Shoalhaven southeast coast mooroonga

mooroonga / jummagong

Source term: bull-roarer

Mooroonga: the bull-roarer of the Shoalhaven River and south-east coast tribes of New South Wales, sounded at their Bunan initiation.

The mooroonga of the tribes along the Shoalhaven River and the south-east coast of New South Wales was the smaller of two bull-roarers: it mustered the tribes and was worked near the women's camp, carried by the ceremonial messenger in his bag beside a quartz crystal, while the great jummagong was reserved for the men away in the bush with the boys — sounded impressively at the novice's side as his tooth was chiselled out. On the Bunan ground the old men heaped up loose earth into a figure of Dharamoolun eight feet long, laid a quartz crystal on its head, and danced around it with arms outstretched, crying "Dharamoolun! Dharamoolun!", the novices waving their arms in imitation. At the end both instruments were swung before the boys, who were told that this was what they had been hearing since the large ring, warned on pain of death not to reveal it, and invited to swing the roarers themselves.

The drawing shows a mooroonga, made of stringybark wood, 13 inches long, 2 7/16 inches wide, and 5/16 of an inch thick. In the smaller end is a hole for the string, and at the wide end there is a large triangular-shaped notch cut out of the wood, a peculiarity I have also observed in the bull-roarers (mundjeegong) used by the Wiradthuri tribes located on the upper Murrumbidgee River.

R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), Fig. 11

Particulars

Function

Mooroonga bullroarer used at Bunan initiation ceremonies of the Shoalhaven and southeast coast tribes.