Head Hunters weapon. 1934.

This offering in the Adelaide museum from 1934 looks like an effective weapon doesn’t it? Those Papua New Guinean head hunters certainly knew how to keep their potential trophies from getting damaged before they had a chance to shrink them!

Chronicle 23 Aug 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article91069573

Head Hunters Weapon for Surprise Attack.

Noose around the head, tight around the neck and a quick jab in the back of the neck. Not really a nice way to go.

Having caught animals with a catching pole before though, I have to say it is not as simple as it looks.

I can’t imagine it being too easy to get this spiked version over the head you covet without doing it some kind of damage.

I wonder if this is an actual weapon or just an interesting artifact?

A search for headhunters weapons mostly returned images of heavy clubs. After all if you’re going to shrink them you don’t need the skull to remain intact do you.

As a child I remember being taken to the Melbourne Museum to see an exhibition of historical medicine and witchcraftery. Ok, that isn’t what it was called but you know what I mean.

One of the exhibits that day was a darkened operating theatre set-up complete with tools for hacking off limbs, a table designed to drain blood, a screaming soundtrack and, of course, rivers of fake blood.

I still remember that excursion happily and fondly remember that day being where I saw my very first real-life shrunken heads.

Ahhhh…. Memories… 😉

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The racehorse of the desert. 1934.

What do you think of when you hear that title, the racehorse of the desert?

When I read it I immediately thought of a camel. Quite fast when they want to be and appropriately adapted for running in sand. We have quite a few wild camels here in Australia, in fact, we have the largest wild population of them in the world. Considering that they are an introduced species that is quite an achievement.

Anyway, I would never have connected that particular title to this vision of a gigantic lizard, would you?

It is a pity there isn’t anything in the top photo to use as a scale but I think we will all agree, that is a lizard that would have been left to go his own way, unmolested by pretty much everything. If you would like to see a similar photo here is one from 1935 I posted a while ago of a 6ft long Bungarra with a wary dog for scale although I get the feeling todays Goanna is even bigger….*

Western Mail 25 Dec 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38390784

After the wonderful clarity of the photos of an 1934 outback christmas I used in my post yesterday I went back to that particular paper to see if they had any other gems and these guys were on the very next page. Fortunately this time there was a note as to who took the picture and we can thank Mrs. E. Lambert and E. Tindale for these pictures.

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*Here is a link to an earlier post with a youtube clip of a far more recent encounter with a goanna, this time the goanna is helpfully perched on a backyard bbq for scale. They are smaller these days, but still impressive. 😀

Underground mutton.

After yesterday’s post about the Hairy Vikings/Hairy Bikers cooking clip EllaDee and I ended up in conversation about cooking rabbits.

The lovely Jason at one of my local bakeries does an amazing rabbit pie, so amazing in fact, that after lunch a while ago I was inspired to go to the local butcher and ask for a rabbit to make into my own stew.

Sunday Times 13 Nov 1910 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article57608678

I remember when that very shop used to have rabbits hanging up for a few dollars apiece, (no, it wasn’t that long ago!), so you can imagine what a shock it was when he said he could get one in for me but he didn’t keep them in stock because they were so expensive.

Rabbits? Expensive? What the!?

When we first moved into this house years ago the rabbits were so numerous that even our killer dog gave up worrying about them. They could pop through the fence and graze the grass in his run, right under his nose and it wasn’t worth the effort of getting up to see them off, another one would be back there chomping away before he even sat down again! His energy was far better spent on neighbours cats and unobservant bike riders.*

Their numbers are greatly reduced now but, quite frankly, I could probably go out and hit a few with my car this evening if I was so inclined. Telling the family that we are having Roadkill stew for dinner doesn’t have the same kind of warm feeling that calling it Rabbit stew does though…  😉

Since the first few breeding pairs were irresponsibly released in 1859 rabbits have become a huge problem in Australia. Their numbers rapidly reached plague proportions and they did immense damage to vast tracts of land.

According to the Department of Primary Industries there were 10 billion rabbits in Australia in 1926. That means 24 pairs turned into ten billion in just over 50 years.

