iDIDJ Australia Didgeridoo Cultural Hub

I've had this stick for about 14 years now. My friend, who makes jewlery, gave a piece to an "Old Man" from somewhere in the Northern Territory. The man gifted this stick to my friend who had it for 5-6 years before giving it to me. does anyone recognize it's origin place? The art work is done with ochre and has worn off considerably in the years I've had it....

I noticed the pictures are rather small after resizing them. I can post larger ones if it is helpful...

Hey Hawk,

It's hard to attribute that stick to any maker, however it looks more like a mago type stick (due to the decoration) and most likely comes from the areas we refer to as WAL (anywhere from Katherine up to Darwin and east to Maningrida).

Nice looking piece - how does it play?

Kyle

mago...

This instrument plays really well. It's a C# and has really rich harmonics, kind of gravely. Overtone/toot can be played quite easily. It look is deceiving~it has quite a booming voice...
It's almost 55 inches long and has a fairly narrow bore, approx. 2 inches at the mouthpiece and the last 5 inches clearly has been opened. Between mouthpiece and end the bore looks untouched consequently it's diameter varies. It's external shape is conical with only a slight taper. Mouthpiece end is approx 6 1/2 inches (circumfrence) and the distal end is approx 9ish inches.... It's a very heavy instrument....

Looking at the exhibition page on Guans website I saw this instrument ( bottom of page linked below) which looks similar in shape and is low pitched as is the Old mans stick...

http://www.ididj.com.au/exhibitions/ncal.html

That's looks like a nice stick Hawk, you should keep it!

We might have several examples similar to yours... by the way, the Exhibitions pages are way outdated on our website, we should have 15-20 examples for each area and will try to get this done in the website overhaul coming soon.

Feel free to submit a clip of your playing bro.

Guan