SAMA2026-001 - ethnographic attestation
The message he ignored
Australia - Gerard - Jalukari reference - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
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 in the catalogue synopsis of that first reel stays with you: Henry got a message on a bullroarer from Jalukari, ignored it, and stayed at Gerard. Nothing records who sent it or who swung it — only that 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.
Henry on bullroarer from Jalukari and how he ignored message on it and remained at Gerard.
SA Museum, Tindale AA338/11/27, Reel 1 CD1 tracks 1-11 synopsis
- Object
- A bullroarer said to have carried a message from Jalukari, described only in the synopsis of a 1964 Gerard recording.
- 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 (Spencer 1914, pp. 164-165, 214; Howitt 1904, pp. 700-701).
- Source
- South Australian Museum, Norman Tindale AA338/11/27 CDs 1-4, Gerard recordings, 25 July 1964
- Source location
Page references
Reel 1 CD1 tracks 1-11 catalogue synopsis
- Source confidence
- low to medium Gerard recording-site anchor only; not Jalukari or the message's origin.
Discussed in: The Summons