The Collection

INDIGENOUS PLAY

The area of indigenous play is a specialist study, far beyond the capability of this author, and this chapter is included simply as a signpost and to acknowledge the fruitful world of indigenous children’s play culture. 

The most important aspect of indigenous play is that all evidence points to pre-European settlement community life as being fairly idyllic for children. For the mainland hunter-gatherer people there were obvious challenges but, overall, family life was well-structured and favoured children. Young children were essentially the responsibility of female members of the extended family, the men keeping an eye on developing skills which would be useful in later life. Initiation marked a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. Play directly related to the skills and knowledge which would for them be essential to survival. In play they engaged in activities which stimulated their imagination, developed muscle co-ordination and strengthened powers of observation. 

Surveying Aboriginal and Islander children’s amusements understandably needs to reflect the diverse territorial and cultural spread of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and the fact that pre-European settlement there were between 250 – 700 different nations inhabiting the continent and surrounding islands. Tribal community life encouraged children’s play with games, dance, music and toys being part of everyday life. The majority of mainland people were hunter-gatherers which would have meant very few possessions and, subsequently, many of the games used improvised balls and few toys were retained. New balls and toys could be made. Children were also expected to help in food gathering by picking berries, collecting firewood, checking fish traps, and helping the women with food preparation. Games were possibly devised to be used in such occasions.

When the compiler of this book started visiting Aboriginal and islander communities back in the late nineteen sixties very little was known about indigenous play yet all the early anthropologists noted the important role of children and how they were incorporated into society. Some indigenous children’s songs were recorded and some ‘observations’. Today’s museums, libraries and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies now actively document all aspects of traditional and contemporary life. Studies have also been undertaken to compare indigenous playmaking in other countries. On first glance, much of indigenous playmaking appears to mimic adult behaviour and the tools used in general community life: mock warfare and hunting, including the use of miniature boomerangs, spears and shields; or toys fashioned out of wood or reeds to resemble totem animals or reptiles including small wooden tortoises, stingrays and snakes. Dances and songs also were adapted to suit younger members of the society. 

Lake Tyers, Victoria, 1908. H. D. Bulmer

The most knowledgable person in the area of indigenous children’s games, Ken Edwards, noted:1

The accounts of traditional games often need to be placed in the cultural context for a particular group even if they can no longer be meaningfully interpreted by that continuing group. For many of the hunter-gatherer and some other types of societies once present there was a relatively large amount of leisure time available for cultural practices which included traditional games. Based on accounts available there were a limited number of games in some cultural groups while other groups had a much larger number of traditional games recorded. Where food-gathering for survival in small family groups was required there were fewer games and less time available for traditional games. Although the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples sought to amuse themselves they appreciated the benefits of relaxing or ‘doing nothing’ as opposed to the need to always be doing something. The concept or idea of boredom may have had different meanings and interpretations in various Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. 

Indigenous play changed with the times. Mission schools, directed by Government policy, quickly replaced traditional games with competitive European games. Corroboree dances were inadequately replaced with hopscotch and rounders. Traditional string making and reed weaving replaced by sewing and knitting. Physical sport was encouraged and seen as a ‘clean and healthy’ activity, especially where teamwork was involved, and competition between external groups especially so. Edwards suggests to some extent this was an exertion of power and games like cricket, an example of British ‘civilisation’. 

‘Father Christmas’ visited the missions every December, (yes, he would have been white and scary), and distributed gifts to the children. The ‘Easter Bunny’ also made an annual visit. It is difficult to imagine what the children and their parents really thought of all this change. Considering the anguish and confusion created with the Stolen Generation programs it is likely they surrendered adding to their misery and diminished view of their new world. As the mission schools retreated and the communities returned to a more normal way of life, albeit still with much interference and confusion, the children, like all children, improvised in their play. Toys were made from available junk, much of it the remnants of old buildings, cars etc. They also invented new games, many of which incorporated indigenous traditional games with the newer games. In some ways these communities had one saving grace – the absence of television. 

Robyn Howell, writing in 1983, tells of the Kwiambul people of the Ashford district, north west New South Wales.2

Children were taught all through their lives. Much of their childhood was spent in learning, but they had time for games, singing and dancing. Discipline with the children was rarely needed. They had so much to do, they would have found it difficult to get into mischief. There was always someone around to help them, to play with them, tell them stories, sing to them, teach them what they had to learn. They copied many of the things they saw the older people doing. They learned to swim when they were very young, and loved to play in the water…..

Children were taught from an early age to be perceptive. For instance, the following is one of their training games. They were shown an area, then objects were added to or taken away from this area. The children had to be able to say what was added or what was missing, even to the smallest stone or stick. Another method was to have them pick out an ant from a group of ants, then follow the movement of that ant, no matter how many ants were there.

Endurance and ability were tested constantly in many ways. There were often competitions to see who could club the quickest, throw a spear most accurately over a distance, or retrieve an object from a branch.

In 1934, a Sydney newspaper mentioned a lists of tests given by Aboriginal people to their children3. For each of the tests there was a certain time allowed for them to train, then they had their test. One test was to find a small bird’s eye that had been buried. Another as to track frogs that had been set free by a stream. The children had not seen where the frogs had been released, and their test was to track their prints across pebbles and so find the frogs. If nothing else, these fascinating examples show how far removed we have become from our environment.

