{"id":"PLEVEY2022-001","label":"Telling the spirits we are here","people_or_site":"Myall Creek Memorial, Wirrayaraay / Gamilaraay country","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Myall Creek Station memorial","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"","source_term":"bullroarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"A bullroarer sounded at the Myall Creek Memorial on Wirrayaraay and Gamilaraay country.","function_summary":"Sounded at the memorial to tell the spirits that visitors have come to pay their respects.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"plevey_2022_myall_creek","source_type":"reported_living_practice","source_url":"https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/16/a-light-in-the-darkness-the-history-and-hope-of-myall-creek","page_or_plate":"article body and photo sequence","map_confidence":"medium_high","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Approximate memorial-site anchor; verify against the official memorial map before integration.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In June 1838, a party of stockmen rounded up and killed at least twenty-eight Wirrayaraay people — mostly women, children and old men — at Myall Creek Station in northern New South Wales; seven of the killers were hanged for it, an almost unheard-of outcome on the colonial frontier. Descendants of both the murdered and the murderers now walk to the memorial boulder there together each year. At the memorial a man twirls a bullroarer, and its low thrum spins out over the paddocks to tell the spirits that people have come to pay their respects.","pull_quote":"You've come here in reconciliation, you've come here to pay respect; and that's all we've ever wanted.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Wirrayaraay man Kelvin Brown, quoted by Tom Plevey, Guardian Australia, 16 July 2022","term_gloss":"No local instrument name recorded.","cls":"sacred","class_label":"Sacred / spirit","color":"#8A5A2B","is_candidate":false,"flags":["death_rebirth"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Tom Plevey, A light in the darkness: the history and hope of Myall Creek, Guardian Australia, 16 July 2022","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/16/a-light-in-the-darkness-the-history-and-hope-of-myall-creek","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20261013034952/https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/16/a-light-in-the-darkness-the-history-and-hope-of-myall-creek"}],"source_citations":"Tom Plevey, A light in the darkness: the history and hope of Myall Creek, Guardian Australia, 16 July 2022","source_display":"Tom Plevey, A light in the darkness: the history and hope of Myall Creek, Guardian Australia, 16 July 2022","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A bullroarer sounded at the Myall Creek Memorial on Wirrayaraay and Gamilaraay country.","function_display":"Sounded at the memorial to tell the spirits that visitors have come to pay their respects.","confidence_display":"medium to high","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"myall creek","display_name":"Telling the spirits we are here","image":{"full":"assets/objects/shared_mathews1898_plateVI_full.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/shared_mathews1898_plateVI_full_thumb.jpg","alt":"Mathews' 1898 survey plate of Australian bull-roarers.","credit":"R. H. Mathews, 'Bullroarers used by the Australian Aborigines', Journal of the Anthropological Institute 27 (1898), Plate VI","license":"Public domain (Mathews 1898)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/sim_royal-anthropological-institute-of-great-britain-ireland_february-23-1897-january-25-1898_27","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Mathews’s Australian survey plate; Kamilaroi blade at fig. 5.","pool_id":"australian-mathews-survey","last_modified":"2026-09-06"},"slug":"plevey2022-001-myall-creek-memorial-wirrayaraay-gamilaraay-country"}