by on_one_wheel » 26 May 2015, 2:08 am
As a kid I had a good modern boomerang that was given to me by my grandparents , traditional boomerangs didn't come back to the thrower. They were more like bent clubs fashioned to give them great flight, the bend was usally well off center and they were very big and heavy.
My boomerang was made from plywood and threw realy well, occasionally I would head down to the local park in the leafy suburbs and find a flock of pidgions that had landed and take aim, occasionally I would smack one.
I found the secret was all in the timing, you need to judge how quickly they will take flight and get your height somewhere close to the middle of the flock, getting about 25 to 30 mtrs from them was just about perfect, I would clap my hands once loudly to spook them into the air.
I never got sprung by any of the toffee nosed locals but was always cautious of people and wouldn't aim at a flock when anyone else was there, I'd just throw it and try to catch it again. ...that takes much more practice than hunting birds with it.
My Grandparents had a good collection of propper high quality traditional artifacts, the workmanship had to be seen to be belived, spears made from tree roots with backward facing quill like barbs, razor sharp stone tips all bound with resin and hand made string , woomeras, boomerangs, baskets, stone axes, stone knives and so on. They were given to them by elders of a tribe that originally occupied the areas around Roonka. My Grandmother worked as an anthropologist for the South Australian Musiem and got to know some of the local aborigines of Roonka and the Cooper Basin well.
Shortly before my Grandfather passed away he began to square things up around the place, he made contact with one of the elders, an old lady who had lost all of her relatives and had lost contact with everyone else who had belonged to that area.
He gave the old lady all the artifacts back, she sat cross legged surrounded by all there things crying her eyes out because these thinge were all she had left, he captured a very moving picture of that moment.
It's a shame what has become of these people, we have lost so much of our country's heritage.
Gun control requires concentration and a steady hand