And gleams like a dream in his face—

Like a marvellous dream in his face?

—HENRY KENDALL.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

To those readers who care not for introductory notes, I suggest starting straight away at Chapter I, and you are into the story.

This story needs an explanatory note, otherwise many readers could be forgiven for doubting that it is a factual story, for the character of the Australian aboriginal here portrayed is quite different to the general idea of him. I believe the reader will see the aboriginals depicted here, their beliefs and hopes, joys and sorrows, ambitions and hates, good points and general cussedness, as surprisingly like ourselves.

I did not wish to write this book. In fact, for twelve months I tried to forget it. Half a dozen times I addressed the notes back to Mr Russell McDonagh, then hesitated to post them. I wished to write my next book on any subject other than the Australian aboriginal, for I’d had enough of him for the time being.

However, there remained the haunting knowledge of a good story in those notes of bygone years, a story from a fast dying race, a whisper from the primitive past, that never would be written if not tackled now. And this story was unusual for two reasons. Firstly, it was coming from the dead. Secondly, it was a straight-out story from an aboriginal—and told so clearly and sensibly, so very different from the fairy-tales and stories for children that the aboriginal has given the white man so often. I have wondered at times whether the old abo believed the white man was not intelligent enough to absorb a real story of fact and grown-up life, when he obliged us so frequently with his fairy-tales.

Unwillingly at last I began to write the book. The notes were lent me—or rather forced upon me in such a nice way that I had to grudgingly promise, “Oh well, I’ll have a look at them!”—by Mr Russell McDonagh, of McDonagh Proprietary Limited, Gunnedah, New South Wales.

Mr Russell McDonagh is very keen on recording the old pioneering records of his district. He has an interesting collection, painstakingly gathered through the years. Among these were notes, actually the aboriginal story in straight-out form of far and away the best-remembered chief of the now extinct Gunnedah tribe. This story was written down word by word years ago by another well-known Gunnedah identity, the late Mr Stan Ewing. The story was from the lips of old Bungaree, last full-blood aboriginal of the tribe.

The late Stan Ewing was the son of Senior Sergeant John P. Ewing, who was in charge of the Gunnedah Police District of those days. Sergeant Ewing, like J. J. Smyth, T. B. Roberts, Doctor Hayne the Government Medical Officer at Gunnedah, and others, was a keen collector of aboriginal stories and relics. Stanley and his brother Ernest, with their schoolboy mates in those happy old bush days, grew up to play with and know the last of the local aboriginal youngsters as well as they did their own mates. And young Ewing reached manhood imbued with a great sympathy towards the last of the local tribesmen. The brothers were respected, but above all trusted, by them—as was the father, though they were always in awe of his official position.