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A boomerang is a curved piece of wood used as a weapon and for sport. Traditionally selected from an appropriately curved piece of wood, usually from the section where the tree trunk joins a large root, making an angle of 95-110°. If necessary, the angle between the wings was adjusted by heating the boomerang over a fire and bending it. The aerodynamic profiles were carved from the wood with an axe, smoothed with a flint, and polished with sand. Designs might be carved into the surfaces, either for decoration or to improve the flight characteristics. The wood was sealed with fish oil or paint.

The oldest Australian Aboriginal boomerangs are ten thousand years old, but older hunting sticks have been discovered in Europe, where they seem to have formed part of the stone age arsenal of weapons. One boomerang that was discovered in a cave in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland was made of mammoth's tusk and is believed, based on AMS dating of objects found with it, to be about 30,000 years old. King Tutankhamun, the famous Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who died over 3,000 years ago, owned a collection of boomerangs of both the straight flying (hunting) and returning variety.

No one knows for sure how the returning boomerang was first invented, but some modern boomerang makers speculate that it developed from the flattened throwing stick, still used by the Australian Aborigines and some other tribal people around the world, including the Navajo Indians in America.

Historical evidence also points to the use of non-returning boomerangs by the ancient Egyptians, Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of southern India for killing birds and rabbits. Indeed, some boomerangs were not thrown at all, but were used in hand-to-hand combat by Indigenous Australians.

Boomerangs are also works of art, and Aboriginals often paint or carve designs on them related to legends and traditions. In addition, boomerangs continue to be used in some religious ceremonies and are clapped together, or pounded on the ground, as accompaniment to songs and chants.

Today, boomerangs are mostly used as sporting items. There are different types of throwing contests: 

Throw from the centre circle, to or past the twenty metre circle, and collect accuracy points depending on where the boomerang returns and lands. 

In Aussie Round, you get points for accuracy, distance and catching.

Points are awarded for a series of unusual catches such as one hand behind the back catch or foot catch.

The idea is to keep a boomerang in the air as long as possible, and make the catch. 

The goal is make five catches as quick as possible

Always throwing from the centre circle, make as many throws with catches as you can within five minutes.

Boomerangs remained a relatively obscure curiosity until about 1970. A workshop about how to make and throw boomerangs was presented by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. It sparked great enthusiasm for the sport, and the Smithsonian began sponsoring annual tournaments on the National Mall. The first international championship tournament was held in 1981.

In 2008, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi took a boomerang with him on March 11, 2008 out in the Space Shuttle Endeavour to verify that boomerangs also function without the downward pull of gravity, as they do on Earth. He repeated and confirmed the same experiment that German Astronaut Ulf Meerbold performed aboard Spacelab in 1992 and French Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy later performed aboard MIR in 1997. He carried a pair of paper boomerangs presented by Yasuhiro Togai, a 2006 world boomerang champion and space enthusiast from Osaka.

 

For our selection of boomerangs, click below:

Beholders Group  Boomerangs 

These beautiful boomerangs are created by Stephane, who is captain of the national Canadian and French team and world champion record holder. They are made of Bamboo, which is a renewable, environmentally friendly resource.

Hand painted by an Aboriginal owned and operated Australian Arts Center, with profits going to the community.

The best competition quality, eco-friendly, socially responsible boomerangs you can find.