1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land

The American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (also known as the Arnhem Land Expedition) remains one of the most significant, most ambitious and least understood expeditions.^[1] Commenced in February 1948, it was one of the largest scientific expeditions to have taken place in Australia and was conducted by a team of Australian and American researchers and support staff.

A number of publications, including H. H. Finlayson’s The Red Centre: Man and Beast in the Heart of Australia (1935), and Walkabout travel and geographical magazine (1934–1974), revised Australians' concept of 'The Centre" from the picture presented in J. W. Gregory's The Dead Heart of Australia (1909).

Leader-to-be of the Arnhem Land Expedition, Charles P. Mountford and his wife Bessie travelled over four months from Ernabella to Uluru in 1940, with Lauri Sheard and skilled cameleer Tommy Dodd undertaking an extensive study of the art and mythology surrounding Uluru and Kata Tjuta. The results of this endeavour were showcased through photographic exhibitions and a prize-winning film created in 1940, which subsequently became the foundation for Mountford's first publication Brown Men and Red Sand (1948), and his 1945 lecture tour in the United States which paved the way for the establishment of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land.^[2]

The American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, known as the 'last of the big expeditions,' was not primarily about terrestrial exploration but aimed to advance knowledge. It focused on studying the natural environment and Aboriginal inhabitants. Taking place after World War II, it symbolized transformations in Australia and globally. The expedition served diplomatic objectives by showcasing collaboration between the United States and Australia , enhancing their trans-Pacific relationship. The mission's public face hid negotiations that would shape this relationship for the 20th century. The expedition garnered domestic support due to Australia's pro-American sentiments after WWII, as the nation adjusted to post-war changes and Britain's reduced global influence. The subsequent signing of the ANZUS Treaty by Robert Menzies continued this collaborative trajectory.

Seventeen individuals, both men and women, journeyed across the remote region known as Arnhem Land in northern Australia for nine months. From varying disciplinary perspectives, and under the guidance of expedition leader Charles Mountford, they investigated the Indigenous populations and the environment of Arnhem Land. In addition to an ethnographer, archaeologist, photographer, and filmmaker, the expedition included a botanist, a mammalogist, an ichthyologist, an ornithologist, and a team of medical and nutritional scientists.

Their first base camp was Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Three months later they moved to Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula and three months following that to Oenpelli (now Gunbalanya) in west Arnhem Land.^[1] The journey involved the collaboration of different sponsors and partners (among them the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and various agencies of the Commonwealth of Australia).

A Bulletin article in 1956 noted that the scientists collected 13,500 plants, 30,000 fish, 850 birds, 460 animals, thousands of implements, amounting to twenty-five tons,^[3] and photographed and filmed in colour and black-and-white and made tracings of cave-paintings from Chasm Island, Groote Eylandt and Oenpelli.^[4] The Australian Broadcasting Commission promoted the Expedition in its ABC Weekly magazine by appealing to readers curiosity about "...a fish that looks exactly like a leaf, a multi-coloured praying mantis, intricate string games the aborigines play, a fungus used to cure wounds..."

In the wake of the expedition came volumes of scientific publications.^[5][6][7][8] The legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition is vast, complex, and, at times, contentious.^[1] Human remains collected by Setzler and later held by the Smithsonian Institution have since been repatriated to Gunbalanya.^[9]

Two staff members from ABC Radio also joined the expedition:^[10]

• Colin Simpson^[11]
• Raymond Frank Giles - Sound Recorder

• Mountford, Charles P.; American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (1956) (in en). Records of the American-Australian scientific expedition to Arnhem Land (1st ed.). Victoria: Melbourne University Press. OCLC 604762407. 
• Mountford, Charles P.; Specht, Raymond L. (1960) (in en). Records of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. 2. Anthropology and Nutrition. 2 (1st ed.). Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. 
• Mountford, Charles P.; Specht, Raymond L. (1958). Records of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. 3, Botany And Plant Ecology (1st ed.). Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press. OCLC 223700975. 
• Mountford, Charles P.; Specht, Raymond L. (1964) (in en). Records of the American-Australian scientific expedition to Arnhem Land. 4, Zoology (1st ed.). Parkville, Vic: Melbourne University Press. OCLC 223700983. 

