The Bullroarer Atlas

LOEB1929-002 - ethnographic attestation

Bunurang / Bunurong

Australia - Victoria - Southeast

Play / practical

A long red-brown bull-roarer blade incised from end to end with overlapping concentric-circle motifs, a single small perforation drilled near...
Representative image. A long red-brown bull-roarer blade incised from end to end with overlapping concentric-circle motifs, a single small perforation drilled near one rounded tip; no surviving Bunurong (Bunurang) specimen from Victoria has been located, so this general Aboriginal Australian example stands in. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-2399-60) Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Across most of Aboriginal Australia the bullroarer was held sacred and kept hidden from women and the uninitiated, its roar taken for the voice of thunder or of a high god who presided over the men's initiation rites. Among the Bunurong of Victoria's coast it was none of these things. Edwin Loeb, drawing on Howitt, records that here the instrument was well known and served as a child's plaything, in a country where boys underwent no initiation beyond being released from their food restrictions.

Among the Bunurang tribe of Victoria, however, the bullroarer is well known and is used for a child's plaything. In this region there is no initiation other than the freeing of the boy from food taboos.

Loeb 1929, Tribal Initiations and Secret Societies, UCPAAE 25(3):250 (citing Howitt 1904:613)
Function
Loeb reports the bullroarer is well known and used as a child's plaything among the Bunurang.
Map confidence
medium - representative coordinate for named people, place, or region in Loeb
Source location
p. 250

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