[788] _Ibid._ Compare Roth, _Eth. Stud._, p. 183.
Curr, speaking of the laying out of a native camp in the Bangerang tribe, says: "the fire of the bachelors ..." is "rather further off and somewhat isolated from the rest."[789] The same author says: "Over the girls his (the father's) authority ceased when they became wives, and after his twelfth year or so the boy was very little subject to the father."[790] "When eight or ten years of age he was sent to sleep in the bachelors' camp, when there was one at hand, with the young men and boys of various ages, his parents still supplying him with food. In his new home, though no violence was used, its inmates being all his relatives, the child gradually became to some extent the fag" of all older and stronger. In short this was the real school he had to pass through, the most important moment of which formed the initiation, when he became _kogomoolga_.[791] "The bachelors, in their camp, cooked each for himself"[792] (at least the older ones; as for the quite young, the family provided, according to what we were told above). "The bachelors had one (hut) in common."[793] Curr also emphasizes the importance of the training enjoyed by the youths in the bachelors' camp for the general tribal order.[794]
J. Dawson says that one partition of a big wuurn "is appropriated to the parents and children, one to the young unmarried women and widows, and one to the bachelors and widowers. While travelling or occupying temporary habitations, each of these parties must erect separate wuurns."[795] Here the young boys and young unmarried girls lived with their family, but in separate compartments of the hut. We are not informed if, when travelling, they formed a separate group in the encampment.
[795] _Loc. cit._, p. 10; this refers to the West Victorian tribes.
"Young, unmarried men frequently muster in parties of six or eight, and make a hut for themselves."[796] In cases when a larger number of natives are assembled it is required by custom that "all boys and uninitiated young men sleep at some distance from the huts of adults."[797]
[796] Eyre, ii. p. 302 (Murray River tribes).
"Until his fourteenth or fifteenth year he (the boy) is mostly engaged in catching fish and birds, because already, for some years, he has been obliged to seek for food on his own account. Thus he early becomes, in a great measure, independent; and there is nobody who can control him, the authority of his parents depending only upon the superstitions which they have instilled into him from infancy."[798]