White Cliffs roarers for fish and honey

Source term: bull-roarers

At White Cliffs on K'gari, the island the colonists called Fraser, a tribe held a ceremony to bring plenty of fish and honey, and the women swung the bull-roarers beside the men. Across the strait, at the mainland Dora, women ran from the camp at the first roar, told that listening would deafen them and looking back would blind them. On the island, for the food of the sea and the bush, they whirled it themselves.

A tribe at White Cliffs, Frazer's Island, on the coast of Queensland, held a ceremony for the purpose of ensuring plentiful supplies of fish and honey, in which both men and women took part, swinging bull-roarers.

A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), p. 400

Particulars

Object

Bull-roarers; form not recorded.

Function

Swung by both men and women in a ceremony held to ensure plentiful supplies of fish and honey.