HAMMOND1933-001 - historical text
South-West Australian woondah
South-West Western Australia (Noongar country)
Play / practical
woondah
The woondah takes its place among the spears and throwing-sticks in Jesse Hammond's record of the Aboriginal people of Western Australia's south-west: a slat about fourteen inches long and an inch and a half wide, swung on a string for its buzzing roar. Hammond wrote from a long working life in the district, and had the implements he described drawn for the book — the woondah among them, labelled in his caption, in plain settler English, a bull-roarer.
- Object
- A wooden slat about 14 x 1.5 inches with one terminal cord, drawn among the implements plate of Hammond's Winjan's People (1933).
- Function
- Swung on a string for its buzzing roar — Hammond's plate caption and checked text give the woondah no ceremonial role, and the south-west pattern Daisy Bates recorded is of traded examples and children's play.
- Map confidence
- high - Broad south-west regional anchor; Hammond attests the region, not one community.
- Source location
Page references
implements plate (drawn from Hammond's descriptions)
- Toy / secular survival