{"id":"CAPELL1956-004","label":"Gurrgoni wubar","people_or_site":"Gurrgoni (Capell's Gorogone; Gungorogone)","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Cadell River, south-east of the Tomkinson River headwaters, north-central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory","macroregion":"Australia / Arnhem Land","local_name":"wubar","source_term":"BULLROARER: wubar","source_language":"Gurrgoni","object_description":"A bullroarer, called wubar; its form is not recorded.","function_summary":"Named for the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of west Arnhem Land.","attestation_type":"lexical_attestation","source_key":"capell1956_vocabulary_600_words","source_type":"linguistic_manuscript","source_url":"https://indigenous.sl.nsw.gov.au/node/9216","page_or_plate":"Capell 1956 p. 18 (BULLROARER column, line 36); language key, line 36 = Gorogone.","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"approximate Gurrgoni language-country centroid after the South Australian Museum Gungorogone entry (Cadell River, south-east of the Tomkinson River headwaters); a language-level anchor, not a collection point","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Gurrgoni speakers on the Cadell River answered a request for the bullroarer's name with wubar, the eastern form of the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of west Arnhem Land. Their Ndjébbana neighbours on the coast gave the same word. Gurrgoni is a small inland language, its country south-east of the Tomkinson River headwaters, between Burarra to the north and the Kunwinjku stone country to the west.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"wubar: the name of the Ubar ceremony, given in answer to 'bullroarer' (Capell 1956, p. 18; Capell & Hinch 1970, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony')","cls":"sacred","class_label":"Sacred / spirit","color":"#8A5A2B","is_candidate":false,"flags":["snake"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"sources":[{"citation":"Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18","url":"https://indigenous.sl.nsw.gov.au/node/9216"},{"citation":"Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony'","url":"https://archive.org/details/maunggrammartext0000acap"},{"citation":"Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale (eds), Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition (ANU Press, 2011), pp. 403–407","url":"https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p116081/pdf/ch201.pdf"},{"citation":"Ronald M. Berndt, Kunapipi (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1951)","url":""}],"source_citations":"Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18; Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony'; Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale (eds), Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition (ANU Press, 2011), pp. 403–407; Ronald M. Berndt, Kunapipi (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1951)","source_display":"Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18; Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony'; Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale…","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A bullroarer, called wubar; its form is not recorded.","function_display":"","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"lexical attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"gurrgoni capell","display_name":"Gurrgoni wubar","image":{"full":"assets/objects/pd_plates/MAT1898-009.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/pd_plates/MAT1898-009_thumb.jpg","alt":"Mathews’s outline of a Shoalhaven mooroonga, a long flat blade with a round hole near one end and a deeply forked notch at the other.","credit":"R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales, 1907, Plate 9 fig. 11","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":true,"caption":"Mathews’s Plate 9, fig. 11: Shoalhaven mooroonga bullroarer","pool_id":"auto-pd_plates--MAT1898-009","auto_assigned":true,"last_modified":"2026-10-19"},"slug":"capell1956-004-gurrgoni-capell-s-gorogone-gungorogone"}