Australian literary legend, Dame Mary Gilmore, grew up in the Wagga Wagga area and observed local Aboriginal children at play.4 

The training of the very young children is the women’s work. I have seen a mother take a small twig, break it till only about three inches of wood and a knot were left, and a toddler of two years taught first to recognise it among others held in the hand, and then to find it when thrown a distance, the child being given only a general idea of the direction in which it had been thrown, sometimes it would be a small piece of grass-stem that would be used.

One of the leaders of the women from the Wiradjuri clan started to teach young Mary Gilmore to count through play, in the Aboriginal way of group counting:

She began as she would with her own children, showing me two fingers, two sticks laid together, two eyes, two ears, two elbows, two feet. She did not show me two thumbs then, as thumbs had a group meaning and she did not want to confuse me. Laster she used tiny sticks, fragments of bark and little clods of earth. This was to show through differing shapes or differing places, two remained two, and it was also to make the child quick in perception. As soon as I grasped two, I went to threes… I have not seen the Guaranis (from Paraguay) count the stars, but as a child, I say the Aborigines do it many a time, and the smallest of them could beat me at it. I used to number by our arithmetical progression, and being small would lose my count and my place in the heavens at about three or four hundred; but the little Aboriginal children of the same age still kept on…. Aboriginal stockmen could quickly count the number of cattle in a mob of about four or five  hundred in no time at all, by using group counting…

Basic warfare and hunting games started with young male children. Both were means of survival in an often hostile environment. Whilst the idea was to have fun, the learning was serious. Children needed to know how to remain silent, creep noiselessly through bushland, accurately aim and throw spears or boomerangs, patiently stand in sea and rivers to catch fish and turtle and how to respect nature. Girls needed to know how to make traditional string, which reeds to use to make fish traps, baskets etc, and, how to prepare food and natural medicines. 

It was important for boys to know which reeds and trees provided the best materials to fashion toy spears, shields and boomerangs. Girls needed to know about native fibres and how to make string for nets, baskets etc. 

Anthropologist Herbert Basedow described the use of toy spears made from bulrushes and reeds.5

With these “weapons” the lads have both mock fights and mock hunts. In the latter case, one or two of their number act the part of either a hopping kangaroo or a strutting emu and, by clever movements of the body, endeavour to evade the weapons of the hunting gang.

Toy spears would be fashioned by an adult or made by children from reeds, spear grass, native bamboo or wood. They also made toy boomerangs and bull-roarers.  

Alan Marshall described spear play that took place in Milingimbi, in the Northern Territory.6

The children rushed to a lump of rushes where they gather bundles of the stiff straight stems for use as spears. They took sides and commenced throwing them at each other… They went swiftly through the grass in a crouching run, they leapt from behind trees and yelled in mock ferocity. They circled each other warily, vibrating their knees, dancing from foot to foot… They were very accurate in their throwing and experts were recognised as in all children’s games

Playing a game called ‘animal tracks’ encouraged and demanded particular skills. The players, mainly young boys, reproduced the tracks of animals scored, dabbed or scratched the surfaces like sand, rock or tree. These tracks were also interpreted with dance steps. In Central Australia, it is described how a group of children would inspect sand-hills in the early morning to see what specific animal tracks had been made during the night, to identify and then to practice them.

For example, the player would produce tracks for a kangaroo that was grazing, for one that was running, and a different one again for a female carrying a joey. Where camel tracks were known, a camel track would be made by momentarily sitting a baby on a smooth patch of sand – the imprint of its buttocks supplying the outline!

In a coastal area, it is described how children would leave turtle tracks in the sand by kneeling and thrusting out the sides of their legs. Imitation of an animal’s gait, and the animal and bird calls were practiced with great enjoyment.

Western society has a long history of keeping pet animals. The Aboriginal people semi domesticated many wild dogs and children would make pets of mainly the young of the species – baby magpies, koalas, wallabies, frogs, goannas, cassowaries, young turtles, brush turkeys, carpet snakes (having first had their teeth rubbed), and possums. It has been observed that pet cockatoos would learn to speak phrases of the Aboriginal language. Pet animal would usually be tethered to a tree with string. A baby wallaby might be carried around on the head, its claws clinging to the hair. A hunting party would often bring home a young animal for the amusement of the children. 

Indigenous relationships with animals reflected the role of game in their diet. Pet animals, other than dogs, were viewed as disposable and, often, consumed. 

Anthropologist Dr Walter Edmund Roth observed boys and girls playing at hunting and preparing food, the boys playing with toy boomerangs, spears, woomeras and shields while the girls played with dolls, baskets and digging sticks. He also observed them enacting family situations in Cape York:7

Playing at “Houses”, “Grown-up”, ”Marriage”, etc, is in one form or another as common among black children as it is among white ones. On the Upper Normanby, the youngsters pretending to be married will build an impromptu hut, and sit contentedly within its shade; suddenly a boy rushes forward to steal a [girl], over whose possession he and the husband now make-believe to have a fight. On the Lower Tully, the boys and girls will make miniature huts… and finally go away in couples into the scrub. It is a game often being played, but whenever the parents catch them at it they generally give them both a good smacking.

Such playing ‘house’ or ‘family’ included building their own windbreaks, placed in the correct positions relative to another, according to the relationships of the inhabitants. They learned to build with the right materials and in the correct way.

Dolls were simple but effective representations. The most popular was a forked stick placed over the shoulders or a ‘baby’ made from grass tied together to make it compact.

