Leaping to their feet the two hunters loaded their three-metre long spears into their woomeras and launched the spears almost in the same action.

Marbungga’s spear felled a fleeing kangaroo but Gunbuk’s weapon narrowly missed its mark.   Before the two hunters could reload their spear-launchers, the herd had moved past them and was bounding toward where I lay concealed in the tall grass a hundred metres behind the others.

Jumping to my feet I raised my own weapon, a large hunting boomerang, swung my right arm back and at the same time collided with an onrushing kangaroo.   My aim was knocked off by the collision so that my weapon went astray and narrowly missed decapitating Marbungga, who ducked under the large boomerang and without missing a step launched a spear from his loaded woomera and felled the roo I had collided with.

Marbungga’s spear passed clean through the young kangaroo and through a small Joey in her pouch, pinning mother and baby alike to the ground.   The Joey was killed instantly, but the mother struggled valiantly against the thick spear, tugging at it with her small front paws, biting at it with her strong teeth, while her powerful back feet kicked furiously at the ground, until Marbungga rushed across to slit her throat with his hunting knife.

The Old Man roo stopped and turned back toward us, anger flashed in his steely grey eyes, his nostrils quivered in rage.   He obviously planned to make a bid to rescue his mates, but seeing it was already too late, he turned and fled, to our relief, leaving us to begin preparing the two carcases for the long trip home.   Gunbuk and Nanguru each took one end of the spear with which Marbungga had pinned the kangaroo to the ground, then, with Nanguru in the lead, they set off back to camp, each holding one end of the spear over his left shoulder.   They travelled slowly to conserve energy as they had many kilometres to travel.   Marbungga pulled the spear from the flank of the second roo, then speared it from backside to neck so that he and I could carry it home in tandem fashion also.

We had hardly set out for home though, when the sky began to darken and the air was filled with an angry hissing, like the hiss of a million death adders all at once, which gradually increased in volume until we had to cover our ears, writhing from the physical agony in our eardrums, which felt as though they were about to burst.