A really good working black boy would say he must leave, he was going to die.

On inquiry we would extract the information that some one was pointing a gooweera at him.
Then sometimes the whole camp was upset; a strange black fellow had arrived, and was said to have brought gooweeras.

This reaching the boss's ears, confiscation would result in order to restore peace of mind in the camp.

Before I left the station a gin brought me a gooweera and told me to keep it; she had stolen it from her husband, who had threatened to point it at her for talking to another man.
Some of them, though they still had faith in the power of such charms, had faith also in me.

I used to drive devils out with patent medicines; my tobacco and patent medicine accounts while collecting folk-lore were enormous.
A wirreenun, or, in fact, any one having a yunbeai, has the power to cure any one suffering an injury from whatever that yunbeai is; as, for example, a man whose yunbeai is a black snake can cure a man who is bitten by a black snake, the method being to chant an incantation which makes the yunbeai enter the stricken body and drive out the poison.
These various incantations are a large part of the wirreenun's education; not least valuable amongst them is the chant sung over the tracks of snakes, which renders the bites of those snakes innocuous..