Donald Thomson - Thomson in Central Australia

Thomson in Central Australia

In 1957, Thomson carried out the Bindibu (Pintupi) Expedition to the Western Desert to make contact with Pintupi there.

For some Pintupi, this was their first contact with Europeans. They were almost the last Indigenous Australian group with whom white Australians were to make contact with (the very last was a group of Pintupi in 1984).

Thomson again demonstrated his excellent ethnographic skills. The photographs taken here, like those he took in the 1930s in Arnhem Land, have become invaluable historical records for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, particularly for the Pintupi.

The Thomson Collection of approximately four thousand black and white glass plate photographs is currently held by Museum Victoria. One of these photographs was of a group of ten men in their bark canoes on a swamp and was the inspiration for the title of a critically acclaimed film Ten Canoes. The title of the film arose from discussions between co-director Rolf de Heer and the movie's narrator David Gulpilil about a photograph of ten canoeists poling across the Arafura Swamp, taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson in 1936.

Thomson lived with the Pintupi, and liked them, through much of the 1950s and 60s.

He returned to the University of Melbourne and continued working there until his death in 1970. His ashes were flown to the Northern Territory and, accompanied in the plane by two of the sons of Wonggu, scattered over the waters of Caledon Bay.