and naked he stood
there facing the storm, singing aloud, as the thunder roared and the
lightning flashed, the chant which was to keep it away from the camp

"Gurreemooray, mooray,
Durreemooray, mooray, mooray," &c.

Soon came a lull in the cannonade, a slight breeze stirred the trees
for a few moments, then an oppressive silence, and then the rain in
real earnest began, and settled down to a steady downpour, which lasted
for some days.

When the old people had been patrolling the bough shed as the clouds
rose overhead, Wirreenun had gone to the waterhole and taken out the
willgoo willgoo and the stones, for he saw by the cloud that their work
was done.

When the rain was over and the country all green again, the blacks had
a great corrobboree and sang of the skill of Wirreenun, rainmaker to
the Noongahburrah.

Wirreenun sat calm and heedless of their praise, as he had been of
their murmurs. But he determined to show them that his powers were
great, so he summoned the rainmaker of a neighbouring tribe, and after
some consultation with him, he ordered the tribes to go to the
Googoorewon, which was then a dry plain, with the solemn, gaunt trees
all round it, which had once been black fellows.

When they were all camped round the edges of this plain, Wirreenun and
his fellow rainmaker made a great rain to fall just over the plain and
fill it with water.

When the plain was changed into a lake, Wirreenun said to the young men
of his tribe: "Now take your nets and fish."

"What good?" said they. "The lake is filled from the rain, not the
flood water of rivers, filled but yesterday, how then shall there be
fish?"

"Go," said Wirreenun. "Go as I bid you; fish. If your nets catch
nothing then shall Wirreenun speak no more to the men of his tribe, he
will seek only honey and yams with the women."

More to please the man who had changed their country from a desert to a
hunter's paradise, they did as he bade them, took their nets and went
into the lake. And the first time they drew their nets, they were heavy
with goodoo, murree, tucki, and bunmillah. And so many did they catch
that all the tribes, and their dogs, had plenty.

Then the elders of the camp said now that there was plenty everywhere,
they would have a borah that the boys should be made young men. On one
of the ridges away from the camp, that the women should not know, would
they prepare a ground.

And so was the big borah of the Googoorewon held,