{"id":"MUS2026-225","label":"Momba Station bullroarer with its string","people_or_site":"Momba Station, northern River Darling (people not named on the record; Paakantyi country)","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Momba Station, Darling and Paroo river system, north-western New South Wales","macroregion":"Australia","local_name":"","source_term":"bullroarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"A plain wooden blade with string attached.","function_summary":"Not recorded.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"maa_1922_281_momba_station_bullroarer","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/492390/","page_or_plate":"MAA 1922.281 (object 492390)","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Representative point at Momba Station on the northern River Darling, the locality the museum records and the base of Bonney's 1884 account of the Darling peoples. Neither a collecting spot nor a place of manufacture is recorded.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A plain wooden blade, undecorated, with its string still knotted on, survives from Momba Station on the northern Darling, gathered sometime between 1865 and 1881 and reaching Cambridge in 1922. Here the moola-uncka hummed near a secluded initiate while women listened from a distance and kept clear of the sound. The country this blade came out of is the Kurlawirra's. Frederic Bonney's own papers record the ancestor — a snake who became a man — filling a kangaroo-skin waterbag with the water of Peri Lake and the ngatyi together and letting them out again at the head of the Darling, and in George Dutton's telling of the same journey the water is mustered into that bag with a little bullroarer swung at the waterholes.","pull_quote":"Plain, wooden bullroarer, with string attached.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, catalogue description for accession 1922.281","term_gloss":"moola-uncka: Frederic Bonney's 1884 name for the Bungyarlee and Parkungi bullroarer of the River Darling, \"a flat and oval-shaped piece of hard wood tied to the end of a long piece of twine\".","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["snake","initiation"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"sources":[{"citation":"Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 1922.281 (Momba Station, Darling River; collected by Frederic Bonney); Frederic Bonney, 'On Some Customs of the Aborigines of the River Darling, New South Wales', Journal of the Anthropological Institute 13 (1884), p. 127","url":"https://collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/492390/","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20261013134242/https://collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/492390/"}],"source_citations":"Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 1922.281 (Momba Station, Darling River; collected by Frederic Bonney); Frederic Bonney, 'On Some Customs of the Aborigines of the River Darling, New South Wales', Journal of the Anthropological Institute 13 (1884), p. 127","source_display":"Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 1922.281 (Momba Station, Darling River; collected by Frederic Bonney); Frederic Bonney, 'On Some Customs of the Aborigines of the River Darling, New South Wales', Journal of the Anthropological Institute 13 (1884), p. 127","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A plain wooden blade with string attached.","function_display":"Not recorded.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"momba station","display_name":"Momba Station bullroarer with its string","image":{"full":"assets/objects/AUSIN-025_giglioli1886_mooryumkarr.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/AUSIN-025_giglioli1886_mooryumkarr_thumb.jpg","credit":"Enrico H. Giglioli, Western Australian objects at the Colonial Exhibition, London (1886)","license":"Public domain","source_page":"https://aboriginalarchivesitaly.com/digital-heritage/photo-aboriginal-cultural-objects-possibly-western-australia","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Giglioli’s 1886 plate; no. 3 is a Western Australian mooryumkarr bullroarer.","pool_id":"auto-AUSIN-025_giglioli1886_mooryumkarr","auto_assigned":true},"slug":"mus2026-225-momba-station-northern-river-darling-people-not-named-on-the-record-paakantyi"}