Descriptions of the great dances attendant on the initiation of a boy into manhood, and its accompanying brutal rites, find a more suitable place in scientific works than in a book intended for the general reader.  I will therefore merely describe some of the dances which are performed for entertainment.

The word corroboree is applied equally to the dance, the whole festival, or the actual chant which accompanies the dancing.

Men and women, the men especially, deck themselves out with tufts of emu feathers, fastened in the hair or tied round the arm, or stuck in the waist-belt of plaited hair; paint their bodies with a white paint or wash made from “Kopi” (gypsum similar to that found by the shores of salt lakes), with an occasional dab of red ochre (paint made from a sandstone impregnated with iron), and fix up their hair into a sort of mop bound back by bands of string.  Thus bedecked and painted, and carrying their spears and boomerangs, they present a rather weird appearance.

A flat, clear space being chosen, the audience seat themselves, men and women, who, unless the moon is bright, light fires, which they replenish from time to time.  The dancers are all men, young warriors and older men, but no greybeards.  The orchestra consists of some half-dozen men, who clap together two sticks or boomerangs; in time to this “music” a wailing dirge is chanted over and over again, now rising in spasmodic jerks and yelled forth with fierce vehemence, now falling to a prolonged mumbled plaint.  Keeping time to the sticks, the women smack their thighs with great energy.  The monotonous chant may have little or no sense, and may be merely the repetition of one sentence, such as “Good fella, white fella, sit down ’longa Hall’s Creek,” or something with an equally silly meaning.  The dancers in the meantime go through all sorts of queer movements and pantomimes.  First, we may have the kangaroo corroboree, in which a man hops towards the musicians and back again, to be followed in turn by every other dancer and finally by the whole lot, who advance hopping together, ending up with a wild yell, in which all join.

Then we may have the emu-corroboree, where each in his turn stalks solemnly around with the right arm raised, with elbow bent, wrist and hand horizontal and poked backwards and forwards, to represent the emu’s neck and head.  The left hand held behind the back, like that of a shy official expecting a tip, stands for the emu’s tail.  Thus they advance slowly and jerkily with back bent and arm pointing now this way, now that, like an inquisitive emu who is not sure of his ground.

Next the mallee-hen builds her nest, and each dancer comes forward at a mincing trot, in his hands a few twigs and leaves, which he deposits in front of the “orchestra,” and, having built his nest, retires.  And so they go on mimicking with laughable accuracy the more common beasts and birds.