The practices of circumcision and subincision were, in my opinion, introduced into Australia from the north-west in comparatively recent times. They spread over Central Australia, but did not reach the south-west of West Australia nor Victoria, and they affected New South Wales only on the north-west corner and Queensland on the western boundary. These rites were unknown among the Kabi and Wakka and surrounding tribes. The other ceremonies attending initiation to manhood were, with local variations, common to the whole of Australia. If they had not been so long disused in the settled districts, the details there would probably not differ very much from those so minutely described by Spencer and Gillen as characterising initiation in Central Australia.

Two words were employed by the Kabi to designate the man-making ceremonies, viz., Dhur (a circle) and Kīvar-yĕngga (man-making). I am not aware of initiation on a grand scale having taken place after 1865, the date of my first acquaintance with the natives. In former years, special places for conducting the ceremonies were selected, on which various tribes would converge, in order that they might all participate by contributing candidates and assisting in the performances. Places specially named to me were Boobangery on the Yabber run, Waraba near Caboolture, and Biuoraba near Ipswich. I shall endeavour to fuse together several accounts, in which the sequence of events is uncertain.