The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSMAIN-004 - secondary catalog

Biripi (Birpai)

Australia - Manning River - Hastings River (Taree, Port Macquarie) - Mid-North NSW Coast

Restricted

Mathews' 1907 plate of New South Wales bull-roarers; fig. 9, the large pointed blade at upper right, is the gonnandhakeen of the Hunter–Macleay...
Mathews' 1907 plate of New South Wales bull-roarers; fig. 9, the large pointed blade at upper right, is the gonnandhakeen of the Hunter–Macleay rivers tribes — an ironbark slat 15½ inches long that R. H. Mathews measured and illustrated, pierced at the narrow end for its cord. R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), pl. 9 (fig. 9) Public domain Image source

gonnandhakeen

gonnandhakeen — the bull-roarer of the tribes between the Hunter and Macleay Rivers, an ironbark slat whirled at the Keeparra and Dhalgai initiations.

Among the tribes scattered between the Hunter and Macleay Rivers, the bull-roarer was the gonnandhakeen, a slat of ironbark whirled on a cord at the Keeparra and Dhalgai initiation ceremonies. On the Manning and Hastings, the country of the Biripi (Birpai), the related Murrawin rite turned on bull-roarers of its own — gheewarra or guarra, by dialect. The novices were taken into the bush to a cleared ground; on later nights, once elders had set up a second site some hundreds of yards off, men whirled the instruments, chanted, and beat coolamons with a nulla-nulla. Each boy was cautioned by a man from a tribe other than his own that if he ever betrayed what he had seen, he would be killed.

This drawing represents the gonnandhakeen of the tribes scattered over the country between the Hunter and Macleay Rivers in New South Wales.

Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), on the gonnandhakeen
Object
Ironbark slat whirled on a cord; the example R. H. Mathews illustrated in 1907 was 15½ inches long, 3 7/16 inches broad, and 7/16 inch at its thickest, pierced at the narrow end for the string.
Function
Initiation voice; central instrument of Keeparra/Dhalgai initiation cycle.
Map confidence
high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
Source location
figure captions for gonnandhakeen

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