As the boys began to grow up, when a good season came round, and game and grass were plentiful, the old men were seen to draw apart often and talk earnestly.
At length there came a night when was heard a whizzing, whirling boom far in the scrub.

As the first echo of it reached the camp, the women, such as were still young enough to bear children, stopped their ears, for should any such hear the Gurraymi, the women's name for the Gayandi, or Boorah spirit's voice, that spirit will first make them mad, then kill them.
The old women began to sing a Boorah song.

To deaden the sound of the dreaded voice, opossum rugs were thrown over the children, none of whom must hear, unless they are boys old enough to be initiated; the sound reveals the fact to such that the hour of their initiation is at hand.
The men all gathered together with the boys, except two old wirreenuns, who earlier in the evening have seemingly quarrelled and gone away into the scrub.
The men and boys in camp march up and down to some distance from the camp.

The old women keep on singing, and one man with a spear painted red with a waywah fastened on top, walks up and down in the middle of the crowd of men, holding the spear, with its emblematic belt of manhood, aloft; as he does so, calling out the names of the bends of the creek, beginning with the one nearest to which they are camped.
When he gets to the end of the names along that creek and comes to the name of a big river, all the men join him in giving a loud crow like 'Wah! wah! wah!' Then he begins with the names along the next creek across the big river, and so on; at the mention of each main stream the crowd again join in the cry of 'Wah! wah! wah!' All the while, closer and still closer, comes the sound of the Gayandi, as the men call the Gurraymi, or bull roarer.
At length the two old wirreenuns come back to the camp and the noise ceases, to recur sometimes during the night, when I expect, did any one search for them, the old wirreenuns would be found missing from the camp.
After the first whirling of the bull roarers and calling of the creek names, the Gooyeanawannah, or messengers, prepare for a journey, and when ready, the wirreenuns start them off in various directions to summon neighbouring tribes from hundreds of miles round to attend the Boorah.

The messengers each carry a spear with a waywah (or belt of manhood) on the top, seeing which no tribe, even at enmity with the messenger, will molest him.