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The Warramunga of Banka Banka were away hunting when the construction parties hurried through their country, from Attack Creek to Renner Springs. They came straggling back in a dry time to springs and rock holes in the hills, travelling as a tribe travels, warriors in the lead, on the flank and in the rear, ready to rush out after an enemy, lubras in the centre carrying the camping gear, babies, yam-sticks and firesticks. Suddenly they came to the dray tracks, the cleared space, the marching poles and endless wire shimmering above.
They were pop-eyed with fright. They believed that a great and powerful devil had passed that way -- and they were not far wrong. `Nyee nyee cooya?' (What animal here?). `Jennanga! Jennanga!'(Back! Back!). You must never tread on a devil's track or you will draw up his evil through your feet. So they made it a running jump, young men vaulting on spears, lubras throwing babies, the old ones puffing and blowing, clearing it by a whisker.
For a long time the `Singing String', its poles humming a high sinister note, was a Voice of terror in the bush. But when the telegraph station was built, the Warramunga of Tennant's Creek came in three hundred together, men with their arm above their heads to show that they carried no spears, women and children before them, and holding green branches of peace. Such was the effect of the white man on the aborigines who at that time probably had not seen a white man.
Another tribe, the Djauan of
Katherine River, in industrious imitation of the white men, went out and
chopped trees and put up a good mile and a half of poles leading nowhere,
to the confusion of the Telegraph men till they discovered the joke.