String Games

Australian Aboriginal and Islander people were highly skilled in making native string and creating string games where the string is looped across hands and fingers to create a picture, often a moving picture like a wallaby hopping. Dame Mary Gilmore recalled the young girls and women playing the game we know as ‘Cat’s Cradle’, and that there were at least seventy variations of the game. 8

“They were played mostly around the fire and taught to children.” She added, “I once knew the ‘Flying Possum running up a tree and out on a branch’, ‘The kookaburra laughing’ and one or two others.”

String was made from natural bark or other fibre typically ‘spun’ by looping the fibre around the toes and twisting until the ‘string’ develops. Later, where tufts of wool or fur might be available they were spun into the string. The string was used for everyday purposes for binding etc and also for play making, especially for string games. Hundreds of indigenous string games have been collected, many extremely complicated. Coupled with storytelling they are extremely effective. Howells observed a string game called ‘Lightning’ where the continuous string was placed around the necks of two little girls facing one another, and a small piece of wood twisted in it. When they bent their heads back, the wood would be catapulted out.9

Ken Edwards put the string game tradition in perspective as:10

String games can be identified as being almost universally part of traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander play and movement expressions. The playing of string games, either singly or with groups of players was a commonly recorded activity within Australia as it was in other cultures around the world. The string games had different levels of meaning and forms in different cultures and were associated with the opportunity to exchange ideas/knowledge or communicate and have fun with others. Usually string games were played by the girls and women, sometimes at special times and for special purposes, such as during the first pregnancy or as part of storytelling. In some areas men also played string games. String figure designs often represented animals and people, or abstract ideas such as the forces of nature and as people played the string game designs would usually change quickly from one thing to another. 

It stands to reason that a culture highly skilled in making string dilly bags and fish traps would have a wider use for string, including play time. 

G. A.V. Stanley, science research scholar from the University of Sydney, writing to the Gundagai Independent and Pastoral, Agricultural and Mining Advocate, in 1926, mentioned having:11

Collected over sixty patterns, chiefly from children at Yarrabah Mission Station, near Cairns. And several more from natives of Darnley Island, in Torres Straits, near Darwin. although essentially a game played by children, many women and men remember the patterns, and delight in teaching them to anyone patient enough to learn.

An earlier newspaper article, from The Australasian, 1902, under ‘Science Notes by ‘Physics’ described some of the Aboriginal string games:12

Perhaps the most remarkable of all the children’s games is cat’s cradle, so well known to our children. Dr. A. R. Wallace in his book on the Malay islands tells us that one wet day when time hung heavily, he thought he would amuse his native servants by teaching them some of the points of the game. They looked on politely till he had finished, and then borrowed the string and showed him that the European was a mere novice in the act. In the same way the North Queensland aborigine is an expert, and Dr. Roth has been at an immense amount of trouble to draw the complicated figures that they make, and a series of nearly eighty pictures is the result. . We understand that Dr. Roth vouches for the fact that all his drawings will work out. It requires a good deal of imagination, often, on the part of the players to see any resemblance between the loops of string and the objects they are supposed to delineate. Still we have vague recollections of being satisfied in our childhood that a series of loops did very closely resemble “a bunch of candles”- whatever that was. Amongst the figures given of this method of representing objects by hoops of string, as given by the author are women in various occupations; animals such as kangaroos, bandicoots, cranes, emu, bats, snakes, crabs, and other. The representation of a palm tree is particularly good, and others are decidedly suggestive. The game seems to widely spread in Australia, for Bunce, in 1857, describes it as played by children in the Westernport Ranges. It is not confined to children, for both men and women occasionally play at it. During the progress of manufacture of some of the figures, hands, feet, mouth, and knees may all be employed, and as sometimes two loops of string are used, a couple of assistants may be pressed into the service.

A contributor to The World’s News June 1934, described indigenous string making. 

Even the youngest members of the tribe are taught string-making, and any Aboriginal is generally able to supply his own wants. They use mainly animal fur, hair (even their own), wool, and the bark of many native trees and shrubs. The medium is generally teased and thinned out by hand. Then sufficient to make the desired thickness is worked and rubbed, often for hours, against the naked thigh. It is incredible how strong the string gets, and the joins stand any amount of strain.

Roth also mentions other games played with hands. One, similar to charades, involved acting out the structure of a tree from which native beans were plucked, or honey was gathered. Questions and answers were part of the game.13

Eleanor Adams, studied indigenous children’s games for her Graduate Diploma in Child Development at I.E.C.D. in 1984. She describes the ‘Honey’ game as played in North Queensland. The game is imitation of the search for bush honey.14

Played by two or more young children of both sexes. The children squat on the ground, each placing the tips of the fingers over the hand of another child below. These six hands represent the trunk of a tree. The tree is symbolically felled by a side cut, knocked from above down. Before knocking off the lowest hand, its owner puts her finger into each digital interspace to feel if any honey has dropped down. She pretends to find a snake there and tells her mates. All three children hold their hands behind their backs and the following dialogue ensues:

A: “Have you a tomahawk?”

B: “No.”

A: “Are you sure you haven’t one?”

B: “I have as very little one.”

A: “Well then, give me the little one.”

B then proceeds to hand over the imaginary tomahawk. B’s arm, the wrist of which is held by A. next represents the trunk or limbs in which the honeycomb is found. A. then makes a chop at the elbow to cut off the limb encircling as far as she can the joint with her fingers and from here rubs the limb once upwards and once downwards, so as to indicate complete discontinuity. (it is interesting to note that the upper portion of the tree where the comb lies is ‘taboo’ to the women. But the lower portion where the dirt and drippings are is ‘free’ to them.)

