Spear Throwers, Clubs, and Skin Cloaks

Spear Throwers

Meander and maze patterns, in which human and animal figures may be discerned, are incised very lightly on the spear-throwers of New South Wales and Victoria, either in the form of broad fluted lines or as sets of parallel flutings. On one specimen are what appear to be snakes, each with its body wound over so as to cross at different points, and set in a field of punctured holes.

Clubs

The clubs of eastern Australia exhibit a simpler decoration than is to be seen on the shields and boomerangs. The same geometric elements are present, but are modified to suit the more restricted surface. The bulbous club heads bear wide bands of different colors, often broken up by grooves into rows of square, pyramidal, and lozenge-shaped bosses. The panels, which may be triangular, semi-circular, or in the form of bands, may be covered with white punctures on a red base. Clubs made of mulga wood with attractive natural grain are not further embellished as a rule, but a neat tooling is often added as a finish. The spatulate bladed clubs of New South Wales are patterned with heart-shaped figures combined with concentric diamonds. One pattern on a cylindrical club from the Bogan River, New South Wales, in the Australian Museum collection offers an excellent textile design, and one must admire the ingenuity of the artist who created this complex pattern.

The Lil Lil is a bladed club well suited to shallow carving. Typical designs on these weapons consist of rows of two to four narrow parallel grooves, curving round each side of the surface, and enclosing a variety of minor elements such as fluted circles and ovals and emu tracks. A circle, within which are two punctures like eyes, occurs on the handle of one specimen. A feature of the weapons of eastern Australia is that many of them are stained with vegetable juice and polished like those of New Hebrides and New Caledonia; in Central and North Australia the wooden objects are usually colored with red ochre.

Skin Cloaks

This cloak is made from eight possum skins, decorated with a varied series of line designs set in a field of cross-hatching.

These cloaks were worn with the fur inside during the day and were used as rugs at night during the winter months by the natives in the southern half of Australia. They were usually made of possum skins which were scraped, and then tanned in the sun, and sewn together. The design was cut in the skin with a shell knife, and the grooves were painted with red ochre to make them distinctive. The motifs include the herringbone, chevrons, bird-tracks, concentric figures, line patterns, and animals.