MUS2026-151 - museum specimen
Ooldea native camp
Ooldea Soak, South Australia - Western Desert
Restricted
Source term: bullroarer
kalligooroo: Daisy Bates's rendering of the sacred bull-roarer's name in use at Ooldea, never spoken before women or the uninitiated; the British Museum record's own term is simply 'bullroarer'.
For sixteen years Daisy Bates — Kabbarli, 'grandmother' — camped in a tent at Ooldea, the desert soak on the transcontinental line where initiation parties announced themselves by heavy smokes on the horizon. She knew the bullroarer's law intimately: the word kalligooroo was never spoken where women or the uninitiated could hear, for the sound was the voice of Nalja — an old, old man with white hair, whose voice comes from the hair beneath his arm-pits, and whom to look upon would be death. If the whirling blade clipped a tree, the boys were told 'Nalja is throwing his boomerang!' Bates even wrote that during one initiate's blood-drinking seclusion near her camp she herself swung the big bull-roarer over the boy and his guardian: 'there were none who dared to question Kabbarli.' This small corded roarer, twenty-two centimetres of wood, left her Ooldea camp for the British Museum in 1933.
Bull-roarer of wood, string.
British Museum, Oc1933,1010.6.
- Object
- 22 x 4 cm wooden bullroarer with its string; materials wood and fibre.
- Function
- Initiation instrument at Ooldea in Daisy Bates's account: the sacred kalligooroo was swung at boys' initiation, its sound the voice of the spirit Nalja, and the name was never spoken before women or the uninitiated. The museum record gives no use for this particular corded roarer.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Ooldea Soak anchor from the Australian Message Stick Database; the British Museum records Ooldea native camp, not an exact collection point.
- Source location
- Oc1933,1010.6
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women