Note (return) — LECTURE VI

Among the tribes of South-eastern Australia the Narrinyeri were not alone in holding the curious belief that the souls of the dead go up into the sky to live there for ever, but that their ghosts come down again from time to time, roam about their old haunts on earth, and communicate with the living. This, for example, was the belief of the Dieri, the Buandik, the Kurnai, and the Kulin tribes.180 The Buandik thought that everything in skyland was better than on earth; a fat kangaroo, for example, was compared to a kangaroo of heaven, where, of course, the animals might be expected to abound.181 The Kulin imagined that the spirits of the dead ascended to heaven by the bright rays of the setting sun.182 The Wailwun natives in New South Wales used to bury their dead in hollow trees, and when they dropped the body into its place, the bearers and the bystanders joined in a loud whirring sound, like the rush of the wind. They said that this represented the upward flight of the soul to the sky.183