Victoria River black wooden bullroarer

Source term: bullroarer

Blackened like charcoal and carved as an airfoil — flat on one face, rounded on the other — this blade was shaped to bite the air, turning a plain pierced board into a carrying roar. It came out of the Victoria River country at the raw edge of the cattle frontier: its donor, the pastoralist Joseph Bradshaw, held a run of four thousand eight hundred square miles on the river, and shipped his Aboriginal collection to the British Museum in 1902. Which of the river peoples made the blade was not set down.

Particulars

Object

28.2 x 4.5 x 1 cm black-stained wooden slat, flat on one face and rounded on the other, with a hole at one end for cord attachment.

Function

Function not recorded.