Early History & Controversy
There's a controversy about the boomerang. You may call it a tempest in a teampot, or perhaps a bora in a billabong (which is nicely alliterative but geographically improbable), but there it is.
Most of us grew up believing that a boomerang is a curved, aerodynamically sculpted stick that returns to the thrower if it's thrown properly.
Then along came some people, anthropologists most of them, who claimed that the rest of us were wrong. A boomerang, they claimed, was a throwing stick usually used for hunting. The mere toy that we were referring to, they said, should be called a returning boomerang.
That not only changed the nature of the beast, it moved its provenance well away from its long association with Australia. If you Google "boomerang," or look up the word in the card catalog of your local library, you will find a lot of information about the boomerang as a type of hunting weapon used by peoples all over the world, including the ancient Egyptians. And you will probably learn that the oldest known boomerang was found in southern Poland, of all places. (Made of a mammoth tusk, it has been dated at 23,000 years old.)
Fortunately, Tony Butz came along. A teacher, linguist, and founder of the Boomerang Throwing Association of New South Wales, Butz did some linguistic research and wrote a very interesting article about it. Boiled down, this is what he discovered:
The English word comes from boornarang, a word used by the aboriginal Turuwal people of Australia to describe a returning throw-stick. They also had throw-sticks that were used for hunting, but they had different words for those.
As Butz sums up, succinctly and sensibly, "If it doesn't come back, it's not a boomerang."
The Modern Sport
Although other cultures, including the ancient Egyptians, did have boomerangs as well as throw-sticks, the boomerang was "discovered" by Europeans in Australia.
The first English colonists were convicts who arrived in 1788. They soon became familiar with boomeranging, at least as spectators. About 1800, a friendly aborigine named Bungaree staged demonstrations of boomerang throwing in Sydney.
But the boomerang seems to have been little more than a curiosity for over a century. No doubt a colonist tried throwing one from time to time, but there doesn't seem to be any record of such experiments. However, Sir Thomas Mitchell in 1846 did write a pretty good explanation of how a boomerang works.
As the aborigine population dwindled because of the intrusion of English colonists, the boomerang was pretty much consigned to a few museum showcases.
It wasn't until the second half of the twentieth century, after World War II, that people began to discover the boomerang's possibilities as a toy for children and adults alike.
In the United States, cheap and usually disappointing boomerangs were sold through ads in comic books and the Boy Scout Manual included instructions on how to make and throw a boomerang.
Meanwhile, the Boomerang Association of Australia (BAA) was founded in 1969 and held its first national championship two years later. Word of the BAA's existence, along with a 1968 article about boomerangs in Scientific American, may have inspired a workshop on making and throwing boomerangs that was held at the Smithsonian Institute in 1969.
Conducted by Ben Ruhe, the workshop was so successful that it became an annual event and included a national boomerang throwing championship in the late 1970s. That led to the founding of the U. S. Boomerang Association in 1979 to standardize rules and sanction competitive events.
The British Boomerang Association was also formed in 1979. Suddenly, boomeranging was an international sport, at least in a small way, and the first world championship event was staged in Australia in 1971. During the 1980s, the sport spread to several other European countries and to Japan.
There are a number of competitive boomeranging events, including Accuracy, Australian Round, Trick Catch, Fast Catch, Endurance, Maximum Time Aloft, Juggling, Individual Relay Trial, GLORP, Team Beaver Scramble, Team Relay, Team Position, and Team Supercatch. (See rules for further information on these events.)
Modern boomerangs are made from a variety of materials, including glass or carbon fibre, kevlar and phenolic resins, as well as wood. Metal isn't allowed in competition. The traditional boomerang has two "wings," but multi-winged boomerangs are now allowed.
The USBA estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of boomerang throwers in the United States. Every May since 1991, the association has held a grassroots event called the Toss Across America. The event, which includes includes lessons and instructions at many locations through the country, annually creates thousands of enthusiasts.