Als handgreep dient een houten staafje, hetwelk door de voormelde uitsteeksels zijn gestoken.<BR> <BR> This example is in a excellent state of preservation. It has a handle of wood attached to the two ends, the whole bound with grass fibre cord. The two thick pieces of palm are folded carefully, and the leaf neatly rolled at the ends, bound tightly to enclose the handle in the same binding.<BR> <BR> Water vessels. Water carriers included both wooden bowls, and vessels made from the leaves of the bangalow palm. Both the literary evidence and the surviving ethnographic material tend to confirm Miss Bundock's comment that the wooden bowl was not common, so we are fortunate in the preservation of this one example at Leiden. The only other specimen known to the writer (in The Australian Museum) was not available in Jube 1970. There seems to be only mention of the type in the historical record, in the memoirs of G.H. Dawson (1834-90:70). This is a brief reference with no detailed description. Miss Bundock notes that this partivular specimen was made from the wood of Urtica moroides, a member of the Urticaceae family. The tree is now called Dendrocide moroides. It is a small shurb found only in the far north of New South Wales; the bark of these stinging trees was also used by the Aborigines to make fibre cord for nets and fishing lines (Anderson 1968:182). These bowls seem to be found only in eastern Australia, and are regarded by Davidson (1937:185) as an indigenous development.<BR> <BR> The palm leaf water vessels are handsome examples of the craftsmanship of Aboriginal women of the north coast of New South Wales; these vessels are also well documented in the literature. Our earliest reference to them comes from Matthew Flinders. While Flinders was anchored in Shoal Bay (the entrance of the Clarence River) in 1799, his party investigated a group of large huts. The Aboriginal Bungaree brought away from these 'a small hand basket made of some kind of leaf which would contain five or six pints of water...' (Flinders 1799:6). They apparently held about half a bucket of water and were called 'pichie ban' (Bundock 1898a:8, Flick 1934; Dawson 1935:10; McDougall 1900:117). Mrs. A.M. West (n.d.), writing of the Nimbin area, says of these vessels:<BR> instead of using billy cans all the time, they used some callabaas. These were made of a piece of bark grom a Bangalow palm tree, about fifteen inches long and neatly pleated in at both ends and tied with a vine over the top with which to carry it.<BR> These were watertight and looked very cute.<BR> <BR> By the late nineteenth century the art of making these beautiful vessels was not being passed on from mother to daughter. Miss Bundock records this in a letter to Dr. Serrurier in November 1885.<BR> <BR> Apart from the Bundock collections, museum holdings of these water vessels are few.