If this boomerang looks familiar, it should. It is the long distance Whalebone traditional that Frank Donnellan threw around a pole in Sydney's Centennial Park in 1934. Frank gave this boomerang to Lorin Hawes in the 1960s for his boomerang museum shop. You can see a photo of this boomerang in Lorin Hawes' popular hard cover book published in the 1970s. I think there are photos of this boomerang in other publications as well. I purchased this boomerang directly from Lorin Hawes in the mid 1980s as he was closing down his boomerang shop museum.

I have never thrown this boomerang because I am left handed and it has enormous collectible value. Ben Ruhe said that this boomerang could never do 140 yards, so it must have been the circumferential distance rather than the range. However, both Lorin Hawes and George Leavens told me that Frank would turn his back to the audience and bend it in a special way before throwing it to obtain the distance. Then he would offer it to others to throw and they could not do the distance because they did not know how to tune it. This boomerang does have an unusual abrupt bend to add dihedral near the lift arm tip. I do not know if this is the result of Frank's tuning or if was pre tuned to have this bend. Either way, it is a valuable historical boomerang in excellent condition and with great provenance. One more thing - The reporter for the Sun Newspaper said he threw it around a pole at that distance. That implies that this was the flight range and not the path length.

This boomerang was made out of a material called Whalebone (see description below). Whalebone is similar to Paxolin in stiffness and density. Frank did not make commercial boomerangs out of Whalebone. He only made them for his own use for long distance throwing. It is painted solid black on both sides. Whalebone boomerangs are very rare.

This item also includes the original throwing instruction booklet that Frank would sometimes distribute with his boomerang products. This booklet tells a lot about Frank Donnellan's personal accomplishments. The is also a piece of Whalebone that George Leavens gave to me in the early 1980s. George told me that Felix Hess used one of George Leavens' Whalebone boomerangs to do his flight testing in the early 1970s. George cut this piece of Whalebone from the blade to affix lights or sparklers. Felix would use the night flight paths to develop the computer model for his magnificent Ph.D. Thesis, published in 1975.

So there is a lot of history in this item and it is the last Donnellan Whalebone boomerang in my collection. I hope that whomever gets this one takes great care in preserving it for future reference.