The Bullroarer Atlas

CJFN15-001 - museum specimen

Barda / Bardadjawa (Bardi / Baada)

Australia - Cape Leveque - Dampier Peninsula, Kimberley

Restricted

An Aboriginal Australian bullroarer of the general elongated-oval type, finely grained and pierced with a single suspension hole at one end;...
Representative image. An Aboriginal Australian bullroarer of the general elongated-oval type, finely grained and pierced with a single suspension hole at one end; shown for form, not the Barda (Bardadjawa) specimens catalogued at Cape Leveque. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. TM-2562-5) Image source

galaguru English

Source term: Classification List of Bullroarers

galaguru: the sacred bullroarers that the creator-hero Djamar cut from a silver-blood tree and set in a line in the stone beds of a creek at the founding of the initiation cult (Bardi/Bād, Dampier Land, west Kimberley); E. A. Worms, Anthropos 45 (1950), p. 648.

Etymology. Among the Bardi (Bād) of Dampier Land the bullroarers are called galaguru: sacred boards that the creator-hero Djamar cut from a silver-blood tree and set in a line in the stone beds of a creek at the founding of the initiation cult. (medium confidence)

The creator-hero Djamar rose from the sea off the Dampier Peninsula and struck south whirling a bullroarer. In the bush he felled a "silver-blood" tree, split boards from it, and drove them into a creek's stone bed in a long line — the first galaguru. On the Burumar sandhill he swung one so hard the hair-string snapped and the roarer shot into the Coalsack Nebula, the black realm of the dead. Among the Bardi the same word names the plug that stops the blood when a novice's arm-vein is opened at the fifth grade of initiation.

Classification List of Bullroarers, p.4157, Texts 153-159, Barda and Bardadjawa, with abstracts ... List of Specimens with Native Names, pp.4379-85

Laves Papers (MS2189) catalogue, Item 2.16 (D. Nash, comp.)
Object
Public Laves catalogue metadata names a 'Classification List of Bullroarers' for Barda and Bardadjawa texts and a list of specimens with native names.
Function
The public catalogue directly identifies bullroarer material for Barda/Bardadjawa; Cormier/Jones fn15 supplies the broader male-initiation context for the Bad/Ba:d item.
Map confidence
medium - SA Museum public Baada coordinate, 122deg55E x 16deg30S, used as a Cape Leveque regional anchor rather than a ritual or manuscript collection site.
Source location
ANU Laves catalogue Item 2.16

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