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A
long time ago (guriabu), there lived a njimbun, a “little fellow”
among the Minjangbal clans of Southern Queensland. One day his mother’s
brother asked him to go looking for honey with him in the mountains.
They searched all day without any success, until what is known today
as Mt. Earnest, they came to a cave.
Now
the uncle secretly disliked his nephew and wanted to get rid of him,
so he said to the njimbun:
“Maybe I am too big to get in there, you had better go in and
see if there are any gubbai (honey bees).” The cave was dark
and njimbun was reluctant to venture too far in, but his uncle kept
on saying:
“Yena bogar, bogar-bogar. (Go farther, farther still)”
until the little fellow was out of sight. He then seized great armfuls
of dead leaves and dry sticks and built a huge fire at the mouth of
the cave. On the fire he piled green leaves so that even the njimbun
were not incinerated he would be suffocated with smoke.
The
njimbun, however, found a crevice leading the outer air at the back
of the cave, and being a very little fellow, he was able to squeeze
through and hide himself in the scrub nearby.
Presently his uncle felt pangs of remorse for what he had done and
sat under a tree lamenting. When the fire had burned down, he went
into the cave to find the body of his nephew. The njimbun seized his
opportunity and quickly stoked the fire up again, piling more and
more fuel on it. His uncle was, of course, far too big to squeeze
through the crevice and at the back of the cave and was incinerated.
The mountain
on which this occurred is known to the Bandjalang as Bogar-bogarni,
the “place of farther still.”
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