Bon'da'ban, the ceremonial noisemaker

bon'da'ban

Source term: bullroarer

bon’da’ban: the Gubbi-Gubbi word for bullroarer.

When the old men decided that enough boys were ready to be made men, messengers set out for the neighbouring camps carrying the sacred bullroarer. This was the Toara, the man-making that R. H. Mathews recorded in 1900 among the Kabi and their neighbours on the coast from Port Curtis to the New South Wales border. Each novice lost an upper front tooth; then, after warriors in paint burst from the long grass in a staged ambush, the bullroarer was shown to the new men and rubbed on their bodies, together with a smaller instrument called bundandaba. In Gubbi-Gubbi the bullroarer is bon'da'ban. The word was written down in a 1943 vocabulary, it came back into Gubbi-Gubbi hands in 1994, when Jeanie Bell compiled her dictionary so that, as she put it, the descendants could rediscover the ways of the old people.

Particulars

Object

A bullroarer; material, size and form not recorded.

Function

The ceremonial bullroarer of the Toara initiation: carried by the messengers who summoned neighbouring groups, then shown to the novices after their tooth was knocked out and rubbed on their bodies, together with a smaller instrument called bundandaba.