Fast Fact Tag: regional traditions

The didgeridoo is often presented today as though it was traditionally used by Aboriginal people across Australia. The historical evidence does not support that view.

The earliest written records are concentrated in northern Australia. Thomas Braidwood Wilson described the instrument at Raffles Bay in 1835, Ludwig Leichhardt recorded the Eboro near Port Essington in 1845, and John Lort Stokes also described it in northern Australia in 1846. These early records all come from the Top End.

Later research by Alice Moyle also found that the didgeridoo had a much more limited traditional range. She argued that it probably began in northern Australia and spread into other northern areas over time. Some of that spread may have happened before European settlement, but there is also clear evidence of later spread. On Mornington Island, Moyle recorded in the 1960s that didgeridoo playing was a fairly recent musical innovation and that Lardil people said it had been adopted from Arnhem Land only within the previous twenty to thirty years.

The evidence therefore points to the didgeridoo being a northern Australian instrument that later spread much more widely. Its modern use as a symbol of Aboriginal Australia as a whole should not be assumed to reflect how widely it was traditionally used before European settlement.

 

No. Historical descriptions show considerable variation in length, material, width and decoration. There was no single standard didgeridoo shape.

Some early northern instruments were short. Barker described a hollow cane about three feet long, while Stokes described a bamboo instrument two to three feet long. Other writers recorded instruments around four or five feet long, and surviving examples can be longer again.

Herbert Basedow described bamboo instruments as well as long hollow eucalyptus limbs. Baldwin Spencer also recorded wax or resin around the mouth end to make a better seal, while some instruments were painted or decorated.

The evidence is therefore better understood as a family of regional instruments rather than one fixed design. Size and shape depended on available material, local tradition and how the instrument was to be played.