ISLAND FAUNA
While the bird life of our island is plentiful and varied, mammalian is
insignificant in number. The echidna, two species of rats, a flying fox
(PTEROPUS FUNEREUS) and two bats, comprise the list. Although across a
narrow channel marsupials are plentiful, there is no representative of
that typical Australian order here, and the Dunk Island blacks have no
legends of the existence of either kangaroos, wallabies, kangaroo rats or
bandicoots in times past. But there are circumstantial details extant,
that the island of Timana was an outpost of the wallaby until quite a
recent date. A gin (the last female native of Dunk Island) who died in
1900 was wont to tell of the final battue at Timana, and the feast that
followed, in which she took part as a child. This island, which has an
area of about 20 acres, bears a resemblance to a jockey's cap--the sand
spit towards the setting sun forming the peak, a precipice covered with
scrub and jungle, the back. Here, long ago, a great gathering from the
neighbouring islands and the mainland took place. Early in the morning
all formed up in line on the sand spit. Diverging, but maintaining order,
men, gins, piccaninnies, shouting, yelling, and screaming, and clashing
nulla-nullas (throwing-sticks), supported by barking and yelping dogs
swept the timid wallabies up through the tangle of jungle, until like the
Gaderene swine they ran, or rather hopped, down a steep place into the
sea, or fell on fatal rocks laid bare by the ebb-tide.
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