall speak again as men speak. You wish to make a noise, to be a noisy tribe & a disturber of men; a tribe that cannot keep quiet when strangers are in the camp; a tribe who understand not sacred things. So be it. You shall, and your descendants, for ever make a noise, but it shall not be the noise of speech, or the noise of laughter. It shall be the noise of barking and the noise of howling …”
Tough love I suppose, the Dummerh tribe were changed into pigeons for spiriting away the grinding stones (dayoorls) and the Oooboon became blue-tongued lizards & so on. Another interesting tale in this collection is “The Cookooburrahs and The Goolahgool”
A goolahgool is the Noongahburrah name for Gali birraa – “ A goolahgool is a water-holding tree, of the ironbark or box species. It is a tree with a split in the fork of it, and hollow below the fork. After heavy rain, this hollow trunk would be full of water, which would have run into it through the split in the fork. A goolahgool would hold water for a long time. The blacks knew a goolahgool, amongst other trees, by the mark which the overflow of water made down the trunk of the tree, discolouring the bark.” (see below in the stained Gali birraa & the 1 & only water holding box tree I have seen here.
Ive had plenty of scartree visitors lately & even managed to get back out to the McDonald’s sunken sandhills with Vicky & Mal from Cohuna Vic. last week. Imagine my glee when we stumbled upon a 2nd 50:50 tree. Like the original, a few hundred mtrs away this one is also half redgum, half bimblebox. These 50:50 trees greet you as you come in from the North & South to the most beautiful camp you will ever see – I call it the sanctuary. Both 50:50 trees are TinTs of course but which one has been planted in who’s lignotuber is hard to tell. Here they are below – Vicky is standing in the fork of the original. Paul Underwood from the Coonamble district has also been to see the CMTs here. A scartree fancier from wayback he has promised to keep an eye out for TinTs around his neck of the woods. Sandra Winsor has found more TinTs around Gulargambone – mostly gnarly old rosewood in big box trees. The last pic shows twin kurrajongs in a yellow box on the Castlereagh highway between Gular & Gil
Another thing I wanted to talk about before I forget are the VinTs & BinTs and their anthropological roots. Dr Jen Silcock didn’t count shrubs/ bushes or vines that are growing out of eucalypts as TinTs because of the sheer number of them & their shorter lifespans. Jen did count the shrubby rice-flower (Pimelea microcephala) but not thorny saltbush (Rhagodia spinescens) or prickly fan flower (Scaevola spinescens) or gargaloo (Parsonsia eucalyptophylla) or Parsonsia lanceolate aka Northern silk-pod among others.
Many plants grow in eucalypt crotches incl. noxious ones and blow-ins. From my experience these ‘guests’ only live until the next drought but many bushes & vines seem to stay there for a very long time & I reckon these are cultural plantings. Its not unusual for academics & farmers not to see eye-to-eye. A longitudinal study would sort out the wheat from the chaff but as we all know – AINT GONNA HAPPEN without the Walgett Elders or Land council support.
