This took place on the corroboree ground, in the quiet of approaching sundown. Shadows from the big box-trees reaching out towards the camp, wisps of smoke by each gunyah where the good food was roasting for the family’s evening meal. Gossipy screech of cockatoo and galah away down on the lagoon tree-tops, “Cark! Cark!” of crows, whirr of bronzewing pigeons, telling that many birds were congregating for their sundown drink. Up here upon the corroboree ground all of the Gunn-e-darr tribe were squatting out to both flanks of the spear-throwers, except those absent on look-out duty. To the youngest piccaninny in the tribe all others were there, the toddlers quiet for once, boys and girls all eyes on the defence made by their boy hero. This practice was in deadly earnest, continued training through which every lad must go when he reached warrior degree so that he would be ever fit and ready to help defend and fight for his tribe. But within memory of the oldest living warrior no boy who had but just passed his initiation through the final grim Bora rites into the young warriorhood of the Kubara had ever been able to thus stand up unscathed against the best that the seasoned warriors could do.

Young Gilwan squatted there with his soul in his eyes, and often his heart in his mouth, in hero-worship of the lad warrior. Gilwan was twelve years of age, and squatting round him were all other boys of his age, sitting quietly apart from everyone, in charge of two old men. For these lads were now entering their first year’s training for the Bora. Those lads of from seventeen to twenty who recently had passed the last initiation into Kubara warriorhood sat close by the tribesmen, as behoves proud warriors who had just passed through the dreaded Bora. And to these lads, too, Red Kangaroo was the hero of heroes. Especially so to Giluram, his mate.

But not only to the lads of these groups was Red Kangaroo an example of a hunter and a warrior, but to the younger boys still, even to boys of from five to eight years who still sat with their mothers. To young Tuki, for instance, only five years old. Alas, Tuki’s mother was dead, so he sat beside his sister Weetah with the women. Weetah was only ten years old, but an aboriginal girl of that age will soon be a young woman. Little brother Tuki’s big, solemn black eyes were all for the young warrior, Red Kangaroo, as he parried spear after spear. Tonight by the campfires young Tuki and all the boys would be boasting that one day they, too, would grow up to be hunters and warriors as mighty as Red Kangaroo. Weetah’s girl friends also were gazing at Red Kangaroo. But it was at Giluram, Red Kangaroo’s stalwart but some-what sulky-looking mate, that Weetah was gazing with adoration in her limpid brown eyes.

The warrior had thrown his three spears. Suddenly he snatched a boomerang from his belt and threw. The whirling missile sped upward, then dived straight for Red Kangaroo’s ankles as he sprang high. On the instant another boomerang came whining and another was following it as the first smacked down, but the lad had fallen flat and the boomerang whizzed up over his body as the next came ricochetting at his legs, which jerked apart to allow it to pass between. There was a shout of approval, in which the warrior joined good-humouredly as he walked away.