Even in the wilderness of Ooldea, I could yet gather wealth to my mind, find solace in the solitude. Those who have passed the siding in the west-bound express know all there is to know-four little boxes of fettlers’ huts in an arid, monotony of sand-hills and low scrub on the rim of the desolate Plain, yet not so desolate, for I found my recompense.
I might be solitary, but I was never lonely. The breakwind that enclosed my garden of sand was a veritable sanctuary of wild life. The birds and the quaint little burrowing creatures of earth were all my friends. They, too, came to Kabbarli.
I invariably rose at sunrise, when the days are at their most glorious, and the whole world is full of beauty and music and dreaming, waking from its slumbers under the mists. I made my toilet to a chorus of impatient twittering. It was a fastidious toilet, for throughout my life I have adhered to the simple but exact dictates of fashion as I left it, when Victoria was queen-a neat white blouse, stiff collar and ribbon tie, a dark skirt and coat, stout and serviceable, trim shoes and neat black stockings, a sailor hat and a fly-veil, and, for my excursions to the camps, always a dust-coat and a sunshade. Not until I was in meticulous order would I emerge from my tent, dressed for the day. My first greeting was for the birds.
In myriads they came to the water-vessels ranged about the camp, ready for the showers that never came and daily replenished from my water-cart. All through the fourteen hours of stark daylight there were visitors to my crumb-ground, for which I saved every morsel. To my 120 native dialects, I now added the language of the birds. I welcomed them in their own sweet accents, and knew them always by the aboriginal names that in many instances are a triumph in onomatopoecia, infinitely more delightful than the stilted English or the sonorous Latin of the ornithologists.
With a flash of bright wings and an excited chattering they were all about me. Melga I loved above all. These little spotted and chestnut-backed ground-thrushes became tame chickens, and would walk sedately through my tent as I sat reading and writing, and preen themselves in the sunny doorway until Jaggal, the bicycle lizard, came along. Miril-yiril-yiri, the blue-backed, black-backed and white-backed wren, and Minning-minning his wife, were other cherished friends. These three separate wren families lived with me in perfect harmony, and allowed me to feed their babies with white ants and other writhing morsels. Nyid-nyiri, the finches, came in hundreds drinking four kerosene-tins full on a hot day, and taking shelter beneath my stretcher. Jindirr-jindirr, the wagtail, and I sang duets together. Burn-burn-boolala, the Central Australian bell-bird, was a gifted ventriloquist. He could stand on the top rung of my ladder observatory, and pretend to be miles away. Juin-juin, the babbler, was insulting. “Yaa! see! Yaa! see!” he would call in derision, then fall into a recital of cheap slander. Koora, the magpie with its liquid throaty warble of extraordinary beauty, was a rare and welcome visitor; Beelarl, the pied bell-magpie, with his wild double note and his quaint impatience with his greedy lazy son; and Koolardi, the butcher-bird, ringing the mellow changes, set me a task in musical exercises-while Gilgilga, the love-birds, and Baadl-baadl, many coloured parrots, all the smaller varieties of parrots furled their gay wings on the “boggada” mulga above me and made cave-shelters from the heat in the shaded sands. Geergin and other hawks I discouraged-they were a menace to the little birds; and I was not too friendly to Kogga-longo, the white cockatoo. Kalli-jirr-jirr, the black-breasted plover, lays four speckled eggs in a small shallow place on the Plain with no cover-the speckles are its protection in that mottled limestone-but the fussiness of Kalli-jirr-jirr drew the attention of hawk and butcher-bird, and she would appear at my tent-flap with a shriek, “Come and save my eggs!”
Weeloo, the curlew, had more than one group totem all to himself throughout Central Australia, but, saddened by his weight of legends, he was ever mournful, and there was that about the hard cold eye of Rool, the sacred kingfisher, that is fatal to the natives. A lone pilgrim, he wanders where he will, and is the Bird of Death.
My reptilian friends were many, and they, too, gave me joyful hours.
Among the fauna peculiar to the Australian region there are two species to which early observers applied the condemnatory term devil-the Tasmanian devil and the York or mountain devil. The Tasmanian devil well deserves the name bestowed upon him, but the little creature known as the mountain devil [It is known to the aborigines of the inland areas by three native names: “Minjin,” from the Murchison and Gascoyne rivers to the goldfields of Western Australia; “Nai’ari” on the borders of South Australia and Western Australia and Northern Australia’s southern and south-western borders; and “Ming-ari” in the south central area and all around the edges of the Great Australian Bight. As ming-ari is the most widely known term amongst the central aborigines, I suggest its general adoption, especially as the name signifies its principal and only food, the little black ant. The word is derived from minga, small black ant; ari, many, belonging to, full of.] is sadly misnamed, for it is one of the most harmless as well as one of the most useful creatures in Australia.
Mountain devils occupy a unique position in aboriginal stellar mythology, for they have a part of the sky belonging to them into which no man may enter. In the dreamtimes of long ago, mountain devils were women who never mated with men; they travelled to and fro over their own territory, always accompanied by big and savage dogs which guarded their camps from all men.
Mountain devils travelled all about, and wherever they rested they left babies behind them, telling their children that they must never speak or whistle, or the men would hear them and come and take them away. At Kallaing, Jalgunba and Bilgin waters they sat down and left many babies in the spirit stones within or beside these waters, which are called ming-ari waters today.
By and by, when the mountain devils were changed into the little creatures we mortals know, they were still voiceless, because their mothers in the dreamtimes had never allowed them to speak or whistle; and no one has ever heard a sound coming from-them. But they were given very keen eyes and their bodies were covered with thorns, so that they might keep their enemies away. [Little is known of the habits of the mountain devils. They have but one food-the pestiferous little black ant-and they will place themselves beside an ant “road” and eat and sleep and wake and eat throughout the day. The females are superior in intelligence to the males, and the adult female will scratch the surface of an ant bed if the supply ceases. They need special intelligence to cope with the intelligent black ant, and pit their wonderful eyesight against the ant’s wonderful hearing. When a number of ants make an attempt to hunt them away from their nest, they raise themselves on all fours and swell their bodies roundly, thereby putting into business trim every thorn on their many-thorned hide. The ants crawl all over them, but only very rarely get a “nip” at the only vulnerable part-the inner lower lip. When this happens the mountain devil raises its head like a racehorse and shakes it viciously, but after a while settles down again to passive resistance.]
Mountain devils are very tenacious of life, and will live a long time without food. Their chameleon-like quality of changing colour with their surroundings is interesting to watch. In times of great heat they dig themselves a little tunnel four or five inches long, where they remain during the heat-wave, but if exposed to the sun on a very hot day they quickly turn a bright yellow, with a few red-brown patches, and die. Excessive cold or ............