AMus_E013372

Title: A message stick held in the Australian Museum

Description: AMus spreadsheet Oct 2022: "E013372 23 Mar 1905 message stick COMMUNICATION & MEDIA Australia Queensland Channel Country Boulia Boulia [ref reg]; Boulia, Queensland [ref LC] Purchase Roth, Dr Walter Edmund"

Date Created: 1895

Notes on date created: date of collection in register

Item type: message stick in a collection

State/Territory: QLD

Notes on linguistic areas: The origin of the message stick is Boulia, Channel Country, Queensland

Cultural region: Channel Country

Source types: museum collection

Institution/Holder file: The Australian Museum object identifier: E013372

Collector: Purchased by: Roth, Dr Walter Edmund

Coordinates: 22°54'38.498400"S,139°54'38.401200"E  (-22.910694, 139.910667)

Media copyright: The Australian Museum

Notes on coordinates: Absolute coordinates for Boulia, Queensland, per Google maps. Wikipedia: Boulia is an outback town and locality in the Shire of Boulia, Queensland, Australia.

URL institution: http://collections.australianmuseum.net.au/amweb/pages/am/Display.php?irn=5575&QueryPage=%2Famweb%2Fpages%2Fam%2FQuery.php&highlight_term=message+stick

Notes: REGISTER

Date: March 23, 1905

Name or Description: Message or letter stick Boinji tribe

Locality: Boulia 1895

How Acquired: Purch.

Name of Donor or Seller: Dr. W. E. Roth. Figs. Bull. 8 Pl 4 F6

Estimated or Market Value: S. 5.

Destination:

Remarks: "Made in the place of No. 6 [?], which I declared had been lost in order to ascertain whether the same message necessitated similar markings"

OTHER NOTES

Roth Bulletin 8 (1905):

Fig. 6—Oblong, compressed, bi-convex, edges sub-obtuse, blunt-ended, section log-oval’ light coloured wood. Obverse—Divided into six panels, five with five longitudinal, deep, incisions in each: the sixth panel plain. Reverse—At one end an M, at the other an N, with between them, eight transverse incisions unequally spaced apart. Length 5 ½ in.; breadth, 5/8 -in.

Boinji Tribe, Boulia.

Made in place of Fig. 2 [PK: AMus_E013373], which was stated to have been lost, in order to ascertain whether the same “message” necessitated similar markings, which it clearly did not. [PK: but note similarity in markings for 'M' and 'N' signs[

Media Files:

Data Entry: Julia Bespamyatnykh, Nitzan Rotman