Burdekin River hair-strung bullroarer

Source term: bull-roarer

A wooden bullroarer from the Burdekin River near Townsville, in North Queensland: carved on both faces, coloured with red pigment, and pierced at one end where a length of twisted hair string was threaded through to swing it. It reached the British Museum through Collingwood Ingram, who collected it in 1902, when he was barely past twenty. Ingram, who went on to a long career as an ornithologist, knew the lower Burdekin: he later published on the birds of Inkerman Station, on the river's delta, while his father, Sir William Ingram, employed the naturalist Wilfred Stalker to collect bird skins across the same country.

Particulars

Object

Wood bullroarer with fibre and pigment in British Museum collection

Function

Not recorded.