In the early 1950’s Myxomatosis killed 99.8% of rabbits but, of course, the survivors eventually developed resistance to it. Unfortunately, by 1990 their numbers were back up to 600 million again. (I would love to know how they counted the little buggers though 😉 )

During the Great Depression in the 1930’s underground mutton was very popular with a lot of people, and the fact that it was freely available probably kept many impoverished farmers and their families alive. I bet they never ate rabbit for enjoyment again though….

It got me thinking, how can a feral pest be so expensive to farm for eating?

Naturally, I had to have a look for some rabbity tales of old and found the picture below of a boundary rider inspecting the rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia.

This fence was made in three parts and when it was finished in 1907 it was thousands of miles long, and the longest unbroken fence in the world. No matter how much work was put into maintaining this fence it was no surprise that rabbits still managed to infest the entire country.

I guess one reason for the eating bunnies being so expensive these days might be that keeping the manky wild rabbits away from the soon-to-be-devoured bunnies might be harder than we think!

Western Mail 16 Aug 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37710646

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*Fortunately, (not for the rabbits though) calicivirus was an effective weapon against them, and after its accidental escape from quarantine in the early 90’s infected rabbits around much of Australia. We noticed a rapid decline in the amount of rabbits here, although now they are starting to make a comeback. 😦

Other rabbit control measures are still being taken but sadly there is too much space here, and too many rabbits, for us to ever be able to get rid of them.

Hot weather thirst. 1934.

It is hot here today (already 33°c/92°F) and it was hot all day yesterday and last night too, hence the lateness of this post. After a day working out in the garden my brain was nothing but cooked mush and unable to do anything other than direct me back to the fridge for yet another cool drink.

How lucky are we that we have fridges filled with cool drinks, and, in the case of the kids, a freezer full of icy poles.

Of course they had little to complain of. The boys spent the afternoon out in the shade with a large bowl of water trying to design a Lego boat that would float weighted down with heavy artillery. Judging by the amount of water on the grass afterwards their plans changed to submarines and doing battle!

Look at this hardworking wheat farmer from 1934. I’m whingeing because I had to walk all the way to the fridge for my next bit of refreshment, and a cold shower awaited me once I finished my self-imposed jobs.

I think this bloke had a little more hard work to do than I did, and had no chance to pack it in once he got bored in order to put his feet up and watch telly in front of the fan… We have it so easy, don’t we?

Western Mail 22 Feb 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38020697

Ants delay train. 1934.

At first reading I didn’t think that this was much of a news item, delayed train, ants… whatever…..

Portland Guardian-5 Feb 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article64284801

Then I thought of how many ants it would take to make a train slip on its tracks and I thought again.

Think of the largest amount of ants you have ever seen in one place, and then imagine what they could have done to hinder a train. Not much I suspect.

To actually stop a goods train would take an immense amount of ants! I wonder what sort of ants they were. We have some pretty big ants here in Australia, Bull ants (40mm), but still I can’t imagine how many of them it would take to cause an incident like this.

I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that train either. Ants aren’t generally too easy to move on, are they? I can imagine they would be swarming all over the train, furiously annoyed at the disturbance, and if they were Bull ants….. eeeek!

What could go wrong? An armed monkey. 1934.

Once you have read this article see if you can work out what the first misstep in this little incident at Wirth’s Circus was.

The West Australian 23 Apr 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article33016056

I know it is hard to spot, so I will give you a hint. I think it was when they gave a monkey a loaded rifle. But I could be wrong.

I wonder if the monkey was actually aiming at Charles Broomhead or if it was a lucky shot? I notice he was wounded in the back, I wonder if the monkey saw that Mr. Broomhead’s attention was not on him, and dealt with him somewhat inappropriately.

It sounds a bit like a teacher chucking a piece of chalk at an inattentive student doesn’t it?

I thought monkeys usually threw poo when they wanted to get attention? Clearly the ones that do this are less well armed than ‘Tarzan’ was. What is the moral to the story? ‘Never give a monkey a gun’? or possibly ‘Never turn your back on a drama queen’?