Boomerangs and the Dreamtime: Stories Behind the Throw

Published by FlyingToyz | flyingtoyz.com

Few objects in human history carry as much meaning as the Australian boomerang. To many people around the world, it's a symbol of Australia — something you see on a souvenir shelf or watch spinning through the air at a weekend market. But to the First Nations peoples of Australia, the boomerang is far more than a tool or a toy. It is woven into the very fabric of the Dreamtime — the ancient spiritual framework through which Aboriginal Australians understand the creation of the world, their place within it, and the laws that govern all living things.

At FlyingToyz, we believe that throwing a boomerang is never just a physical act. Every throw carries a whisper of something ancient. Understanding the stories behind the boomerang deepens the experience — and deepens your respect for the culture that gave it to the world.

What Is the Dreamtime?

The Dreamtime (also called the Dreaming) is not simply a collection of myths or legends. It is the spiritual and cultural foundation of Aboriginal Australian life — a timeless reality that existed before the world took its current form and continues to exist alongside the present. In the Dreaming, ancestral beings of extraordinary power moved across the land, shaping mountains, rivers, animals, and people as they went. These ancestors were not gods in the Western sense; they were forces of nature given form, and the stories of their journeys are the stories of the land itself.

The Dreaming is not something that happened long ago and ended. For Aboriginal Australians, it is ever-present. Country — meaning the land, sky, water, and everything in them — is alive with Dreaming. Every hill, rock, waterhole, and wind has spiritual significance. And many of the tools that Aboriginal people made and used, including the boomerang, exist within this living spiritual world.

The Boomerang in Dreaming Stories

Across Australia, hundreds of distinct Aboriginal language groups each hold their own Dreaming stories, and many of these feature the boomerang. While it would be inappropriate to reproduce sacred ceremonial knowledge — much of which is restricted and belongs to specific communities — there are shared themes that appear across different cultures and have been respectfully shared in public contexts.

Creation and the Shaping of Country

In some Dreaming stories, ancestral beings used boomerang-like objects during the act of creation itself — hurling them to carve valleys, direct rivers, or mark the boundaries of sacred sites. The returning flight of the boomerang mirrors a profound spiritual idea: that all things move in cycles. The land was shaped by forces that returned to their source, just as the boomerang returns to the hand of the thrower.

The Boomerang as a Messenger Between Worlds

In certain traditions, the arc of the boomerang through the sky was seen as a connection between the earth and the sky world — a bridge between the physical and the spiritual. Its flight was not random; it followed the same invisible pathways that birds, wind, and ancestral spirits moved along. To throw a boomerang was, in some sense, to participate in that ongoing conversation between the human world and the world beyond.

The Emu and the Boomerang

One of the most widely shared Dreaming stories involves the emu — Australia's great flightless bird — and explains why the emu cannot fly. In many versions of this story, a clever bird (often the brolga or brush turkey) tricks the emu into clipping or hiding its wings. The boomerang features in some tellings as the object used in this deception, hurled to demonstrate the joy of flight that the emu would forever be denied. It is a story about jealousy, trickery, and consequence — themes as timeless as any human tale.

Stars and Boomerangs

Several Aboriginal groups identify constellations and celestial formations with boomerangs. The arc of the boomerang in flight mirrors the arc of the Milky Way across the night sky. For people who navigated by the stars and read the seasons in the sky's movements, this was a natural and powerful connection. The boomerang was not just a tool of the earth — it was a reflection of the heavens.

Bill Onus: The Man Who Threw Boomerangs for Justice

No story about boomerangs in Australia — and certainly no story rooted in Victoria — would be complete without honouring Bill Onus.

William Townsend Onus (1906–1968) was a Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta man, born at the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Reserve in New South Wales, who became one of Australia's most remarkable activists, entrepreneurs, and performers — and was celebrated for his exceptional boomerang-throwing skills.

What makes Bill Onus so significant to the story of the boomerang is that he understood, with extraordinary clarity, that culture and politics are inseparable. Through his factory and shop, Aboriginal Enterprises, he shared his art and culture — selling boomerangs and other pieces — as an act of resistance and reclamation of power.

