The secret of Gulajahlis

In ancient times there were no fishing-nets. The people used to build simple low embankments across the river with the help of stones and loam at a flat place. After that they drove fishes against the barrier and caught them only with their hands out of the water.

At that time Gulajahlis, a black-white pelican, was a man and a powerful magician. He was the first to use a fishing-net but nobody was able to say or tell, how he had got it and where he kept it. Always when the pelican wanted to fish, he ordered his sons to get some sticks for fastening the net-endings.

-"But where is the net?" the curious children asked every time.

-"Let this be my problem!" the father answered. "Why are you still waiting, do as I told you!"

Without any futher argument the intimidated kids left the camp to collect the sticks, special ones from a bush named Eurah, in the swamps.

When the sons came back, the mysterious net was already Iying down on the floor in front of the old magician. Next to it a little fire nourished from rosewoodbranches was flickering.

Gulajahli threw a few green leaves into the fire, hold the net a few moments into smoke and called his tribal comrades to fish together.

At a flat place some of the men tightened the long vertical net crossways through the river and fastened it.

The others run futher upwards and drove the fishes with lout shouts into the trap.

When they had cought enough fish, a big fire was set and the prey was fried in the flames.

But they asked themselves how Gulajahli got this wunderful net, which delivered such plentiful food for the people every time. Auch where could it be hidden, because after every catch it disappeared.

One day the children decided to find out about this. When the magician sent them away, two of them crawled into the thick bushes and waited. As the old man believed his sons out of sight, something strange began to happen with him. His neck became taller and taller and he seemed to writhe with pain. The children thought he became sick, they wanted to help him. But suddenly they could not believe their eyes. The magician threw up out of his mouth the fishing-net. With both hands he pulled it out till a big heap lay on the ground in front of him. Deeply frightened the children ran towards the others and reported breathlessly, what they had seen.

Soon everbody knew about Gulajahlis hiding-place but nobody could explain how he could make the net.

In the meantime the news about the new way to fish had spread all over the country like a bushfire. Even foreign tribes came from far away to see the wonderful fishing instrument. Again and again the old man had to show his art to the audience and finally exposed his secret.

He told them to get the bark of the black Kurrajong tree, to chew it until it was tender and then to tie those nets. The people asked him mistrustful, why he did not do it in that way.

-"I am a powerful Wirrinun, a big magician" answered Gulajahli proudly, "I need only to swallow the fibres, the net originates himself in my body".

So the people learned how to tie a net. But only the men from Gulajahlis group know how to produce the net in the same secretful way, as the pelicans do till now.

Namely they don’t catch the fishes like the other birds do by flying towards the prey, but they put their heads right or left, and than move their long beaks like a net in the water. The fishes swim into this deep skinbag, there they are caught in the net, the pelican hide there secretly.

It was the old magician, who gave them this net.

That’s why they are named Gulajahli, it means, the people, who have a net.

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