It is a shallow dish with curved sides, about 30cm (12in) to 70cm (28in) long, shaped like a small canoe.
Aboriginal women used coolamons to carry water, fruit, nuts, and even to hold babies. Today, women usually use things like buckets or cans to gather food from the bush. When carrying a coolamon over a long distance, women would balance it on their heads. If they used it to hold a baby, they carried it under their arm. When carrying it on the head, they used a soft ring pad called an akartne, made from possum or human hair, grass, or feathers. This pad helped protect and support the coolamon, just like head pads used by women in other traditional cultures worldwide.
The Pintupi people from the Western Desert used a double rope made from hair or plant fibres to carry the coolamon over their shoulders. They also wore smaller coolamons as hats, with twine tied under their chins.
Coolamons were also used to help prepare food, like winnowing grains for bread, heating or cooking food, and even as umbrellas to protect from rain or sun.
Coolamons are usually made by men. They are often made from hard wood like mallee. In Central Australia, people often used the bean tree. To make a coolamon, they take a piece of the tree’s outer bark and shape it over a fire to make its curved sides. Deep lines were cut into it using a sharp quartz stone knife. The coolamon had to rest for several days with a stick inside to keep it open and stop it from losing its shape. Sometimes, coolamons were made from a knot or growth on a tree called a "wirree."
Coolamons were often beautifully decorated on the outside with carvings showing tribal symbols and totem designs. They were also used in ceremonies, such as a smoking ceremony, which was believed to clean and purify. People rubbed coolamons regularly with fat, like emu fat, to keep the wood in good condition.
Different Aboriginal groups across Australia have many other names for coolamons. These groups include the Murri, Queensland Aboriginals, people from the Northern Territory, Victoria, Western Australia, and the Dharug or Eora people from the Sydney area. Each group has its own name for the coolamon.
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