AWABAKAL2025-001 - lexical attestation
Bubu, the cry in the woods
Australia - Lake Macquarie - Newcastle - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
bubu
Source term: Bullroarer
bubu: Awabakal noun, bullroarer.
Awabakal country wraps Lake Macquarie and the coast around Newcastle. When boys reached about fourteen, the elders prepared to bring them into the duties and privileges of manhood — and suddenly, at night, a dismal cry would be heard out in the woods, which the boys were told was the bubu calling for them. The community's own Awabakal language edition lists bubu as the word for bullroarer and files it among spiritual vocabulary, while holding the line on what can actually be known: Horatio Hale, who set the scene down, never elaborated what 'bubu' referred to — the instrument, the cry it made, or the caller the boys were meant to imagine behind it.
Suddenly at night, a dismal cry is heard in the woods, which the boys are told is the bubu calling for them.
Traditional Ownership of the Awabakal Language, Community Edition 2025, printed p. 95
- Object
- A bullroarer known by the Awabakal name bubu; no physical description survives.
- Function
- A night cry told to puberty-age boys as the bubu calling them to initiation; the edition cautions that the word's exact reference was never explained.
- Source
- Traditional Ownership of the Awabakal Language, Community Edition, 2025; dictionary entry with Hale quotation
- Source location
- PDF p. 24 / printed p. 95
- Source confidence
- medium Lake Macquarie regional anchor for Awabakal country; no event site stated.
- Initiation rite