[

The Honey Game

A. now does exactly the same to B’s other arm, then goes over the same process with C’s arms and finally does the same with her own. The honey is now supposed to have been collected from the removed limbs and mixed with water, placed in a bark though represented by all the cupped hands resting upon one another. 

Each bends down her head in turn to get a taste. “Too sweet!” is the verdict. They pretend to add more water and when satisfied with the consistency make a show of easting it.

* * *

Adams also described a memory training game of the Walbri people of the Northern Territory.15

The children make a large circle on the ground and around this are placed pieces of sticks, stones and odd bits of things to represent objects in that area. Should the children live near a highway, the sticks represent bridges, stone houses, bits of earth, motor trucks etc. As many as fifty objects are placed around the circle at any one time. The leader of the game places the articles along the circle line and arranges them. He calls the others to examine the positions, when they are satisfied they have memorised them, they turn their backs.

The first player calls an object at a given point and continues to call each article on the line until he/she calls wrongly, then another player takes up the call. When all fail, they go away once more while the leader arranges the pieces for the next game.

Storytelling was always a favourite pastime and in some areas also involved music, dance and puppetry. Certainly in the Muni Muni tradition of Central Australia the storytellers used leaves as representative puppets as part of the telling. Other storytellers would draw images in sand or use pebbles to illustrate their tale. 

Skipping, that perennial favourite, was played using native string or vines swung to and fro like a pendulum. Ken Edwards explains:16

A favourite game of the Juwalarai people of New South Wales was brambahl or skipping. As a long rope was turned by two players the player in the middle performed a number of actions such as jumping like a frog or taking thorns out of their feet. The winner was the player who could vary their performance the most. A skipping game played called jirrakayi-ku (which means jumping in the Panyima dialect) was played in northern Victoria. In playing this game as many as 12 players at a time skipped. 

The campfire as play central.

Fire was an important element of indigenous society and whilst Aboriginal people were skilled at lighting fires they often carried burning cinders from one camp to another. Children were raised respecting fire and learned about it from an early age.  C. P. Mountford writes about this early relationship.17 

Children sitting around the fires, chanting their childish songs. – they would play with fire-sticks to set alight shrubs and tufts of grass – driving out lizards and small game. They also enjoyed pinning two long leaves together with a thorn, which when thrown on a large smokey fire, would whirl upward on a hot current of air.

There were numerous fire games and the campfire, according to Edwards, was also the natural place for related activities.18

The kal boming (fire hitting) game was played in the Southern districts of Western Australia and called for both agility and strength. A fire was lit either on the ground or the top of a Xanthorrhoea (“grass tree‟) and the players divided themselves into teams. One side tried to put the fire out with short branches of trees while the other side defended it. A wrestling game of the Ngungar people of the south-west of Western Australia was called meetcha kambong. A meetcha (nut) was buried about 20cms underground. Four or five players guarded it while an equal number attempted to dig it up. Only pushing and pulling was allowed. Each year teams from far and wide gathered at a “place of wrestling‟ (at Dingulami) in Kabi Kabi territory in Southern Queensland for a wrestling competition. Each pair in the competition attempted to push each other back over a line. Various forms of wrestling for a bunch of emu feathers or similar held by a player were played in different areas of the southern parts of Australia. Tur-dur-er-rin was a wrestling game from Victoria. Wrestlers placed their hands on each other’s upper arms near the shoulders, and holding on tight, moved around, pushing and pulling in an attempt to knock the other to the ground.

Girls also played games around the fire. Daisy Bates recalled in her memoirs how the young girls would play ‘firesticks’.19

Girls have also a game played with a lighted firestick, similar to the European game. A firestick is taken and twirled round and round, the player calling out the names of all the fish she can think of until the light goes out. 

Toys. Indigenous children did not have or appear to need many toys. Necessity and reality being the parents of invention and play creativity. Just as today’s toddler will find fun and adventure in a couple of old cardboard boxes, Aboriginal and Islander kids made fun with what was available. They could make play toys out of just about anything. Robyn Howell continues:20

They played with what was known in some areas as a ‘weet weet’ which was a small knob of wood attached to a flexible stick, up to or over a half a metre long. This could be twirled around rapidly. Toy spears, boomerangs and other implements were made from wood by the fathers for their sons, and for the girls they made toy digging sticks. Girls learned to make woven baskets and net  bags. When they were very young, their mothers, aunts or grandmothers would weave little bags for them, so they could carry their ‘babies’ just like their mothers. These were made from wood, grass or mud, whatever was handy at the time… Balls were made from various things such as rolled up possum skins, tightly laced into a round shape; wet mud made a quick, ready to use ball for an instant game. These, or a disc of bark made a rolling target for their toy spears.

Lyn Love, writing in 1983, observed ‘wit wits’ in Queensland.21

Wit Wit – is described as something with a spindle shaped head made from wood) or again as a club shaped playing-stick of mulga. It had many names (including Wik Wik, Weet Weet, kukerra etc) and was played with in widely distributed areas of Australia and the Torres Strait islands. It was thrown by the men, in a special way, at an ant hill or tussock, from which it would ricochet and hop like a kangaroo rat, or slide like a snake – to the amusement of the children. It was played with by children in Queensland where it was described as being ‘like a tadpole’ and called a Tirra.

