Biraban is initiated as a “headman” or as a koragji

Biraban is initiated as a “headman” or as a koragji or perhaps both. Threlkeld relates this important part of Biraban’s life: “He [McGill] went to the mountains with upwards of 60 spears to exchange for  a possum cord made of the fur, and also to engage in some superstitious ceremony…It appears that Berah-bahn [Biraban]…slept with two other Blacks on the grave of [a] girl…from sunsetting to sun rising for the purpose of obtaining ‘The Bone’, the mystic bone used in the mystic ring, and supposed to be in the abdomen of certain persons skilled in curing sickness and in knocking out the teeth with the bone without pair to the sufferer…A few weeks back Be-rah-bahn returned from a ceremony performed in the mountains, which has initiated him into the rights of an Aborigine. – It appears that they burn a large part of the country, then hunt kangaroos, feast upon the shank bones only, after which they pipe clay themselves all over and then everyone must rush at once into the water and bathe themselves clean. They then return to the women, who are not admitted to see the ceremony, but who are kept at some distance in the charge of an old man” (Gunson, Australian Reminiscences & Papers of L E Threlkeld Missionary to the Aborigines, 1824-1859, 1974, p308, note 31, 206; Blair, 2003, 53).