As you enter the Museum, we welcome your to our First Nations Exhibit. Here we will share a few interesting stories, titled Smoke Signals, The First Educational Toy, Tool Making, and A Man Called Sandy Cape.
A bloke, that lived on a station, said he was going to Cairns, and this First Nations woman, came to him, and asked if he could give a stick to her husband, in Cairns. She told him where he would be, and said to ask for him at the Camp. She gave him a stick with all sorts of marks on it.
He said, 'would you mind telling me what this stick is', and she said, 'it’s just telling him, to tell you, when he will be home, and something about one of the kids'.
The bloke was interested to find out if the husband could sort the message out. He found him, and gave him the stick, and said, 'Can you tell me what’s this all about'. He said, 'She wants to know what time I’m coming home, and something happened to the little one'. They communicated with the message stick.
Smoke signals were also used to communicate.
Across the Tablelands, all the way to Tully, every three years, or about that, the First Nations people held an event like the Olympic Games.
They would get in touch with each other, and always go to Tully, most likely because there was enough food for everyone.
They kept in touch with smoke signals, 'Okay we’re all going to Tully, we’re going to have the games this year'.
When they arrived in Tully, within a couple of days of each other, they held the games. The games included, throwing boomerangs to hit people; and spears to hit people; and the last man standing was the winner! They played for keeps, and they enjoyed it!
The games continued, until the police stopped it in the early nineteen hundreds, because there were too many people getting hurt, and killed.