Anthony Trollope defined a corroboree as “a tribal dance in which the men congregate out in the bush, in the front of a fire, and go through various antics with smeared faces and bodies, with spears and sticks, howling, and moving their bodies about in time;—while the gins, and children, and old people sit round in a circle.”
Roderick J. Flanagan described it as the “great festival among the New Hollanders,” encompassing “all the festivity and fun of which the aboriginal is cognizant, or in which he indulges. It is at once his Bacchanal, Cyprian and Olympian games. Here, songs and orations were recited, musical performances accomplished, dances performed, and amours and courtship indulged.”
The Rev. George Taplin, in “The Narrinyeri,” further specified that while used as a charm to frighten away disease and in some ceremonies, “its real character is only that of a song and a dance.”