Palefaces imagine that travelling shows (like The Lion King) and very long theatrical entertainments (like Wagner's four-day Ring Cycle) are white man's inventions. But 100 years ago this week the Sydney Morning Herald reported forms of them perhaps thousands of years old.
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"Mrs Daisy Bates, honorary protector of the Eucla aborigines ... is once more camping among the natives on the borders of South Australia and Western Australia. This cultured lady is spending the best years of her life [with] the blacks. She has written to the Herald describing some of the curious customs of the tribes.
'" 'Just think of the corroboree as the beginning of the travelling shows. One that has been travelling from North Queensland ... has come across to the Koogurda mob ... and their country is along part of the line of the Transcontinental railway. The Wanji-Wanji corroboree now being performed by my dusky friends has also been years and years travelling down to here.
" 'I attended it in its completeness. It lasted a fortnight. We began at 4pm, ending the first part at about 6 or 7. Then we began again at 7.30 or 8, going on till 11 Then a few hours "rest" (orgies in the camps) until we resumed at 2am, and left off at pale dawn, beginning again next day at 4, and so on for a fortnight. I never went to bed during the whole time as I wanted to chronicle the whole thing and learn the songs, of which there were over 20 different ones.' "