Lyn Love tells of a game called ‘Tipcat’ – played by sharpening both ends of a short wooden peg, making it jump by striking one end with a somewhat longer stick, and, while it is in the air, batting it as far as possible. This, of course, is not far removed form the common game known as ‘aerial cricket’ or ‘aerial baseball’ where an object is thrown in the air and belted with any form of bat.

Games of physical prowess were extremely popular, especially for those boys nearing initiation age. Early photographic images show young children as very healthy-looking with taut bodies and keen eyes. Their natural diet, coupled with physical activities, kept them agile and healthy. It is not surprising that games like wrestling, mock fights, dodging and tug-of-war were popular. In coastal areas and where there were rivers and billabongs, aquatic games were similar to any child’s visit to water: diving, water fights, underwater swimming, swings and sliding on bark across the slippery sand or mud. 

They were also highly skilled in making models with clay and bark. A separate, more contemporary tradition has evolved for making wire figures. They can be of a stockman or horse and are found in many regional communities where the men work as stockmen or drovers.

One game, similar to ‘I’m the king of the castle’, possibly simply called the ‘sand game’, involved building a sand mound where the ‘king’ sat and others tried to topple him or her from the royal seat.

Indigenous sportsmen and women are now considered world best, especially in the field of football. Many different ball games were played in traditional society. Balls were made from available materials, including kangaroo bladders stuffed with fur and grass and then sewn with sinew, plaited bandanas, wild melon or even a piece of wood. Later footballs were made from wet newspaper and rags tightly bound with string. 

Howells observed football.22

Children and adults played ball games which sometimes could last for hours. In one of these each side had a leader and the idea of the game was to keep the ball away from the other side by throwing it around the team, or by kicking it. The feather game was also enjoyed by both children and adults. A stick with a feather attached was placed on the ground. One side defended the stick, while the other side tried to get it. A great amount of wrestling and struggling went on to protect the feather stick. Wrestling was popular (including team wrestling).

Edwards talks about hunt-related skill games.23

Spearing the disc of bark or disc rolling was a favourite game in most parts of Australia and there were different versions. In one area it was called gorri and a player would call gool-gool before rolling the disc in front of a line of throwers. Sometimes the disc would be bounced along the ground or thrown into the air. A spear dodging game called tambil tambil was played by the Jagara people of southern Queensland. One player stood 10-15 metres out in front of the rest of the group and hopped around as the other player tried to hit them. In another version played elsewhere the player being used as a target could use a small shield to protect themselves. In the Wembawemba language of western Victoria the word ngalembert referred to an expert at dodging spears.

Edwards also mentions games of stone rolling. One, ‘Turlurlu’, from the Great Sandy Desert of Central Australia, has each player holding a mukurro, or fighting stick, as a bat. Each team taking turn to underarm bowl a kamikaze at the opposing team, aiming to make it pass through the line without being hit. Another game was more like tag bowling where a player threw a marker stone and others tried to hit that stone.

A telling feature of play within indigenous society is the fact that participating and skill was more important than winning. There was no keeping score or awarding of prizes.24

Feats of skill received admiration and respect: while ridicule and whoops of derision greeted a poor showing. Certainly in some cases, older men would watch a game to assess the potential skills of the young hunters.

Eleanor Adams discussed how the Djinghali people of the Northern Territory played ball.25

The ball is similar to one used in cricket, but it is made of grass tied up tightly with string, then covered with beeswax. Sides are taken (as in football) and the game is started by kicking the ball into the air. Once kicked off, hands must not touch the ball again, only the feet. The side which has kept it in the air and away from the other is the winner.

Sue Thomas, a graduate of the Institute of Early Development, spent 1988 and 1989 in Hall’s Creek, West Australia, where she observed local children making tow truck toys out of old Sunshine powdered milk tins (billys were also used for similar tow toys).26 

Sunshine Powdered Milk Can toy truck. 1989/90

They put two holes in the tins and thread wire through – wire as thick as coat hangers – so that the tins can be dragged along or pushed in front.

Much has been written about the universal popularity of the  traditional game of ‘Hide and Seek’. Lyn Love highlights two variations played by indigenous children.27

Hide and Seek. The seekers would hide their eyes by placing their heads on the ground, or looking into the sun. 

Hide the object. The object being the lens from the eye of a cooked fish hidden in a patch of sand, or a goanna claw hidden in the bark of a tree.

Above all, it appears that the campfire was the central place for childhood pastimes. Certainly singing and dancing were the favourite amusements. This is not surprising when one considers the central role of the campfire for nourishment, warmth and ceremony. Kids would compete to jump over the flames and devise all manner of fire games. Guessing games were extremely popular. One might be staged around the result of a day’s hunt – guessing what the men saw, or what the women saw when gathering reeds and food. The campfire was also the place to dance, sing and play music. Anthropologist, T. Hernandez, writing in 1941, says of the Drysdale River children:28

The most favourite entertainment for native children is dancing and singing. No sooner is a dance invented than they are practising it for themselves…They dance as if their lives depend on it.

The corroboree was always the standout event of the adult world and the children took immense interest in learning the dances. They held their own children’s corroborees to practise the steps, inevitably trying to outdo each other in improvisation and mimicry.  

L

WARNING – sensitive material.

Note: This following section is primarily based on material sourced from old newspapers, citing early anthropological works and memoirs, and uses phrases of earlier times. Many of the words, like ‘blackfellows’, ‘natives’ and ‘primitives’ are not acceptable in today’s Australia, and, however condescending and insensitive they may appear, even for an earlier time, they are a matter of public record. Some of the items come from children’s sections in regional and metro newspapers where editors, one assumes, were trying their best to explain indigenous life and play. Hopefully, we learn from history.

