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The lost tribe – MARK NODEA
“This story was told to me from my grandpa – my father’s dad. When my grandpa was young, they were living in the desert south-west of Yakanarra at Karrajarri country.
“Anyway, in that time tribes were always moving around the desert. The lost families (man, woman, and a couple of kids) wanted to move further away and went away from my grandpa’s area. They told my grandpa’s family that they were going looking for more bush food, and also waterholes. They went for a week and didn’t come back.
“My grandpa’s family were starting to get worried, So some men got together and went looking for the families. They looked day and night and didn’t find them. They were burning bush fires to try to get a response but nothing happened. It took 2 years for my people (Walmajarri tribe) to find them. Close by from kurtal they came across two billabongs surrounded by bush onions plants on the sandhills. They knew that was their people lying near the billabong, because my people know their knowledge in the desert. For a long time, at those two billabongs, there were never any bush onions around that area. The people founded bush onion plants here. They knew the families died here, so my grandpa’s people sat at the billabong and started crying for their families.
“Those lost families, before they died, they ate bush onions and those seeds were in their stomach and that is where they grow today.”
