The Bullroarer Atlas

No. CAPELL1956-013

Gunavidji wubar

Australia · Liverpool River mouth around Maningrida, north-central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory

Sacred / spirit

Historical plate of seven wooden churinga: the plain Urabunna chimbaliri, no. 1 at the centre, among decorated churinga of the Luritcha and Arunta.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. The plain Urabunna chimbaliri Public domain · Image source

wubar

Source term: BULLROARER: wubar

wubar: the name of the Ubar ceremony, given in answer to 'bullroarer' (Capell 1956, p. 18; Capell & Hinch 1970, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony')

Ndjébbana speakers at the Liverpool River mouth gave wubar for the bullroarer, the Ubar ceremony's name in the form the Kunwinjku also use. Their country runs from Maningrida up the Liverpool River to the limit of the tide, and east to where the Tomkinson River runs into the mangroves. Inland the Gurrgoni said the same; west along the coast the rite was uwar.

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer, called wubar; its form is not recorded.
Function
Named for the Ubar, the sacred ceremony of west Arnhem Land.

Sources

  1. Arthur Capell, A Vocabulary of 600 Words in Forty North Australian Languages (typescript, Sydney, 1956), State Library of New South Wales A 6929, p. 18 View
  2. Arthur Capell and Heather E. Hinch, Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), vocabulary, wuwar 'Ubar ceremony' View
  3. Murray Garde, 'The Forbidden Gaze', in Martin Thomas and Margo Neale (eds), Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition (ANU Press, 2011), pp. 403–407 View
  4. Ronald M. Berndt, Kunapipi (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1951)
  • Amurdak uwarAustralia · Eastern shores of Van Diemen Gulf, Murgenella and Cooper creeks, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Gurrgoni wubarAustralia · Cadell River, south-east of the Tomkinson River headwaters, north-central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Kunbarlang uwarAustralia · Coast between Hawkesbury Point and Junction Bay, inland toward Table Hill, western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Marrku uwarAustralia · Croker Island and the facing shore of the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles Bay, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Mawng uwarAustralia · Goulburn Islands and the mainland coast opposite, east to the King River, Braithwaite Point and Junction Bay, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit
  • Mengerrdji uwarmAustralia · Alligator Rivers country around Gunbalanya (Oenpelli), western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory · Sacred / spirit

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.