Message stick

They have traditionally been used across continental Australia, to convey messages between Aboriginal nations, clans and language groups.

The message stick is usually a solid piece of wood, around 10–30 centimetres (3.9–11.8 in) in length, etched with angular lines and dots.

Cases of message sticks being sent and interpreted without an intermediary are not unheard of but are exceedingly rare in our documentation.

Finally, the stick having passed from one to the other of the old men present is handed to the messenger, who has received his verbal message in connection with it.

[7]Jeannie Gunn wrote about life at a station near the site of the town of Mataranka in the Northern Territory in 1902:Then he ['Goggle-Eye'] showed me a little bit of stick with notches on it, and said it was a blackfellow's letter-stick, or, as he called it, a "yabber-stick."

There was some other news marked on it...[8]Donald Thomson, recounting his journey to Arnhem Land after the Caledon Bay Crisis in 1935, writes of Wonggu sending a message stick to his sons, at that time in prison, to indicate a calling of a truce.