PLEVEY2022-001 - ethnographic attestation
Telling the spirits we are here
Australia - Myall Creek Station memorial - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer
No local instrument name recorded.
In June 1838, a party of stockmen rounded up and killed some twenty-eight Wirrayaraay people — mostly women, children and old men — at Myall Creek Station in northern New South Wales; seven of the killers were hanged for it, an almost unheard-of outcome on the colonial frontier. Descendants of both the murdered and the murderers now walk to the memorial boulder there together each year. At the memorial a man twirls a bullroarer, and its low thrum spins out over the paddocks — not to frighten novices or to hide anything, but to tell the spirits that people have come to pay their respects.
A man twirls a bullroarer, its low thrum spinning out over the paddocks of Myall Creek Station, telling the spirits we are here to pay our respects.
Tom Plevey, Guardian Australia, 15 July 2022
- Object
- A bullroarer sounded at the Myall Creek Memorial on Wirrayaraay and Gamilaraay country; its form and dimensions are not recorded.
- Function
- Sounded at the memorial to tell the spirits that visitors have come to pay their respects.
- Source
- Tom Plevey, A light in the darkness: the history and hope of Myall Creek, Guardian Australia, 15 July 2022
- Source location
- article body and photo sequence
- Source confidence
- medium to high Approximate memorial-site anchor; verify against the official memorial map before integration.