warlukun

In 1887 when the young Warumungu man Dick Cubadgee was in Adelaide, he demonstrated the use of a firedrill like the one displayed here. A visiting writer described the event as follows: 'Cubadjee made fire for us with two pieces of wood...by rubbing a piece of wood with holes bored in it against another piece, quickly producing sparks, which easily ignited a piece of paper, and left a certain amount of black powder.' The writer was in fact wrong about the sparks - it was actually the black powder that ignited. This hot black powder is created by twirling one stick into the side of another which lies along the ground. The second stick contains a shallow circular pit with a channel leading from the pit to allow the hot wood powder to spill over onto the tinder. Cubadgee was said to have taken 65 seconds to make fire using such a firedrill.