[Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia And Overland From Adelaide To King George’s Sound In The Years 1840-1 Volume 2. by Edward John Eyre]@TWC D-Link bookJournals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia And Overland From Adelaide To King George’s Sound In The Years 1840-1 Volume 2. CHAPTER III 23/56
It is extraordinary to see a party of women plunge into the water on a cold dark night, and swim and dive about amongst logs, stumps, roots, and weeds without ever hurting themselves, and seldom failing to obtai the object of their search. Turtle are procured in the same way, but generally by the men, and in the day time. Muscles of a very large kind are also got by diving.
The women whose duty it is to collect these, go into the water with small nets (len-ko) hung round their necks, and diving to the bottom pick up as many as they can, put them into their bags, and rise to the surface for fresh air, repeating the operation until their bags have been filled.
They have the power of remaining for a long time under the water, and when they rise to the surface for air, the head and sometimes the mouth only is exposed.
A stranger suddenly coming to the river when they were all below, would be puzzled to make out what the black objects were, so frequently appearing and disappearing in the water. Cray-fish of the small kind (u-kod-ko) weighing from four to six ounces are obtained by the women wading into the water as already described, or by men wading and using a large bow-net, called a "wharro," which is dragged along by two or three of them close to the bottom where the water is not too deep. Frogs are dug out of the ground by the women, or caught in the marshes, and used in every stage from the tadpole upwards. Rats are also dug out of the ground, but they are procured in the greatest numbers and with the utmost facility when the approach of the floods in the river flats compels them to evacuate their domiciles.
A variety is procured among the scrubs under a singular pile or nest which they make of sticks, in the shape of a hay-cock, three or four feet high and many feet in circumference.
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