The little love story of Giluram and Weetah is fact, though enlarged by me, the subject obviously being considered as of little account by Bungaree, except for convenient mention here and there. To many of us it would come as a surprise to be told that the aboriginal man and wife, young fellow and girl, can “love”, more or less in the sense of the term as we use it.

The wild aboriginal man or woman can be as fiercely jealous, faithful, or unfaithful, can “put up with it” or simply “just not care”, as we can. In my wandering days in the far north I’ve known young couples in the “hot-house” stage, who, in utter despair at the tribal laws that would hold them apart for ever, made a run for it in the face of almost certain death just to snatch a few precious hours of love to carry into eternity.

It may surprise some readers, too, that wild Australian aboriginals, among the last Stone Age men remaining upon earth, should put into words the sentiments, “I love you” (“kurridu zinundun inda”), and “You are my love” (“Da zinda gulirdul”). In this case the actual aboriginal words used have been taken from Ridley, just as he took them down from tribesmen of the Kamilaroi, in his translation of the language.

Ideas of Baia-me, too, and of the Bora have been taken from this source. Although, in my experience, belief in the Great Spirit, and the meaning and action of the Bora ceremonies, are practically the same all over Australia, here I have stuck to the conscientious, though incomplete, account of the man who put these beliefs of the Kamilaroi on paper, from the lips of the Kamilaroi themselves.

As mentioned before, the substance of this book is, in various chapters, almost word for word as old Bungaree, the aboriginal teller, spoke to Stanley Ewing, who wrote the story down years ago. The reader may think, and correctly also, “But there are words and meanings here that surely could not have been used in what must have been a very limited aboriginal language!”

Words, yes, but not meanings. Perhaps the reader could solve this question to his satisfaction by remembering Ewing’s own description of Bungaree’s grasp of language—“in talking to him one realized he was an intelligent man ... Bungaree, from many years’ association with white people, could talk a very fair type of English.”

As to the language of the aboriginals before the white man came, it varied in scope and richness according to the aridity or richness of their tribal country just as their physique and knowledge did, but, generally speaking, it had just the same command of expression and range of subjects as did the wild aboriginals of the north not many years back.

Their vocabulary was naturally limited by their life and environment, by nature, and their own imaginings. But in their own life they could and did express themselves as lucidly as we do within our own immeasurably greater range of subjects and vocabulary.