And as she spoke Weetah was climbing straight up the tree, really walking up it with her wonderful hands and feet. She did not even have to follow the claw marks, her keen eyes had already marked the hollow up there in which deep down the possum would be coiled up asleep. She was pleased she did not have to use her stone tomahawk to chop him out. She peered down into the dark hollow a moment and smelt, to make sure no snake had recently followed the possum down into his home. Then, reaching in her hand and arm right down to the shoulder, she could just touch the warm little body. She gripped its neck and drew the now awakened, helplessly fighting possum up out of the hollow. She held him wriggling and scratching and spitting into the air as she called down to Tuki.

“See, a fine fat possum! Very angry, too! The first possum that our hunter Tuki has ever tracked. Now won’t we have a lovely dinner!” And, jamming the possum back into the entrance to the hollow, she broke its neck against the doorway of its own home. Dropping the warm, furry body to be caught by the eager Tuki, she slid straight down the tree with a laugh.

“Come quickly now,” she said. ‘We must rejoin our friends, for in tracking the possum we have fallen a long way behind. Who knows but that devil men of the Goonoo Goonoo from the bad chief Ilpara, or raiders of the terrible Cassilis warriors may be tracking us! Come!”

And Tuki, with a fearful glance round at the wild, silent bush, hurried on after his sister.

Thus all the women and elder girls while daily seeking food for the tribe were teaching the younger children, while the men away on the hunt were teaching the older boys and picked warriors such as Burradella were teaching the lads soon to begin the long, arduous training that prepared them for the sternest school of all, the Bora. Even now, away out in a secret place in the bush, selected old men, fathers of the tribe, were training the grim-faced, hollow-eyed, silently huddled lads who must face this year’s Bora. Well before sundown all the scattered parties except the lonely Bora initiates, came hurrying back to camp, for tonight the young warriors were to dance, and the people dearly loved dancing and chanting and play-acting. The women came heavy-laden into camp with dilly-bags bulging with yams and tubers and roots balanced on their heads, and sometimes with a baby clinging to back or hip. Their coolamons were loaded with seeds and berries and nuts, and also with small game and with goose eggs and other luxuries that thrive in good country during a good season.

If it were not for the patience and labour, the marvellously developed hunting instinct of the women for vegetable foods and small game, the men would often go hungry. For there are times when the best hunters return tired and hungry to camp, empty-handed. This happens during the hot, dry times, when game is both scarce and very wary. In such times if it were not for the women and their vegetable foods and small things from the mud of drying river or swamp or waterhole, the men and children would go hungry indeed. A woman is therefore very valuable, both as a mother for the tribe, and as a food finder for the family.