Australian European children were rightly fascinated with the idea of a returning boomerang and many the child boldly declared that the stick about to be thrown was a boomerang, even if it was a plain old stick. Such was the fascination for the boomerang.  Early newspapers came to the recuse with detailed instructions on how to make a toy boomerang. The following comes from 1933.

A Toy Boomerang. 29

Most of our young readers are too familiar with the boomerang, the national weapon of our aborigines— to need any explanation of its principles and uses, except to say that when properly thrown it will travel a considerable distance and return to the thrower if not interrupted in its flight by some obstacle. The boomerang illustrated is not quite the same shape as these used by the Australian aborigines, but it works on exactly the same principle. We have illustrated this pattern before, but there are always young readers coming in who are not acquainted with the toy form, and this time we are going to show how it can be thrown much farther than in an ordinary way.

The boomerang can be made of thin wood, metal, or fibre board, and it should be made to the proportions shown in the drawing. The size can easily be calculated by means of the squares, which measure half an inch each way, so that the length of the longer arm is about 4 1/4 in. and of the shorter 3 1/4 in. measuring from the back of the boomerang. It can, of course, be made larger in the same proportion, but if too big may be a little dangerous if the thrower is not an expert. The best plan is to make a small one first, and then if the sport is attractive try a larger one. This size can be operated in a good-sized room, but beware of mother’s vases or the crockery on the shelf! One side is left flat, and the other, which is the upper side in practice, is given a slight camber (angle); in the case of the shape shown this camber would be about 1/2 in. for the width, namely thrower it can be sent over a much longer distance. This method is more suitable for a paddock or in the open where there is plenty of room.

The blackfellow of North Queensland throws his spear by means of a short 13/4 in. in the size shown in Fig. 1. If made of metal or fibre the material can be bent so as to give this cambered shape. The aboriginal method of projecting the boomerang is to throw it with the hand, but with the catapult stick known as a woomera. This is a flat piece of wood, like a boomerang straightened out, with a small hook on the edge at one end and a roughened or string-bound portion at the other end to give a good handhold. The butt of the spear, hollowed out slightly, is placed against the hook, and the spear laid along the top edge of the woomera, which is held by the hand-grip horizontally over the shoulder, the spear being kept from falling off by the fingers of the hand which holds the end. Then the blackfellow projects the woomera forward in the direction in which the spear is to go, holding the handle firmly all the time. As soon as he reaches the limit of his throw the woomera stops, but the spear continues its course towards the target because the fingers are used only to steady the spear on the woomera and do not check its flight. The driving force is the small hook at the back end of the woomera. Using a light reed spear, tipped with a hardwood point, the blackfellow can throw with the woomera to a great distance—far greater than could be done with the unaided arm.

For throwing the toy boomerang we are going to employ the same principle as the woomera, except that a catapult or “shanghai” is used in place of the woomera. In the pattern for the boomerang will be noticed a small notch at one end. This is to fit on the rubber cord of an elastic catapult as in Fig. 2.

This catapult has no leather pocket or bag for the stone like an ordinary “shang,” and left-hand with the usual fork and a piece of elastic cord. If this is not obtainable and flat rubber has to be used a short length of common twine should be inserted in place of the pocket of the ordinary catapult so that the notch on the boomerang will fit over it. It is important to hold the free arm of the boomerang in the correct direction, and also at the correct inclination. These conditions, however, need not deter the user, for after a few trials with different angles and inclinations he will find the correct one at which the boomerang will return to him after its flight. The best kind of return is the one where it passes the thrower in a series of zig zags until it drops at his feet.

The following from 1935 is a very simple boomerang – with instructions how to launch it!30

A Toy Boomerang.

This little toy, which will afford you lots of fun, can easily be made from a piece of fairly heavy cardboard, about three inches square. Cut the cardboard none to the shape shown in the corner diagram.

Place the boomerang on the edge of a book with one end projecting over in the way shown. Then take a pencil and strike the projecting edge of the boomerang. It will spin through the air, curve around, and come back to you.

* * *

How the Australian Blackfellow used to play games.31Aboriginal Substitutes for Cricket, Golf and Tops.

Makers of Ingenious toys.

The discussion about boomerangs which followed the discovery of such a weapon in Utah the other day, brought out the fact that the Australian blackfellow is the sole manufacturer of boomerangs that actually return to the thrower. It is not every boomerang that comes back, and these that do are mostly playthings. Our aborigines used to be very fond of playing games. They were light-hearted people once, and some of their toys were very original and ingenious.
The blackfellow’s inventive skill was by no means confined to the production of playthings. The fighting boomerang was a very dangerous weapon, and is still no joke among the few wild natives who are left to use it. It can be thrown so as to fly in a wide circle, but that is not its principal purpose.  The fighting boomerang is thrown to kill, but it can be warded off with a nulla-nulla or shield — so long as it has not got a hook on the end of it. The inventor of the hooked boomerang was an artful fellow. He saw how the ordinary boomerang would bounce off any stick held up to intercept it; so he added the hook, to catch on the shield, and swing the boomerang round it with such force as to dash a man’s brains out.

