Ugari

Our blackfellows are animated by no sentiment, and, instead of posing in an attitude, surveying with poetical eye the truly grand scene, search for a bivalve called, in the aboriginal tongue, Yugarie, a delicate member of the mussel family, in much esteem by fishermen as bait, and by the natives as a bonne bouche which makes the sea-side tolerable. To us this trudge across the dismal swamps and sandy ridge signifies a final spectacle of great, if melancholy, grandeur; to Kings Brown and Brady it meant a heavy feed on Yugarie.

Next morning these sisters went out on to the main beach to gather yugaries there.

The shell-fish Donax deltoideus, commonly called ‘ugari’ in Southern Queensland, seem gifted with intellect or reasoning powers.

There was the inner core ready to eat with the wallaby, the baked fish, big pearl shell oysters in their shells, and yugari shell-fish.

The occupants fished, flaked stone for artefacts and built fires but did not gather many shellfish locally (most of the few fragments found in this phase are identifiable as Eugarie from the east coast).

As we lived on an island, sea foods were in abundance. Our sea spirit Quandamooka, which the Europeans renamed Moreton Bay, kept us well supplied with food. Fish, oysters, crabs, quampee (pearl shell), eugaree (pippy) and dugong (sea cow).

To all of us, suitcases were ports, sideboards duchesses and instead of pippies and macadamias, we had yugaries and bopple nuts, although we rather unimaginatively kept spelling the nut as it sounded despite Miss Ruthven's appeal […]

When he walks barefoot on the damp sand tiny bubbles erupt, reveal the location of ugaris. […] When he sees a gap in the breaks, he takes precarious steps towards the worm, moves to the side of it and places the flesh of the ugari almost underneath it, […]