Gnowangerup History

This piece of wood was about three feet long and about one and a quarter inches thick. Billy examined it and found what he was looking for, which was a crack in the wood, no doubt formed when the wood was drying and shrinking. 
The crack ran more or less the length of the wood, but the important thing to him was that it was about a quarter of an inch wide at the top and a quarter of an inch deep. Then still without moving from where he sat, he picked up a very old piece of kangaroo dung and also a few sprigs of old and very dry Wandarie grass that he could reach. 
The two items he ground together in the palm of his hand, then packed the resulting powder in the crack of the Mulga wood. He next selected another dry mulga stick, this time about two feet long and three quarters of an inch thick, and using this like you would a saw, but applying considerably more pressure, he moved it quickly back and forth over the tinder dry powder he had placed in the crack and soon a small spiral of smoke appeared. 
That was the signal to apply more pressure and also to increase the speed of the sawing motion which in turn soon doubled the amount of smoke coming from the friction area. 
Billy now discarded the friction stick and bent forward and very gently blew on the smoking powder and in no time, a small tongue of flame appeared. 
This he then fed with some very small sticks and pieces of grass and he soon had a miniature fire going. The amazing thing to me was that in no more than a minute and a half after I had asked him how his people made fire, he had produced a fire without even moving from where he sat.
Admittedly the conditions were ideal for the job as there had been no rain for very many weeks and everything was tinder dry.
Yamagees living under their natural conditions, when subjected to adverse weather always carry a fire stick from their last campsite to start their fires at their next resting place.
Fire to them was and still is, something more than just to keep them warm and to cook with. 
They also claim it is a wonderful aid to keep away things that go bump in the night. Always the first thing they do on arriving at a campsite, is to make a small fire.”