Upon withdrawing the stick, water is poured through the holes thus made upon the hissing stones below, the top grass is hastily closed over the apertures and the whole pile as rapidly covered up as possible to keep in the steam.

The gathering vegetable food, and in fact the cooking and preparing of food generally, devolves upon the women, except in the case of an emu or a kangaroo, or some of the larger and more valuable animals, when the men take this duty upon themselves.
In cooking vegetables, a single oven will suffice for three or four families, each woman receiving the same bundles of food when cooked, which she had put in.

The smaller kinds of fish and shell-fish, birds and animals, frogs, turtle, eggs, reptiles, gums, etc., are usually broiled upon the embers.

Roots, bark of trees, etc., are cooked in the hot ashes.
Fungi are either eaten raw or are roasted.

The white ant is always eaten raw.