Apart from magic and birds Australian lovers appear not to have been
without means of communicating with one another. Howitt says that if a
Kurnai girl took a fancy to a man she might send him a secret message
asking, "Will you find me some food?" And this was understood to be a
proposal--a rather unsentimental and utilitarian proposal, it must be
confessed. According to one of the correspondents of Curr (III., 176)
the natives along the Mary River even made use of a kind of
love-letters which, he says, "were peculiar."
"When the writer was once travelling with a black boy
the latter produced from the lining of his hat a bit of
twig about an inch long and having three notches cut on
it. The black boy explained that he was a _dhomka_
(messenger), that the central notch represented
himself, and the other notches, one the youth sending
the message, the other the girl for whom it was
intended. It meant, in the words of Dickens, 'Barkis is
willin'.' The _dhomka_ sewed up the love-symbol in the
lining of his hat, carried it for months without
divulging his secret to his sable friends, and finally
delivered it safely. This practice appeared to be
well-known, and was probably common."
Such a "love-letter," consisting of three notches cut in a twig,
symbolically sums up this whole chapter. The difference between this
bushman's twig and the love-letter of a civilized modern suitor is no
greater than the difference between aboriginal Australian "love" and
genuine romantic love.