The Bullroarer Atlas

PEABODY2026-001 - museum specimen

Lake Naddern

Namendarra Lake, Shire of Laverton, Western Australia (Peabody: 'Lake Naddern')

Restricted

Representative—not this record’s object: a herringbone-carved Aboriginal Australian bullroarer from the Wereldmuseum.
Representative—not this record’s object: a herringbone-carved Aboriginal Australian bullroarer from the Wereldmuseum. Emile Clement, Ethnographische Beobachtungen in Nordwest-Central-Australien (1903), Plate IV; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek scan Public domain Image source
A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the...
Representative image. A board carved edge to edge with a herringbone zigzag pattern — an Aboriginal Australian bull-roarer held by the Wereldmuseum, shown for the general form; not the Martuthunira boonangharry from the Pilbara coast documented here. Wereldmuseum / NMVW (acc. RV-2306-7) CC BY-SA Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Swung hard on its cord, a blade this long — close to sixty centimetres — throws a deep, carrying roar that across the Western Desert was heard as the voice of an ancestral being. When it wailed from beyond the camp, an initiate understood the spirit had come to swallow him and, after weeks in seclusion, to spit him out a grown man; women and the uninitiated who saw it could be killed. Grooved on one face and pierced for its cord, this specimen from the goldfields desert near Laverton kept no record of its own ceremony — only the tradition it was made for.

Bullroarer, carved wood, elliptical, grooved designs one side, perforated

Peabody Museum, object 25-46-70/D2449, inventory description
Object
Carved wooden elliptical bullroarer, perforated, with grooved designs on one side; 59.1 x 8.7 x 0.7 cm.
Function
In the Western Desert tradition the roar is the voice of an ancestral being who swallows initiates and returns them grown men; women and the uninitiated who saw the board could be killed. The ceremony of this Laverton blade itself was not written down.
Map confidence
high - Official Landgate Namendarra Lake coordinate (GEONOMA feature 100025515), used as the probable modern match for Peabody's 'Lake Naddern'; the equivalence is not accession-confirmed.
Source location
object 25-46-70/D2449

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