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Oolah the lizard was tired of lying in the sun, doing nothing. So Oolah said, "I will go and play." Oolah took his boomerangs out, and began to practise throwing them. While Oolah was doing so a Galah came up, and stood near, watching the boomerangs come flying back. The kind of boomerangs Oolah was throwing were the bubberahs. Bubberahs are smaller than other boomerangs, and more curved. When bubberahs are properly thrown they return to the thrower, which other boomerangs do not. |
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Oolah was proud of having the gay Galah to watch his skill. In his pride Oolah gave the bubberah an extra twist, and threw the bubberah with all his might. Whiz, whizzing through the air, back the bubberah came, hitting, as the bubberah passed her, the Galah on the top of her head, taking both feathers and skin clean off. The Galah set up a hideous, cawing, croaking shriek, and flew about, stopping every few minutes to knock her head on the ground like a mad bird. Oolah was so frightened when he saw what he had done, and noticed that the blood was flowing from the Galah's head, that Oolah glided away to hide under a bindeah bush, but the Galah saw him. |
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| She never stopped the hideous noise
she was making for a minute, but, still shrieking, followed Oolah. When
she reached the bindeah bush she rushed at Oolah, seized him with her beak,
rolled him on the bush until every bindeah had made a hole in his skin.
Then she rubbed his skin with her own bleeding head. "Now then," she said,
"you Oolah shall carry bindeahs on you always, and the stain of my blood."
"And you," said Oolah, as he hissed with pain from the tingling of the prickles, "shall be a bald headed bird as long as I am a red prickly lizard." |
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So to this day, underneath the Galah's crest you can always find the bald patch which the bubberah of Oolah first made, and in the country of the Galahs are lizards coloured reddish brown, and covered with spikes like bindeah prickles. |
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Collected in 1897 by Mrs. K. Langloh Parker. |
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