Once Upon A Time An Anthropologist Watched Men Hunt In 10 Canoes

The Age

Saturday December 16, 2006

BRIDIE SMITH

UP IN the attic of an Eltham house on the banks of the Yarra, a couple of bark canoes made by the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land are gathering dust and cobwebs.

The canoes, collected by the late anthropologist Donald Thomson during a field trip, are a tangible link to a long-gone way of life recreated in the AFI award-winning film Ten Canoes.

It was Thomson's 1937 evocative photograph of the men from the Ganalbingu, Mandalpuy and Djinba clans hunting for goose eggs in their 10 canoes (right) that inspired director Rolf de Heer's film - Australia's first Aboriginal language feature.

Close descendants of those men pictured in the old photo appear as actors in the film.

Thomson took the photo, part of an extensive archive of artefacts, drawings and field notes he collected during trips to central Australia, Arnhem Land and Cape York between the 1930s and the 1950s, from a tree above Arnhem Land's Arafura swamp.

Capturing the image during the northern wet season would have been challenging to say the least. "The logistics of it are beyond belief," his son, also Donald, said.

"In the canoes, you would have had to keep all your gear dry . . . and you've got the mosquitoes . . . it would have been horrendous. Everything that the Aboriginal people did, he did. He lived like them, except for the fact that he was there as an observer with a camera and was trying to take notes and document what he saw."

Earlier this year, de Heer told the ABC that making the film, set around the Arafura swamp and Ramingining community in north-east Arnhem Land, was one of the hardest jobs he had done.

"You stand in the swamp up to your waist for six or seven hours a day and it's not very pleasant. You know, the leeches get you from the waist down, the mosquitoes from the waist up. And the croc spotters are up in the tree saying, 'There's a big one coming'."

At least four of the photographs taken by Thomson, who died in 1970, have been mirrored in scenes in the film, which took out six awards at this month's AFI awards.

"Quite a few of the photographs in the collection have been used in the story-boarding," his son said. "The photographs are also held up in Maningrida where the community is very familiar with them, so they would have shown them to de Heer."

Thomson, whose ashes were scattered in Arnhem Land, over Caledon Bay, was not much of a film-goer. But his wife, who has seen the film twice, believes he would have been pleased.

His son agrees. "I think, to a degree, he would be quite thrilled," he said.

Born in Brighton and educated at Scotch College, Thomson worked at the University of Melbourne until he retired as the professor of anthropology in 1968. He also briefly worked as a journalist on the Melbourne Herald.

His unique collection of notes, specimens and artefacts was donated to the University of Melbourne by Mrs Thomson and is on permanent loan to the Museum of Victoria.

Lindy Allen, a senior curator at the museum, said the Thomson collection was significant because it was so well documented and because "indigenous people themselves" seek it out.

The museum also has two bark canoes, on display at the Bunjilaka centre, and has recently purchased one of the canoes made for the film.

© 2006 The Age

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