Throwing Sticks
The come-back boomerang is a very different article, although one of the games in which it used to figure is what civilised people would call rather rough. No one ever studied the sports and pastimes of the Australian blackfellow more intelligently than Walter E. Roth, the author of a rare little book called Ethnological Studies Among the North-West Central Queensland Aborigines. The play boomerang seems to have been evolved from the fighting boomerang and from a highly ingenious toy throwing stick and Roth saw both throwing stick and play boomerang in use. He has left us an interesting description of the games in which they were employed. The throwing stick, he says, is a thin straight stick with a knob on the end of it, which, if cleverly thrown up against some thick foliage, or down at a tussock, can be made to shoot through the air twice as far as it can be thrown in the ordinary way. There is a curved throwing stick which will bound up and whirl about in an astonishing way if thrown against a log on the ground. Nearly related to this is the comeback boomerang, which is quite an entertaining plaything.

But the Queensland blacks, at all events, were not content just to throw the play boomerang and watch it circle in the air and return. They devised games for it — trying to make it come back in such a way as to hit one another, or to fall directly on an agreed spot marked with a peg in the ground— a sort of aboriginal game of quoits. The natives used to have at least three games of ball — catch-ball, stick-and-stone, and spin-ball. Children played with a leather ball, bound with hair-twine, not vastly different in its component parts from the earliest golf balls.

‘Stick-and-stone’ was remotely suggestive of cricket. There were opposing teams of/from four to six players, armed with sticks and ranged up fifteen or twenty yards apart. ‘The game,’ says Roth, ‘consists in throwing a stone of convenient size from one side to the other, each individual trying to intercept it with his stick as it skips or rolls before him on the ground.’

Blackfellows’ Tops
The spin-ball was generally of baked clay, brightly coloured and spun between the fingers on the ground —clearly related to the top of the European boy. Roth’s black friends were also fond of skipping and used a rope made from the roots of a tree, which two persons swung backwards and forwards — and not over and over — while a third did the skipping. Then there was ‘hunt the eye,’ something like ‘hunt the slipper’. It was played with a tethered object, often the lens of an opossum’s eye, which was hidden in the sand while the players, sitting round in a ring, held their hands before their faces. ‘Hide and seek’, the aborigines used to play just as our children play it today. Throwing a leaf into a column of hot smoke in such a way as to make it ascent in spiral curves, was another innocent pastime. The Australian savages with whom Roth was acquainted, even played a sort of golf, but without clubs. There was only one hole, and that was a pit, guarded by a cross bunker, in the form of a net. The game was to throw a human shinbone from a prodigious distance, and to ‘hole in one.’ Altogether, the passion for sport seems to have been felt in this country even before white settlement.

This detailed article, from 1924, observes play of Queensland indigenous people.

Native Games. By ‘Castlebar’32

The Australian blacks have impressed many observers as being simply big children, cheerful, irresponsible, and with no care for tomorrow, and there is no doubt that their lives before the advent of the white man were, in the main, very happy.

The blacks are natural optimists, and love fun, and they had no terrifying doctrines of a future world, few diseases, and no natural enemies, save themselves. There was practically no bickering in the camps of the tribesmen, but endless frolic and laughter. With them time was no object, and, especially in seasons of plenty, every day was a holiday. The blacks had numerous games, many athletic, and ball games of skill and everyone, even fine old men and women, joined in the games, which never failed to cause tremendous excitement and emulation. The various corroborees were, of course, the national games or ceremonies, but apart from these unique performances, the many and often clever pastimes of the blacks have never received the attention they deserved. 

