Flinders by Rob Mundle

Author:Rob Mundle [MUNDLE, ROB]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Published: 2012-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

In the ensuing days, they had a far more amiable contact with the Aboriginals than that at Point Skirmish, but there was one somewhat embarrassing scare. On 18 July, while exploring the bay to the south, the Englishmen feared they were about to be attacked by some 20 natives who were paddling their canoes towards Norfolk. Flinders called for the decks to be cleared and the men to be armed in preparation for a possible confrontation, only to realise that their ‘attackers’ were fishermen who were actually standing on a shallow sandbank and beating the water with sticks to drive fish into their nets.

Flinders subsequently made an appraisal of the local inhabitants:

These people were evidently of the same race as those at Port Jackson, though speaking a language which Bongaree could not understand. They fish almost wholly with cast and setting nets, live more in society than the natives to the southward, and are much better lodged. Their spears are of solid wood, and used without the throwing stick. Two or three bark canoes were seen; but from the number of black swans in the river, of which eighteen were caught in our little boat, it should seem that these people are not dextrous in the management either of the canoe or spear.

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