Tag: material culture

No. Some of the earliest documented didgeridoos were made from bamboo or hollow cane, not eucalyptus wood.

Collet Barker’s 1829 account describes a “large hollow cane” about three feet long. Ludwig Leichhardt described the Eboro in 1845 as “a long tube of bamboo”, and John Lort Stokes wrote in 1846 of an ebroo made from bamboo about two to three feet long.

Later writers also recorded wooden instruments. Herbert Basedow described both bamboo trumpets and instruments made from a long hollow limb of woolly-butt eucalyptus. Baldwin Spencer likewise recorded trumpets made from bamboo or hollow tree branches.

The evidence shows that eucalyptus wood was an important traditional material, but it was not the only one. Bamboo, cane and other naturally hollow wood were also used in different northern areas.