In the words of the 1961 controversial song by Cockney Charlie Drake , will I be a disgrace to the entire Aborigine race ?
Searching through the cluttered contents of a dark house during a moving sale in North Queensland , a soiled book, instead of a reptile or spider , jumped out at this blogger : The Boy Mechanic 700 Things for Boys to Do . It is a Lindsay Publications 1988 reprint of the 1913 book by Popular Mechanics Press, Chicago , original copyright by H.H.Windsor .
Much to my delight , instructions for building boomerangs were found on page 202 , contributed by O. E. Tronnes , of Wilmette, Illinois , who informed readers : A boomerang is a weapon invented and used by the native Australians, who seemed to have the least intelligence of any race of mankind .
(This despite the fact that they seemed to have mastered aerodynamics long before the Wright brothers became airborne for a short time and aeons before Boeing got off the ground.)
Instructions were given for making and throwing curved , T-shaped and cross-shaped boomerangs , all of which should be soaked in linseed oil .
Another surprise in the book was a photograph of the annual regatta at Port Melbourne , Australia . This copy was ex libris King Island District School , off the north-west coast of Tasmania , in the Roaring Forties , where a boomerang of any shape launched into the air could be blown all the way to the South Pole.
Instructions for mechanically minded American boys covered playing baseball with a pocket knife, building your own volcano , assorted magic tricks-including removing 36 cannon balls from a handbag , an explanation for why gun barrels burst, imitation weapons and armour , an electric postcard projector .
There was a nifty device for keeping annoying cats and dogs away from garbage cans which involved wrapped a bin in wire , connecting it to an old telephone magneto, cranked to give an animal , especially that annoying greyhound, the electric chair.
Boomerang Dicordant Discography
There were several versions of the hit song , one for the American market in which bringing down the Flying Doctor plane with a boomerang was dropped . Odd sounding Aborigines used a Red Indian expression , pow-wow. Dare it be mentioned Rolf Harris did a version . It was eventually judged not politically correct , never to be played again on the ABC.
Boomerang Dicordant Discography
There were several versions of the hit song , one for the American market in which bringing down the Flying Doctor plane with a boomerang was dropped . Odd sounding Aborigines used a Red Indian expression , pow-wow. Dare it be mentioned Rolf Harris did a version . It was eventually judged not politically correct , never to be played again on the ABC.
