A wirreenun has the power to conjure up a vision of his particular
yunbeai, which he can make visible to those whom he chooses shall see
it.

The blacks always told me that a very old man on the Narran, dead some
years ago, would show me his yunbeai if I wished; it was Oolah, the
prickly lizard.

One day I went to the camp, saw the old man in his usual airy costume,
only assumed as I came in sight, a tailless shirt. One of the gins said
something to him; he growled an answer; she seemed persuading him to do
something. Presently he moved away to a quite clear spot on the other
side of the fire; he muttered something in a sing-song voice, and
suddenly I saw him beating his head as if in accompaniment to his song,
and then--where it came from I can't say--there beside him was a
lizard. That fragment of a shirt was too transparent to have hidden
that lizard; he could not have had it up his sleeve, because his
sleeves were in shreds. It may have been a pet lizard that he charmed
in from the bush by his song, but I did not see it arrive.

They told me this old man had two yunbeai, the other was a snake. He
often had them in evidence at his camp, and when he died they were seen
beside him; there they remained until he was put into his coffin, then
they disappeared and were never seen again. This man was the greatest
of our local wizards, and I think really the last of the very clever
ones. They say he was an old grey-headed man when Sir Thomas Mitchell
first explored the Narran district in 1845. We always considered him a
centenarian.