 As a bed and blanket in one, there is, I suppose, nothing on earth that surpasses it, whilst as a protection against a day's rain it is as efficacious as a roof of a house.They are also reasonably common in accounts of the gold rush period of the mid-19th century, but gradually became rarities, and restricted to observations of Aboriginal people encountered on the margins of white settlement.As Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their land, the making and wearing of cloaks became rarer.