target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_fcfff76c-fe1e-5e7f-998e-ec53bdfc216c">10 Gillen, Gillen’s Diary,18; Mulvaney, et al., My Dear Spencer, 335.
11 “Australian Aborigines”, The Age (Melbourne), 8 July 1902, 5; see also Spencer and Gillen, Across Australia. London: Macmillan & Co. (1912), 6; Mulvaney, et al., My Dear Spencer, 334.
12 See for example, Walter Baldwin Spencer, Wanderings in Wild Australia (2 vols). Vol. 1, London: Macmillan and Co. (1928), 823 and 826; Mulvaney, et al., My Dear Spencer, 335 and Gillen, Gillen’s Diary, 48–78.
13 See Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 49–50.
←18 | 19→
The Last of Their Kind: Aboriginal Life in Central Australia (1901)
Aboriginal Life in Central Australia (1901), Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen – directors and cinematographers. Permission: National Film and Sound Archive. Blank Map: Australia Online Map – free printable – <http://allfreeprintable.com>
Background
One of the first films depicting Aboriginal people, Aboriginal Life in Central Australia (1901) was made by Walter Baldwin Spencer, who held the first Chair of Biology at the University of Melbourne (1887–1919) and Frank Gillen, a telegraph officer (1892–1899) and Protector of Aborigines, in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. They were the ←19 | 20→first Australian based practitioners of ethnographic filmmaking1 and provide one of the earliest examples of ethnographic films viewed by a large public audience. The friendship between Spencer and Gillen began during the Horn Expedition in 1894. Named after its financial backer, William Austin Horn, mining and pastoral magnate eager for a knighthood, the expedition surveyed a vast tract of country from Oodnadatta northward to the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory. In fourteen weeks the members of the expedition made comprehensive findings and in particular, Spencer was able to record 398 genera and 171 new species of mainly insects and beetles, spiders, reptiles and molluscs as well as eight new botanical species, sixteen unknown and sixteen other species previously unknown in arid Australia.2 Members of the expedition included Charles Winnecke (1857–1902), “an explorer, surveyor and entrepreneur who acted as both agent and manager in assembling stores and transport”.3 Professor Edward Sterling (1848–1919), was the medical doctor and anthropologist. An anatomist and director of the South Australian Museum, Stirling plays a significant role in developing the academic culture at that institution and its associate South Australian Board for Anthropological Research (SABAR), the body responsible for the films discussed in the following chapter. The expedition’s botanist and palaeontologist, Professor Ralph Tate (1840–1901) from the University of Adelaide was then the current chairman of biology at the Australian Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS). He was assisted by ←20 | 21→J. A. Watt, a University of Sydney mineralogy graduate. Two naturalists and taxidermists were F. W. Belt, an Adelaide solicitor and G. A. Keartland, a Melbourne ornithologist, along with two prospectors, a camp cook and four camel drivers employed to tend the twenty-five camels.4 As well as meeting Gillen, Spencer also formed lasting friendships with mounted police officer C. E. Cowle5 and naturalist P. M. Bryne.6 With the help of a network of Aboriginal people, both contributed large numbers of zoological specimens and Aboriginal artefacts for Spencer’s research. Appointed to the expedition as the biologist and photographer, Spencer also developed a keen interest in researching Aboriginal material culture and social customs.7 Gillen’s occupation allowed him to develop friendly relations with the local Arrernte communities and the opportunity to accumulate more than a superficial knowledge of their culture and habits. He claimed knowledge of the Arrernte language but according to his biographer, John Mulvaney, the extent of his mastery must be considered within the context of his flamboyant personality.8 The fractious interpersonal relations between some members of the Horn expedition encouraged Spencer and Gillen to organise an expedition of their own. They decided to concentrate their efforts on more specific anthropological data gathering and began planning for an expedition to be undertaken in 1901.
The Film
Spencer’s decision to include a Kinematograph camera as part of the expedition’s equipment was confirmed in correspondence with British Anthropologist Alfred Haddon. Haddon used a similar camera on his ←21 | 22→expedition to the Torres Strait Islands in 1898 and his enthusiasm verified for Spencer his decision to include this expensive equipment in their load.9 Titled Aboriginal Life in Central Australia (1901), from the handbills of the lectures, the films comprise a collection of the 150-foot (the length of the film stock) sequences collated by the National Film and Sound Archive. The survival of the footage is remarkable given that it was recorded on highly volatile nitrate film that can cause explosions when the fumes are allowed to build up in confined spaces.
The sections of unrestricted film footage used in this study are a compilation obtained from the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA)10 showing Arrernte men demonstrating a ceremonial dance. These scenes comprise the “Kurnara which is one of the ceremonial dances of the Intitchiuma or Rain making ceremony”11 and the “Quatara Okraninna of Okilchia the sacred ceremony of the great snake of Okilchia” are only two of a dozen or so recordings.12 Other scenes show their preparation for another ceremony as well as a dance performed by a group of Arrernte women, “called the Unintha”13 and further scenes include food preparation. Like many films made in the early twentieth century, filmmaking was conceived by Western filmmakers as making a record of human movement and activities, in a sense, an animated photograph. From John Mulvaney’s account of Spencer’s notes, it was clearly Spencer’s intention to make an accurate record of Arrernte ceremonies and activities.14
Spencer needed to develop ways of filming events to allow for the restrictions imposed by the Warwick Bioscope camera. One such consideration was the short length, 150 feet (3 minutes), of the film stock, ←22 | 23→which made long dance sequences (that sometimes lasted longer than 10 minutes) difficult to record because the film needed frequent changing.
