CHAPTER XIII - CLOTHING AND ORNAMENT

Summary

The northern coastal tribes are not much troubled with clothing. Out on the central uplands and around the coasts of the Gulf of Carpentaria the nights in winter are bitterly cold—often below freezing-point, and yet the natives have never learned to make fur rugs out of the skins of the kangaroos, wallabies, and opossums that they can, and often do, secure in plenty. In the more northern coastal districts the climate is different and clothes are not much needed. To keep themselves warm the natives there will often use sheets of paper bark.

The only things that can perhaps be strictly described as articles of clothing are the pubic tassels which are worn amongst many tribes by men and women, and the curious paper bark aprons that the women wear on Melville and Bathurst Islands. The former are often of considerable size. They consist of a large number of human-hair string pendants, forming a tassel that may be a foot in length and four to six inches across. The tassel is always attached to a belt made of the same material. In the Central tribes the belt consists of, perhaps, twenty strands that are only attached to each other at the two ends of the loop. In the Northern tribes there are many more strands, and in addition to being thus attached, there are two, three, or four cross bands, at regular intervals, through which the strands of the belt are woven and which serve to flatten it out, so that it may have a width of three or four inches.