The following day, Wills was so weak, he could scarcely crawl out of the mia-mia on the south bank of the Cooper.
These were removed from the roofs of living shelters erected for protection from wet season rains done either on sheets of gum-tree bark that form the walls of their mia-mias, or on the roofs and walls of their rock-shelters, and represent animals and mythological gnomes and spirits, of whom they stand in dread.
They had grown so careless that they did not think of pitching their mia-mias where no one could see them from a distance.
At their campsites, Aborigines constructed simple huts, called mia-mias, using stone hatchets to remove sheets of bark from trees.
The author challenges some previously strongly held opinions about the Aborigines: that their only shelters were frail mia-mias, that they had no attachment to a particular area of land, and that they were simple hunters and gatherers.
Origin
From Wathawurung (an extinct Aboriginal language) or Nyungar.