His shop and factory in the Dandenong Ranges became a major tourist attraction, with Bill's boomerang-throwing demonstrations a drawcard in themselves. For Bill, the business was more about promoting and preserving the traditions of his people than it was about profit. He particularly enjoyed working with children and created programmes to introduce children to Aboriginal culture.

This is a detail worth sitting with: Bill Onus ran his boomerang factory in Belgrave, in the Dandenong Ranges — the very same region where FlyingToyz calls home today, based just nearby in Selby. The hills that inspired him are the same hills we look out at every day.

To promote his wares, Bill Onus toured widely in Victoria and beyond as a travelling showman, giving demonstrations of boomerang-throwing, which he advocated as a national sport. He wasn't simply entertaining tourists — he was making an argument. Every throw said: this culture is alive, it is skilled, it is worthy of your respect.

He became a leader of Aboriginal Victorians in the fight for the "yes" vote in the 1967 referendum, serving as the first Aboriginal president of the Aborigines Advancement League, and was the first Aboriginal Justice of the Peace. He organised theatre productions, campaigned against British nuclear tests at Maralinga, and is now recognised as likely one of Australia's first Aboriginal filmmakers.

And through all of it, he threw boomerangs. He threw them for crowds. He threw them for children. He threw them for Harry Belafonte. Lost footage rediscovered decades later captured Onus's boomerang-throwing prowess — a man who understood that to demonstrate mastery of your culture is to assert the dignity of your people.

It was in his workshop that his son, Lin, first learnt to paint, before going on to become an acclaimed artist. The boomerang workshop in the Dandenong Ranges became the creative cradle for one of Australia's most celebrated artistic legacies.

Bill Onus reminds us that throwing a boomerang has never been a trivial act. In his hands, it was defiant. It was proud. It was a statement that Aboriginal culture was not dying — it was very much alive, spinning through the air, and always returning.

Not One Culture, but Many

It is important to understand that Australia is home to hundreds of distinct First Nations cultures, each with their own languages, laws, ceremonies, and stories. There is no single "Aboriginal Dreamtime story" about the boomerang, just as there is no single European myth about the sword. The meaning and use of the boomerang varied enormously across the continent.

In the arid centre, boomerangs were crafted from acacia and mulga wood and used for hunting, as musical instruments (clapped together in ceremony), and in trade. In coastal regions, different designs suited different purposes. Some boomerangs were not designed to return at all — they were hunting tools built for distance and impact. The returning boomerang, the kind we know today, was primarily used in certain regions for sporting and bird-hunting purposes, where the spinning flight could frighten waterfowl into nets.

This diversity matters. When we hold a boomerang, we hold a connection not to one story, but to a mosaic of thousands of years of ingenuity, creativity, and deep relationship with the land.

Why This History Matters When You Throw

At FlyingToyz, our mission has always been to bring the sport of boomerang throwing to Australia — the home of boomerangs. We believe every Australian should have the chance to experience this amazing activity that connects you to the wind, the weather, and the land.

But we also believe that connection should be informed. When you throw a boomerang — whether it's one of our foam Superangs in the backyard or a handcrafted performance boomerang in an open field — you are participating in something that goes back at least 50,000 years. The physics haven't changed. The wind hasn't changed. And the profound satisfaction of watching it arc through the air and return to your hand is, in some small way, a feeling that has been shared across countless generations of human beings on this remarkable continent.

Throwing a boomerang with awareness of its origins is a form of respect. It is a way of saying: I know this came from somewhere. I know it carries meaning. I am grateful.

How to Learn More

We encourage everyone who picks up a boomerang to explore the rich cultural heritage that underpins it. Some great starting points include:

• AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) at aiatsis.gov.au — a vast archive of cultural knowledge, stories, and resources.
• Local First Nations cultural centres and museums — many cities and regions across Australia have dedicated centres where you can hear stories and see traditional artefacts in their proper context.
• Conversations with Country — many Aboriginal-led tourism experiences across Australia offer the chance to connect with Dreaming stories in the places where they belong.

And when you're ready to throw — to feel the wind on your face, to watch that arc cut through the blue Australian sky — we're here to help you find the perfect boomerang for your journey.

Browse our full range at flyingtoyz.com

FlyingToyz has been making boomerangs since 1993. Based in Selby, Victoria, we are proud to celebrate and share Australia's most iconic cultural object with throwers of all ages and abilities. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live and work, and pay our respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging.