Making and sailing bark boats is popular with children who picnic on the banks of
the Murray. But making and sailing boats has been common along the Murray for
many hundreds of years. To the people who carved a canoe from this tree, perhaps
150 years ago, it was no game but a basic necessity for their existence.
The necessity for the hunting and fishing that was their way of life, the only one
they knew. Scars such as these are to be found on many trees surrounding
Australia's waterways and particularly along Murray. The people are gone the
canoes are gone for the many visitors who come to relax in the quiet beauty
that surrounds the Murray there only remained faint traces that this was the
home of so many people less than a hundred years ago.
The scars on healthy trees are all in various stages of healing.
This scar,perhaps 150 years old, was very wide originally but the bark has gradually
grown around over the years and now the scar would be less than half its
original width. The true age of these scars is in doubt and this is a matter
being researched by Mr Robert Edwards from the Adelaide Museum.
The scar could be 250 years old and now it has almost completely healed.
The Aborigines put the bark of the red gums to other uses too - there are scars of
such obvious things as shields and carrying baskets
The useful life of these canoes was from one to two years. They varied in length
from about six feet to over 20 feet as we can see from the many different size
scars on the red gums. Perhaps this one was a family canoe.
Perhaps this one, a sports model for boys
There is only one such back canoe in existence today,
and that is to be found at the Adelaide Museum in very good condition. It is 16
feet long, 3 feet wide and an average of 7 inches deep. Towards the bow end on a
bed of clay is the remains of a fire. The bow is ornamented with a knob cut in the
bark. This canoe was presented to the South Australian Museum by Mr D. H. Cudmore
of a Avoca station. And with it this photograph of it being used on the Murray.
These canoes were rough, but they had certain advantages. They drew very
little water. They were light to carry and they could
go up on mudbanks to pick up shellfish.
Often, when the men and women went fishing, they would put stones on the
clay floor of the canoe and keep a fire burning to cook their fish as they caught them.
This simple, rough canoe was sufficient to
fill the aborigines needs. It had to be. In these dry areas where the Murray
flows through low rainfall country and where the red gum lines its banks for
mile after mile, it's very difficult to see what other type of canoe they could
have made. Now one wonders how much longer will the canoe trees stand.
The men who used them have disappeared, many of the trees have already been destroyed
and others are showing signs of age and decay.
Staff from the Adelaide Museum are attempting to photograph and measure
every canoe tree and are arranging with wood cutters to remove a section from as
many trees as possible. Research on these sections may one day reveal exactly when
each canoe was cut and give us another link in the history of Australian Aborigines.
How long ago did the story of canoe trees begin? When was the first bark
canoe cut? This we will probably never know for even the long-lived red gum
couldn't live long enough to answer that one. But it must have been a long time
ago, because the canoe was used in the dream time. We know this from the ancient
legend of Ngurunderi. In that legend we learn of the great ancestor, Ngurunderi
who chased the Murray cod down the River Murray in a back canoe.
Ngurunderi made camp on two great sand hills at Mount Misery and having no further use
for his canoe, stood on these sand hills and, lifting it, placed his canoe in the
sky, where today it represents the Milky Way