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Boris
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A swagman, Phil Moubray, relates that he found in the basin of the River Mitchell the Aborigines roasting and eating their own children:
When a child looks well, is “well-fed,” or “fat,” it may happen that one of the men, or even the whole community, murders it for cannibalistic purposes in the absence of its mother … We do not think that such cannibalism was common, though there are many references to it … It was only in periods of drought and famine that child-eating assumed large proportions … In hard summers the new-born children seem to be all eaten in the Kaura tribe. [Explorer Alfred William] Howitt inferred this from the remarkable gaps that appeared in the ages of the children … [I]n the Birria tribe during the years 1876-77, in the drought, not only were all the infants devoured, but even the younger grown children. However, in some tribes this practice appeared, even in a normal period, not to be so very rare. At least, if the gossip that circulated among the tribes were to be believed, cannibalism was even more extensive than we suppose. For instance, one tribe relates of another that it marks at birth those infants which are to be eaten later on; again the children of some women were always killed and eaten as soon as they got fat enough. According to [doctor and squatter Richard] Machattie, a tribe numbering 250 when the Europeans came, during the next six years ate seven children, i.e., about 3% of the whole population.
William D. Rubinstein taught at Deakin University and at the University of Wales
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