The Bullroarer Atlas

CHRISTY1926-001 - museum specimen

Painted North Queensland fire-plough board

Australia - North Queensland

Function not recorded

Science Museum Group 1937-682/123: the exact painted board and its separate fire stick.
Science Museum Group 1937-682/123: the exact painted board and its separate fire stick. ยท CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: possibly a bull-roarer

A painted oval board from North Queensland, about 43 centimetres long and almost flat, carries black rectangles on one face and a deep friction groove on the other. Two round holes are visible near one rounded end in the exact photograph. Miller Christy catalogued the board as the hearth of a fire-plough, but in the same entry called it possibly a bull-roarer and noted that this fire-plough form was otherwise unknown in Australia. No recorded field use settles the question: the groove supports the hearth reading, while the blade form and holes keep the bullroarer reading open.

hearth oval in shape, almost flat, and about half-an-inch thick; possibly a bull-roarer; a rude pattern, in rectangles, painted in black, on the back; has one furrow only on its surface; from North Queensland. (This is a very exceptional form of the fire-plough, which, apart from the evidence afforded by this specimen, is not known to have been used in Australia.)

Christy 1926, cat. 123
Object
Long oval wooden board, almost flat and about half an inch thick, 17 inches or roughly 43 cm long, painted with black rectangles on one face and cut by a deep longitudinal friction groove on the other. The exact photograph shows two round holes near one rounded end and the separate 18-inch fire stick catalogued with it. Science Museum Group 1937-682/123.
Function
Catalogued as the hearth of a fire-plough and described in the same entry as possibly a bull-roarer; Christy notes that the fire-plough is otherwise unknown in Australia.
Map confidence
low - Deliberately generalised regional anchor in inland North Queensland, the only provenance the catalogue supplies; not a locality, community or collection point, and consistent with the atlas's generalised handling of Australian points for cultural-site sensitivity. The record's structured 'Made: Bow' field refers to Bryant and May's works at Bow in London and is expressly NOT used.
Source location
Page references

Christy 1926, cat. no. 123; SMG 1937-682/123, UID co8075907, barcode SMG00226539, image i454964

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