Part 2

'There were but few men present, as they were watching the widows in Perth. Yenna and Warrup, the brothers-in-law of Mulligo, were digging his grave, which as usual extended due east and west; the Perth boyl-ya Weeban by name, who, being a relation of the deceased, could of course have no hand in occasioning his death, superintended the operations. They commenced by digging with their sticks and hands several holes in a straight line, and as deep as they could, they then united them, and through out the earth from the bottom of the pit thus made; all the white sand was thrown carefully into two heaps, nearly in the form of a European grave, and these heaps were situated one at the head and the other at the foot of the hole they were digging, whilst the dirty-coloured sand was thrown into two other heaps, one on each side.

The grave was very narrow, only just wide enough to admit the body of the deceased. Old Weeban paid the greatest possible attention to see that the east and west direction of the grave was preserved, and if the least deviation from this line occurred in the heaps of sand, either at the head or foot, he made some of the natives rectify it by sweeping the sand into its proper from with boughts of trees.'

Grey witnessed this for himself but it was not the only way Aboriginal people burried their loved ones/ Last year I found a cave with several skeletons burried above it in a kind of nich worked into the ceiling. I did not take a photo.

To be continued.