Daly Waters concentric-circle bullroarer

Source term: vinare / bullroarer / churinga

vinare: Swedish catalog term for a bullroarer; not an Indigenous name.

Five roundels ringed in concentric circles cover both faces of the Daly Waters blade — over two feet of carved wood on a long plant-fibre cord. It was collected by Robert Pulleine, an Adelaide eye-and-ear doctor who also gathered shells, succulents and Aboriginal ethnographica, and reached Stockholm in 1916 through Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen, Sweden's consul in the German South Seas. The museum now holds it as secret and sacred and keeps its photograph out of view.

Tunn platt träskiva, på båda sidor ornerade med fem rundlar, inneslutna i koncentriska cirklar.

Thin flat wooden board, ornamented on both sides with five roundels enclosed in concentric circles.

SMVK Etnografiska museet, object record 1916.01.4080

Particulars

Object

Thin flat wooden blade, 68.5 x 11.7 x 1 cm, both faces ornamented with five roundels enclosed in concentric circles; a long plant-fibre cord (128 cm) passes through a small hole at one end.

Function

Identified as secret/sacred in the museum's 2004 review; no ceremony or particular use is recorded.