SAMA2026-002 - ethnographic attestation
A song to make the bullroarer
Australia - Aitjilara - Hatches Creek; recorded at MacDonald Downs - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
Source term: bullroarer
No local instrument term supplied.
In 1930 Norman Tindale and the musicologist Edward Davies took a wax-cylinder recorder out to MacDonald Downs station in Central Australia and cut a run of songs there. Most carry titles that name a place or a being. Song seven is flatly practical: 'To make the bullroarer.' It was said to have come from Aitjilara, at Hatches Creek, well over a hundred kilometres to the north-east. The cylinder survives, damaged. The archive itself warns that its language labels may follow whoever happened to be singing rather than whose song it was — so the route the song travelled is firmer than its ownership.
To make the bullroarer (from Aitjilara, Hatches Creek)
SA Museum, Tindale AA338/11/1, Record 5 / Song 7 / AS25
- Object
- No object; a damaged 1930 wax cylinder preserves a song catalogued as 'To make the bullroarer', recorded at MacDonald Downs and said to come from Aitjilara at Hatches Creek.
- Function
- A making song for the bullroarer, carried from Aitjilara at Hatches Creek and recorded at MacDonald Downs in 1930.
- Source
- South Australian Museum, Norman Tindale AA338/11/1, MacDonald Downs recordings, 1930; Record 5 / Track 2 / Song 7 / AS25
- Source location
Page references
official catalogue lines for Record 5 / Track 2 and Song 7 / AS25; field journal AA338/1/6 pp. 127-143
- Source confidence
- medium Official NT Place Names coordinate for historic Hatches Creek, the stated origin of the song; not the recording site or a demonstrated performance point.