The message he ignored

Source term: bullroarer

No local instrument name recorded.

Gerard, on the Murray near Loxton, opened as a mission in 1945, and among the people brought there were children taken from Ooldea, a thousand kilometres west at the edge of the Nullarbor. On 25 July 1964 Norman Tindale recorded Daniel Mudu and Jimmy James at Gerard, talking about Kokata men from north of the Nullarbor and about their own histories. One line Tindale wrote on the box of that first reel stays with you: Henry got a message on a bullroarer from Jalukari, ignored it, and stayed at Gerard. Here the instrument carried a summons a man could refuse. The summons was an institution, not an oddity: Spencer saw Mungarai messengers carry kunapippi to distant camps to call them to ceremony, perfectly safe so long as they carried it, and Howitt's Kulin messenger bore a bullroarer when he called a meeting for the initiation of boys. Of such a call the Kurnai said that when the wood goes to a man he must come, he cannot stay away. Henry stayed away.

These men escaped initiation by being taken by missionaries to Gerard. They were therefore 'grown up children' in their knowledge of former life.

Norman B. Tindale, tape-box annotation, Reel 1 (CD 1, tracks 1-11), Gerard, 25 July 1964 (South Australian Museum AA338/11/27)

Particulars

Object

A bullroarer that carried a message from Jalukari.

Function

Carried a summons from Jalukari, which the man named in the recording ignored; among Australian peoples a bullroarer sent by messenger called distant groups to ceremony and gave its bearer safe conduct.