Celluloid Subjects to Digital Directors. Jennifer Debenham
film appears to conclude with the return of the expedition party to Adelaide. The film footage shot on 35 mm nitrate stock was not incorporated into the main six-reel narrative shot on the 35 mm and 16 mm safety film footage but is included in what could best be described as an extended visual appendix of 00:17:01 minutes showing how the party collected data in the field and is identified as NFSA Title No. 335556. There is also evidence that a colour film was produced in this expedition. At the time it was technologically impossible to copy colour film and as a result this sequence of film was screened only on rare occasions. The film has now deteriorated so extensively it cannot be viewed at all.17
Although the visual appendix shows the Aboriginal subjects with numbers painted on their bodies, many are afforded recognition of their traditional names. For example, the test subject G57 is also recorded and ←41 | 42→referred to as Kakuta, a Warlpiri man.18 This is only apparent in the curator’s notes that accompany the film and Tindale’s field notes held by the South Australian Museum (SAM); the film shows the test subjects moving around the campsite with the numbers painted on their bodies, usually on the back of their shoulders. Images of Tindale and Draper Campbell sitting with members of the Warlpiri group collecting information and using an Edison phonograph to record their voices are full of laughter. They appear to be enjoying hearing their voices played back. Other footage show groups of people gathered around Norman Tindale who is writing down what appears to be words for different parts of the body, such as the ear. The groups are seen laughing at his attempts.
Included in the appendix is a record of the basal metabolic tests being conducted on a group of Aboriginal men. Believed at the time to determine the efficiency of body temperature control, they tested the efficiency of Aboriginal bodies to adapt to the environment and were carried out by physiologists Cedric Stanton Hicks and R. F. Matters. The cumbersome and elaborate equipment together with the clutter of an outdoor laboratory and camp kitchen contrasts markedly with the handful of spears, boomerangs and pitchies (wooden bowls) that the Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere people brought when they gathered at Cockatoo Creek.
Other activities recorded on the film include Herbert Mathew Hale, director of the South Australian Museum, and Tindale making plaster face moulds, in what appears to be a gruelling experience for the Aboriginal test subject. Herbert John Wilkinson collects dermagraphs (hand prints) whilst Henry Kenneth Fry and Robert Henry Pulleine conduct sense and intelligence tests. Grey, the medical student, washes some children’s hair so that he can examine hair track patterns. Film footage shows Wilkinson taking still photographs of some Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere women. The photographs showing body profiles; frontal, and side on shots of the women subjects are now considered classic anthropological representations that come from a time when the ethical ramifications of making such images was given little if any consideration. The film concludes with ←42 | 43→A. Rau, the taxidermist returning aboard a camel from a day of collecting animal specimens.
Collectively, the films record the performance of an elaborate display of scientific ritual that emphasised the proficiency and the scientific objectivity of the members of the expedition in their fields of expertise. As a silent film, both the scientists and the Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere people represented have no direct dialogue with the audience through the film. However, the scientists had more power over how they represented themselves in the editing of the film, deciding the content and placement of the intertitles and had an opportunity to address the film’s audience whenever they exhibited the film. The Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere people never enjoyed such latitude in their representation. What the film appears to show is their amiable disposition in front of the camera and an eagerness in displaying their skills of spear throwing, making pitchies, shields and spears. Intermittently segments of this footage are shot in slow motion to accentuate the graceful movements of the men. When footage of a pubic tassel being made and is then completed an inter-title appears which says “on retiring the suit is hung on the door”. The Aboriginal man hangs the pubic tassel on his wurley (bush hut) while looking directly at the camera and smiling demonstrating not only his sense of humour at the situation created by the scientists but also an acute awareness that he is performing for the camera; never aware of the intertitle slight.
Paid in food, tobacco and boiled sweets, as exchange or payment for their participation in the tests, the Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere take advantage of the opportunity to participate in the tests. The extra food compensated for the gathering of these three groups at Cockatoo Creek for ceremony and indicates the relationship between the scientists and the Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere peoples was to some degree mutually beneficial, despite the imbalance of power exercised by the scientists. At 00:14:52 footage shows Ernest Kramer of the Aborigines’ Friends’ Association. He was responsible for gathering the Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere at Cockatoo Creek for the scientists and distributed food to the children.19 In his journal article, Cleland addresses his concern about the ←43 | 44→co-operation they could expect of the Warlpiri when he makes a reference to a recent massacre (now referred to as the Coniston Massacre).20 Due to the arduous nature of the tests carried out on them, this may indicate the value of the foodstuffs provided by the SABAR group but also may indicate the increasingly limited availability of food due to the encroachment of the pastoral industry on traditional Country.21
Aboriginal Agency
Although it is not immediately apparent, the Aboriginal peoples depicted on the film demonstrate considerable agency. Without their willing co-operation, the scientists would have little hope of conducting the arduous tests. Significantly, there are few women featured on the film. The off-camera relations were fraught by recent incursions by the pastoral industry, miscegenation and subsequent massacres, for example the Coniston Massacre, impacted the families featured in the film. Another consideration for the lack of women in the film is most likely due to the expedition consisting of only male scientists. As a result, this “men-only” expedition not only placed greater importance on studying and recording men’s activities but the Warlpiri, Ngarti and the Anmatjere women would not have discussed women’s business with these men. This would have not only been directed from the scientists but would also be managed by the Warlpiri, Ngarti and the Anmatjere people in their observance of cultural protocols regarding male/female interactions.
Life in Central Australia offers valuable visual evidence of the method of data collection, which in turn portrays the process of scientific ritual as a Western cultural artefact. It also confines the Warlpiri, Ngarti and the Anmatjere as the Other, that is, as suitable objects of scientific research; objects that enhance Western knowledge systems. Despite the humanity ←44 | 45→afforded to them, this appears to be conditional on accessing what were believed to be authentic “full-blooded” Aborigines and their ongoing co-operation.
Reception and Distribution
Like the film made by Spencer and Gillen, the images captured on Life in Central Australia, helped sustain and consolidate negative ideas about Aboriginal people as timeless; they were confined to the place of “deep history”, particularly regarding their perceived lack of technological progress through the images of the Cockatoo Creek film. The film was screened in universities to instruct a new generation of medical scientists and anthropologists, arguably prolonging this perception. According to the South Australia Museum’s curator: “the films were produced for educational purposes and commercially sold and loaned to individuals and institutions as a teaching tool, copies of these films are likely to exist in institutions throughout Australia and overseas”.22
Life in Central Australia has enjoyed only limited viewing to public audiences, screened primarily at key cultural institutions, such as universities as an educational tool and at theatre venues to interested groups of the public.