The favourite sport was tug-of-war, which was carried out on a different plan from that of the white men. A pole, cut from, the bush and trimmed with the stone axe heads, was used instead of a rope, and the contestants pushed instead of pulled, while the onlookers sat in rows and shrieked encouragement to their favourite side. Wrestling bouts, were for men only, and these were looked forward to and well prepared for before the great gathering of the tribes for the Priodle Boorah, or initiation ceremonies. They had also several ball games, the ball being made from portion of the skin of an old man kangaroo, stuffed with gins’ hair. Two opposing sides or teams had each a captain, and totem played against totem, such as White Cockatoos versus Pelicans. The game was for each side to keep the ball away from the other, and there the men arid women took part, but it was considered too strenuous for the children. Another popular game was spearing the kangaroo. A piece of bark was stripped from a tree, and shaped, into a circle; and then bowled along the ground, while the players from given positions, had to pierce it. It was an excellent practice for their hunting.
The blacks, wherever water was plentiful, spent much time in swimming, and they had numerous water games. Besides ordinary swimming and diving for objects, and the imitation of swans, turtles, etc. Tremendous laughter invariably accompanied the for the grown ups, both sexes participating. They were also fond of holding sham fights, excellent practice for their extreme quickness of eye, for real spears were thrown, and only the watchfulness of the attacked one prevented real injury. Much time was spent in teaching the children thoroughly to fight, swim, hunt, track, etc. In these mock battles, a black was upon his honour (not to move off the ground when dodging a spear, and to avoid the hissing missiles by only the slightest possible movement of his body. The children’s games, of course, were imitations of these of the adults. The boomerang was used in several games, usually the returning boomerang, which was largely a toy, and seldom used in fights. Contestants each lighted a small fire, at which the boomerangs were prepared and rubbed with fat. They were then thrown, and the game was to make them return as near as possible to a given spot. At night the blacks were fond of sending thousands of boomerangs tipped with fire circling through the air together.
Another species of native fireworks was that known as “poolooloomee.” They peeled off great sheets of green bark from white gum trees, and shaped hundreds of “poolooloomees,” which resembled bark spoons with long handles. These were put into the campfires till they glowed red and then the display began. Each black had a long stick stuck firmly into the ground, and when one lent against this the glowing head was broken off and sent whirling through the air. Hundreds were sent up at once, the lubras rushing backwards and forwards to the fires to keep the men supplied, while the night rang with wild yells of revelry. Skipping was another accomplishment well known to the blacks, and much indulged in, and they had developed the art far in advance of the white man’s methods.
A vine was often used for a rope, and the two turners tried by every means to catch the performer, man or woman, off his or her guard. At first the skipper went through the ordinary steps but this was soon followed by amazing variations, such as taking turns of feet, digging for yams, grinding seed, imitating a frog, or other, creatures, Striking an attitude as distance, snatching up a child, or lying flat on the ground, measuring the full length in that position, and recovering in time to jump the rope, which was kept going constantly during the whole pantomime. Many of the oldest warriors and gins were excellent performers. The blacks also spent much time in carving implements and even whole trees, in decorating with differently coloured ochres, and in painting figures in caves. The famous gigantic  painting of’ “hell-fire” at Nardoo Creek, in which hundreds of human hands appear to be lifted out of a sea of flames, is well known. They were also fond of fireside stories, mostly tales of wonder and magic, and were adept in merit of oratory, in which their eloquence was wonderful. Singing or chanting took up much of their time, and, according to that, first of all authorities on the aborigines, Mr  J Mathew, almost every blackfellow is a maker of lyric verse, and whiles away the hour in expressing the poetry and music that is in him. The special bards or song-makers of each tribe were held in great esteem, and they were overeager to learn new songs. They had songs to the dawn, and to the kookaburra; songs for various occasions, and many humorous chants or action-songs. Whenever the successful game they came in chanting the emu song, or the kangaroo along, as the case might be.  Some were magic or ceremonial songs for the corroboree.  Whether in far off tunes, the blacks, with their genius for mimicry, evolved the corroboree from the marvellous dawn-dance of the brolgas, or native companions, cannot be known; but they declare that the brolgas learnt their quaint quadrilles from the corroborees, and for that reason these birds were never molested. Apart from the way the ceremonial dances of the boorah, and other semi-religious functions, the blacks had an unlimited repertoire of corroborees, which were the native plays or operas. Most of these were humorous and imitative of some bird, animal, or event. The dancing grounds were lit by great armfuls of dead timber, placed in forks of surrounding trees, and fired, and the gins sat in rows and did the singing, keeping time on their ‘possum rug “drums.” It was always a wild and impressive spectacle, and seemed express all the weirdness and mystery of the Australian bush. Among the favourite performance were the sick baby dance, startled birds, the last the the poisoned dingo, cattle raided by the blacks, the coming of the first steamer, and the imitation of different birds and their cries, and were in reality dramas, and each had its appropriate music. Numerous riddles were also acted in pantomime. One was called “the wild dog dance,” and began by the life-like howling of hidden dingoes in the darkness answering each other, and then they finally came to the fire, running about, snarling and snapping, etc. Another was the “imitation of a stormy shore,” in which the performers imitated to perfection the long rhythmic sweep of the waves and their recoil, together with the hiss of spray and the boom of breakers. In the canoe dance also there was the same perfect- rhythm of the swaying bodies. Among the humorous pieces were “an old man tormented by ‘possums,” and ”crossing a river in a leaky canoe.”

‘References

1 Edwards, Ken.  A Typology of the Traditional Games of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, 2012

2 Howell, Robyn “The History and Culture of the Ashford District”. D. West. Government Printer 1983

3 Sydney Morning Herald, 15/3/1934

4 Gilmore, Mary. ‘Old Days, Old Ways’ A&R 1934 

5 Basedow, Herbert, The Australian Aboriginal, compiled and edited by David M. Welch, second edition, Australian Aboriginal Culture Series no.8, 2012

6 Marshal, Alan. The Dark People. In Farwell and Johnston This land of ours… Australia, Angus and Robertson, London.

7 Roth, Walter, Games, Sports and Amusements of the Northern Queensland Aboriginals, 1902

8 Gilmore, Mary. ibid.

9 Howell, R. ibid.

10 Edwards, Ken. ibid

11 Gundagai Independent and Pastoral, Agricultural and Mining Advocate, Dec. 1926

12 The Australasian June 1902

13 Roth, W. ibid

14 Adams, Eleanor. Course extract reproduced in Australian Children’s Folklore issue 9. November 1985.

15 Adams, Eleanor. Ibid 1985

16 Edwards, Ken. ibid

17 Mountford C. P. Nomads of the Australian Desert. Adelaide Rigby. 1976

18 Edwards, Ken. Ibid

19 Bates, D. Songs, Dances, Games etc. Daisy Bates Collection. National Library of Australia, Canberra, A.C.T., 1929.

20 Howell, Robyn “The History and Culture of the Ashford District”. D. West. Government Printer 1983

21 A selection of Aboriginal children’s games. Lyn Love. 1983. Anthropological Society of Queensland newsletter 1983 

22 Howell, R. ibid

23 Edwards, Ken. Ibid

24 Love, Lyn. ibid

25 Damas, Eleanor. Ibid 1985

26 Thomas, Sue. Cited in Australian Children’s Folklore newsletter Issue 19 December 1990

27 Love, Lyn. ibid

28 Hernandez. T. ibid

29 The Queenslander 4 May 1933

30 The Australasian. 17 August 1935

31 The Register News Pictorial (Adelaide) 26 Sept 1929

32 The Daily Mail (Brisbane) 16 Aug 1924