organisations, who, though living far apart, are aware of the fact by seeing men of the other class at the great tribal meetings. In the south-west of Victoria, if a man of the Lake Bolac tribe, being a Krokitch, were to marry a woman or the Woëworung-speaking people, she would be of the Bunjil class, that being the equivalent of Krokitch, while Krokitch equals Waang. An instance of the manner in which this works is within my own experience. I happened to meet with a man from the Upper Diamantina River who had been brought down south. In speaking to him of the place he came from, I said that I thought the names Kurgila, Banbe, Wungo, and Kuburu were to be found there. He said, "Yes, I am Wungo." Then I said that away farther south of that place there were four names different to those of his tribe, Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, and Kubbi, and that, if I were there, blackfellows might call me Ipai, and that Ipai is the same as Kurgila. He thought for a moment and then said, "Then you are the same as brother to my father." This was quite correct, for Kurgila marries Kuburuan and their son is Wungo. Among themselves this would have formed a real class relationship, and the respective rights and duties attached to it would have been recognised and acted on as a matter of course.
In the table given below the chain apparently ends at the Belyando River, but in fact this class system extends to the upper waters of the Flinders River in a slightly varied form of names. Its furthest point occurs on the Upper Cloncurry River where it is followed by that of the Maikolon tribe.[1] I have not been able to make out the equivalence of the Wakelbura type of names with those of the Maikolon, but when this is done, the link will be supplied to complete the chain of equivalent systems from Mount Gambier to the Mitchell River in Queensland, a distance of over 1500 miles in a straight line.
Wherever two systems touch each other the members of the adjacent tribes invariably know which of the neighbouring classes corresponds to their own, and therefore the individual knows well with which class or sub-class of the other
- ↑ E. Palmer.
