Native women weeping over a grave at Mount Wayo, near Goulburn, NSW, 1836
William Romaine Govett
Sketches of New South Wales: written and illustrated for the Saturday Magazine in 1836–37, London: John W Parker, 1836–1837
DL Q83/68
When artist and surveyor William Romaine Govett toured the Goulburn region in 1836, he witnessed a Wiradjuri funeral ceremony. He described how the women would wail, cutting their scalps with axes. Govett sketched the scene for the Saturday Magazine (London), noting that:
The trees all round the tomb were marked in various peculiar ways, some with zigzags and stripes, and pieces of bark otherwise cut, as shown in the sketch.