National Museum of Australia - Boomerang (2024)

FAQs

What is the significance of the boomerang in Australia? ›

Boomerangs are an internationally recognised symbol of Australia. For Aboriginal people the boomerang is as old as creation and a symbol of the enduring strength of Aboriginal culture. The boomerang has also been a popular symbol for tourism and travel, with notions of visitors returning 'like a boomerang'.

The oldest Australian boomerangs yet discovered were found in Wyrie Swamp, South Australia, in 1973 and have been dated to about 10,000 years ago. However, the oldest images of boomerangs in Australia are found among the Bradshaw/Gwion Gwion rock art paintings in the Kimberley, and are about 20,000 years old.

Boomerangs used in traditional Aboriginal culture can either return or not. Non-returning boomerangs are made to fly straight, while returning boomerangs are made to spin in a way that allows them to curve back towards the thrower. The vast majority of traditional Aboriginal boomerangs were non-returning.

No one knows for sure how the returning boomerang was invented, but some modern boomerang makers speculate that it developed from the flattened throwing stick, still used by Aboriginal Australians and other indigenous peoples around the world, including the Navajo in North America.

Aboriginal peoples used it to lure prey. A boomerang was thrown above a flock of birds to simulate a hawk. The birds would fly low to avoid this threat, coming within range of hunter's clubs or tangling themselves in nets stretched across their path.

For Aboriginal people the boomerang is as old as the continent and symbolises their cultural endurance. Boomerangs continue to be made in Aboriginal communities and are an important link to Aboriginal history and country.

Boomerang is an Australian children's pay television channel owned by Warner Bros.

Boomerang-shaped, nonreturning weapons were used by the ancient Egyptians, by Native Americans of California and Arizona, and in southern India for killing birds, rabbits, and other animals. Today boomerangs are often made of high-grade plywood and fibreglass.

Used literally to represent a boomerang. Also used to represent Aboriginal people or Australia in general. May be used to represent something that comes back or returns. Boomerang was approved as part of Unicode 13.0 in 2020 and added to Emoji 13.0 in 2020.

What is the Aboriginal name for a boomerang? ›

There are many Australian dialects Om. The kylie, kali or garli is a returning throw stick. In English it is called called a boomerang after a Dharug word for a returning throw stick. They were very important to the Noongar people, being used to make music, celebrate, and for hunting for food.

The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. The history of the first aerofoil could date back 1000 years with the boomerang.

However, the oldest boomerang discovered is around 23,000 years old. It was made from a mammoth tusk and found in a cave in the Oblazowa Rock in Southern Poland.

The weapon was thrown at roughly waist height with the aim of outright killing ground-based prey such as kangaroos or emus. Contrary to popular opinion hunting boomerangs are often unevenly weighted throwing sticks， with one weighted heavier killing end and a lighter end intended as a handle.

boomerang, curved throwing stick used chiefly by the Aboriginals of Australia for hunting and warfare. Boomerangs are also works of art, and Aboriginals often paint or carve designs on them related to legends and traditions.

The rock's caves, cliffs and fissures represent the physical evidence of the ancestral spirits' time on earth. To this day, the Anangu people's spiritual and cultural connection to Uluru and Tjukurpa is still very strong (Red Centre, 2022).

The Boomerang's path is circular or elliptical, like everything in the universe is circular or elliptical. It is a spiritual tool, that reminds us (with its circular path) that the kind of energy we give, the same we get back.