• National Museum of Australia
• Australian Museum
• National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
• Art Gallery of New South Wales
• South Australian Museum
• State Herbarium of South Australia
• Art Gallery of South Australia
• State Library of South Australia (literary collections)
• Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
• Art Gallery of Western Australia
• Queensland Art Gallery
• National Gallery of Victoria

• May, Sally K. in press 2009. Collecting Indigenous Cultures: myth, politics and collaboration in the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition. California: Altamira.
• May, Sally K. 2008 ‘The Art of Collecting: Charles Pearcy Mountford’. In Nicholas Peterson, Lindy Allen, and Louise Hamby, The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections. Melbourne: Museum Victoria.
• May, Sally K. with Donald Gumurdul, Jacob Manakgu, Gabriel Maralngurra and Wilfred Nawirridj. 2005. 'You Write it Down and Bring it Back… That's What We Want" - Revisiting the 1948 Removal of Human Remains from Gunbalanya (Oenpelli), Australia', in Smith, Claire & Wobst, H. Martin (eds). Indigenous Peoples and Archaeology. London: Routledge.
• May, Sally K. 2005 ‘Collecting the ‘Last Frontier’’, in Hamby, Louise (ed). Twined Together. Melbourne: Museum Victoria.
• May, Sally K, Jennifer McKinnon and Jason Raupp, 2009. ‘Boats on Bark: an analysis of Groote Eylandt bark paintings featuring Macassan praus from the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.
• May, Sally K. 2003 'Colonial Collections of Portable Art and Intercultural Encounters in Aboriginal Australia', in Paul Faulstich, Sven Ouzman, and Paul S.C. Taçon (eds), Before Farming: the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. California: Altamira. 1, 8, p. 1-17.
• May, Sally K. 2000. The Last Frontier? Acquiring the American-Australian Scientific Expedition Ethnographic Collection 1948, Unpublished B.A. (Honours) Thesis, Flinders University of South Australia.
• Neale, Margo. 1993 'Charles Mountford and the 'Bastard Barks' A Gift from the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, 1948. In Lynne Seear & Julie Ewington, Brought to Light, Australian Art 1850 - 1965, From the Queensland Art Gallery Collection. Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery.
• Brittain, N. (1990). The South Australian Museum collection of Aboriginal bark paintings from Northern Australia. Unpublished Honors BA Thesis, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide.
• Calwell, A. (1978). Be just and fear not. Adelaide: Rigby Limited.
• Clarke, A. (1998). Engendered fields: The language of the 1948 American-Australian expedition to Arnhem Land. In Redefining Archaeology, Feminist Perspectives. Canberra: North Australia Research Unit.
• Florek, S. (1993). F. D. McCarthy’s string figures from Yirrkala: A museum perspective. Records of the Australian Museum, Supplement 17, pp. 117–24.
• Johnson, D. H. (1955). The incredible kangaroo. National geographic, 108(4), 487–500.
• Walker, H. (1949). Cruise to Stone Age Arnhem Land. National Geographic, 96(3), 417–30.
• Jones, C. (1987). The toys of the American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land ethnographic collection. Unpublished Diploma Thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney.
• Lamshed, M. (1972). Monty: A biography of CP. Mountford. Adelaide: Rigby.
• McArthur, M., Billington, B. P., and Hodges, K. J. (2000). Nutrition and health (1948) of Aborigines in settlements in Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition, 9(3), 164–213.
• McArthur, M., McCarthy, F., and Specht, R. (2000). Nutrition studies (1948) of nomadic Aborigines in Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Asia Pacific Journal of clinical nutrition, 9(3), 215–23.
• Simpson, C. (1951). Adam in Ochre: Inside Aboriginal Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

• National Museum of Australia Audio on Demand: Barks, Birds and Billabongs: Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, International Symposium held at the National Museum of Australia 16–20 November 2009
• State Library of South Australia: Mountford-Sheard Collection

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