Since 1894 my tenure of office as Surgeon to the Boulia, Cloncurry, and Normanton Hospitals, respectively, has afforded unrivalled opportunities for making inquiry into the language, customs, and habits of the North-West-Central Queensland aboriginals. The following pages embody the notes collected during that period.

At Boulia, where strictly professional work was conspicuous by its absence, almost my whole time was devoted to a careful study of the local (Pitta-Pitta) language: only when this was sufficiently mastered did I find it possible to understand the complex system of social and individual nomenclature in vogue, and ultimately to gain such amount of confidence and trust among the natives as enabled me to obtain information concerning various superstitions, beliefs, and ceremonial rites which otherwise would in all probability have been withheld. To any future observers of, and writers on, the Queensland aboriginal, I would most strongly recommend this method of making themselves familiar with the particular language of the district before proceeding to make any further inquiries.

I would also draw the attention of the reader to the chapter on the Sign Language, which I first accidentally hit upon at Roxburgh Downs, on the Upper Greorgina. I was out on horseback one day with some blacks when one of the “boys” riding by my side suddenly asked me to halt, as a mate of his in front was after some emus, consisting of a hen-bird and her young progeny.