Etarratarra twin-boys bullroarers

Etarratarra / Itaratharra

Source term: bull roarers / unique motifs representing two boys

Western Arrarnta name for the carved Palm Valley outcrops, meaning “two boys.”

At Palm Valley, among the red sandstone of Finke Gorge, two carved markings sit on rock ledges beside a spring -- one large, one small. In 1936 the painter Rex Battarbee noted them in his diary as "two unusual stones... that had markings carved upon them," and his companion Albert Namatjira, on whose Western Arrarnta country they stood, explained them on the spot: Etarratarra means two boys, one big and one small, who once lived between here and Koporilya Springs, and "they are really Bull Roarers, one large and one small, and the spring is carved out of the rock too." Decades later, the archaeologist June Ross photographed the same place for her PhD thesis and captioned it "unique motifs representing two boys, Itaratharra."

the small stone and the small carving on the rock is the large boy and the big one is the small boy. The small boy kept on growing.

Albert Namatjira's account, as recorded by Rex Battarbee in 1936, in Martin Edmond, Double Lives: Rex Battarbee & Albert Namatjira (DCA thesis, University of Western Sydney, 2013), p. 162

Particulars

Object

Two carved rock markings at Palm Valley, one large and one small, on reddish outcrops beside a spring: elongated, weathered, basin-like motifs on a sandstone ledge.

Function

Identified by Albert Namatjira in 1936 as bullroarers, one large and one small, embedded in the story of two boys ("Etarratarra") tied to a nearby spring.