{"id":"AUSMAIN-004","label":"Biripi (Birpai)","people_or_site":"Biripi (Birpai)","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Manning River / Hastings River (Taree, Port Macquarie)","macroregion":"Australia / New South Wales","local_name":"gonnandhakeen","source_term":"gonnandhakeen","source_language":"","object_description":"Ironbark slat whirled on a cord; the example R. H. Mathews illustrated in 1907 was 15½ inches long, 3 7/16 inches broad, and 7/16 inch at its thickest, pierced at the narrow end for the string.","function_summary":"Initiation voice; central instrument of Keeparra/Dhalgai initiation cycle.","attestation_type":"secondary_catalog","source_key":"mining2026","source_type":"secondary_literature","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Aborigines_of_New_South_Wales","page_or_plate":"figure captions for gonnandhakeen","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the tribes scattered between the Hunter and Macleay Rivers, the bull-roarer was the gonnandhakeen, a slat of ironbark whirled on a cord at the Keeparra and Dhalgai initiation ceremonies. On the Manning and Hastings, the country of the Biripi (Birpai), the related Murrawin rite turned on bull-roarers of its own — gheewarra or guarra, by dialect. The novices were taken into the bush to a cleared ground; on later nights, once elders had set up a second site some hundreds of yards off, men whirled the instruments, chanted, and beat coolamons with a nulla-nulla. Each boy was cautioned by a man from a tribe other than his own that if he ever betrayed what he had seen, he would be killed.","pull_quote":"The novices are told that the noise they hear is the voice of Goign, who would come and eat them if he got the chance.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"R. H. Mathews, \"The Keeparra Ceremony of Initiation,\" Journal of the Anthropological Institute 26 (1897), p. 331","term_gloss":"gonnandhakeen: the bull-roarer; the name means \"excrement-eater\".","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","initiation","women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), fig. 9; R. H. Mathews, \"The Keeparra Ceremony of Initiation,\" Journal of the Anthropological Institute 26 (1897): 320-340","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Aborigines_of_New_South_Wales","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20241217225048/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Aborigines_of_New_South_Wales"}],"source_citations":"R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), fig. 9; R. H. Mathews, \"The Keeparra Ceremony of Initiation,\" Journal of the Anthropological Institute 26 (1897): 320-340","source_display":"R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), fig. 9; R. H. Mathews, \"The Keeparra Ceremony of Initiation,\" Journal of the Anthropological Institute 26 (1897): 320-340","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Ironbark slat whirled on a cord; the example R. H. Mathews illustrated in 1907 was 15½ inches long, 3 7/16 inches broad, and 7/16 inch at its thickest, pierced at the narrow end for the string.","function_display":"Initiation voice; central instrument of Keeparra/Dhalgai initiation cycle.","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"biripi","display_name":"Biripi (Birpai)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/pd_plates/MAT1898-008.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/pd_plates/MAT1898-008_thumb.jpg","alt":"Mathews’s fig. 9, the Hunter–Macleay gonnandhakeen: an outline drawing of a broad tapered blade with a small hole near its rounded narrow end.","credit":"R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), pl. 9 (fig. 9)","license":"Public domain (published 1907)","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Notes_on_the_Aborigines_of_New_South_Wales_-_Plate_9_Bull-roarers_used_by_the_Australian_Aborigines.jpg","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Mathews' fig. 9 — the Hunter-Macleay gonnandhakeen type."},"slug":"ausmain-004-biripi-birpai"}