Calga Daramulan thundering-voice bullroarer

Source term: bullroarer

At Calga on the Peats Ridge songline, boys were called to initiation by the bullroarer, its sound the thundering voice of Daramulan. Darkinjung and Guringai knowledge holders hold this sandstone amphitheatre to be the very place where Daramulan came into being: the one-legged son of Baiame, the all-father who came down from the sky, and Bootha, the emu-mother. R. H. Mathews recorded that Daramulan had a voice like the rumbling of distant thunder, and that it fell to him to separate the youths from their mothers and teach them the Law. A one-legged figure pecked into the rock holds a large ovoid shape that may be the instrument itself. Here boys were parted from their mothers and came back as men.

Boys are called to initiation by the sound of the bullroarer, which represents Daramulan's thundering voice.

Heritage NSW 5064142 (Hodgetts 2018)

Particulars

Object

No surviving object is documented. A one-legged Daramulan engraving holds a large ovoid form that the listing says may be a bullroarer; the identification is not certain.

Function

Called boys to initiation as Daramulan's thundering voice within the Calga ceremonial landscape.