AUSIN-036 - museum specimen
Milparinka district (people not recorded)
Australia - Corner Country, far north-western New South Wales - Western NSW
Function not recorded
Toon Doon English
Source term: TOON DOON, TUNDUN Bullroarer
Toon Doon: the name recorded with the object at Milparinka; the paired 'Tundun' is the Kurnai (Gippsland) term and its local validity is uncertain.
A stout wooden bullroarer, forty-six centimetres long, its cord spun from human hair — collected around Milparinka, the gold-rush township in the Corner Country of far north-western New South Wales, and given to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1900. The register wrote down two names for it: Toon Doon, and Tundun. The second should raise an eyebrow. Tundun is the celebrated bullroarer name of the Kurnai of Gippsland, a thousand kilometres to the south-east — likelier a label that travelled with collectors than a second word heard on the spot — while Toon Doon is probably what was actually said in the Corner Country. Of who swung it, and for what, the record says nothing.
TOON DOON, TUNDUN Bullroarer
Pitt Rivers Museum record, 1900.55.275
- Object
- PRM 1900.55.275 (irn 39663): wooden bullroarer, 465 x 82 mm, with a cord of human hair; made before 1900, donated 1900.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- high - Milparinka township, Corner Country; the record's 'near Wilcannia' is a cataloguing imprecision — Wilcannia lies ~200 km south-east
- Source location
- PRM object record 1900.55.275 (irn 39663)