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National Geographic : 1956 Mar
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428 jane L. uooaie Dolly Skins a Stringybark Tree Stringybark is to the Melville islander what birch bark was to the American Indian. The half-inch-thick inner layer makes baskets and crude lean-to shelters. In times past it covered canoes. Dolly was house girl at the expedition camp and chief informant for Miss Goodale's study of Tiwi women. unencumbered by jungle offered a camping site. Others had taken advantage of it previ ously, as old fires and remains of bark shel ters bore witness. A fire was soon started-with matches, al though any Tiwi can readily make fire by twirling a hardwood drill between his palms. Tea was the first order of business. One of the native women dipped water from the near-by billabong with her billy, a five-pound corned-beef can with a wire handle. As soon as it boiled, she tossed in a handful of tea leaves. With sugar added, it was ready to pass around. Wall of Flame Aids Hunters After a camp spot had been cleared, one of the aborigines set fire to the shoulder-high grass around the clearing. It burned intensely but briefly as the wall of flame raced away, and only an occasional dead log continued to smoulder in its wake. Hunters burn off the land every year in this fashion, turning the bush into a brown parkland in which they can easily see wallabies hopping through the trees, or locate the hollow-tree homes of bandi coots and possums. Next morning the men were off early for the hunt, some of the women accompanying them. Other women took their axes and searched for stringybark trees. Tapping until they found a tree with loose bark, they chopped two deep rings several feet apart around the tree and connected them with a vertical cut. Carefully skinning off the entire ring, they stripped away the rough outer layer and put the inner bark to soak. When it had become flexible, they folded it into a sacklike basket while holding it over the smoke of a fire. Then with a sharpened wallaby bone they punched holes along the sides and sewed them together with strips of vine (page 430). Now the Tiwi use these bark-slab baskets chiefly for ceremonial purposes (page 434). For most other needs they prefer a calico or flour-sack carryall. Basket weaving has only recently been introduced, though the na tives make woven pandanus armlets for use in rituals. The search for tucker (food) occupies most of the time of both men and women when in the bush. Women dig yams with sharpened hardwood sticks or long iron rods flattened at one end. They collect oysters and crabs and cockles and snails; gather the bulbs of water lilies; chop holes in hollow logs to capture bandicoots and possums; or dig for goannas
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