Charles P. Mountford

Mountford's father Charles married Arabella Windsor and moved into the house on a block farmed by his father at Hallett on the railway line 32 km north from Burra in South Australia. In the house his son Charles was born and was educated in the one-room local school.

The family income was constrained and they moved to Georgetown and then, when Mountford (who adopted the nickname 'Monty') was ten, to Moonta, seeking better circumstances. He took work at the chaff mill managed by his father, laboured at surface jobs in the copper mine, cut scrub and quarried stone, before joining his father in selling stereoscope slides, an enterprise continued after they moved again, to Adelaide. After the business failed, he took work as a stable hand at Kilkenny, then as a striker for a blacksmith before being employed for a longer term as a conductor on the horse tram service, continuing when the line was electrified.

In the meantime he studied at the South Australian School of Mines and Industries and in January 1913 obtained a permanent position in the engineering workshops at the General Post Office in the Engineering Branch of the Post and Telegraph Department. He was continuing studies in mathematics and natural science at the School of Mines and the University of Adelaide, although without prospect or graduating since he had never matriculated.

In 1914 he married Florence Purnell at Thebarton and they had two children, Kenneth and Joyce. In 1920 was promoted to the Darwin Post Office as Mechanic-in-Charge, work that took him to remote outposts in which he became familiar with Aboriginal communities. Suffering poor health from the tropical climate and hard work, Mountford, then thirty-three, was posted back to the Adelaide GPO workshops where his family lived at 52 West Street, Torrensville.

When Florence died aged 34 on 30 May 1925,[2] Mountford, seeking distraction, revived his interest in indigenous culture and artworks in particular, and while staying with his father in Dawson they found at nearby Merowie Springs a rock with dozens of carved grooves which he traced and photographed. Ethnologist Norman B. Tindale at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide was interested and he and Mountford collaborated on a short paper "Native Markings on Rocks at Morowie, South Australia" was read to the Royal Society of South Australia in 1926, the first of many which Mountford was to present to learned societies;[3] in 1928 he spoke again on the subject to the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science.

Members of the anthropological expedition to the Warburton Range in Western Australia, 1935. From left: Charles Mountford, E. O. Stocker, N. B. Tindale (leader), and Dr C. J. Hackett.

Mountford and his father became founding members of the Anthropological Society of South Australia in 1926.[4] Encouraged by the society's president, Frederic Wood Jones, he conducted surveys of engravings in the Panaramittee and Mount Chambers Gorge areas.

On October 28, 1933, at the Gartrell Memorial Methodist Church in Rose Park, he wed Bessie Ilma Johnstone, a 42-year-old civil servant. In 1935, he took on the role of secretary for a board of inquiry tasked with investigating reports of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory, specifically at Hermannsburg and Uluru,[5] and in the same year, he joined an expedition organised by the University of Adelaide's board for anthropological research to the Warburton Range in Western Australia, alongside Tindale, C. J. Hackett, a physical anthropologist, and E. O. Stocker, a cine-photographer. Mountford contributed as a stills photographer and art recorder, amassing numerous photographs and over 400 crayon drawings illustrating various sites and dreaming tracks.[3]

After participating in the board's expedition to the Granites in the Northern Territory in 1936, Mountford joined another expedition to the Nepabunna Mission in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia in 1937. He revisited Nepabunna multiple times, creating an unprecedented ethnographic record of the Adnyamathanha people through his photographs, recordings, and notes on mythology, material culture, and social practices. In 1938, he accompanied (Sir) Archibald Grenfell Price's expedition to Mount Dare station to investigate a reported discovery of the remains of Ludwig Leichhardt's party.[3]

Mountford also served as lecturer in ethnology for the Workers' Educational Association and authored further scientific papers as well as a series of newspaper articles. He had completed a two-year term as an honorary assistant in ethnology at the South Australian Museum. In addition to his anthropological work, he had conducted successful research within the PMG's Department, examining the corrosive effects of electrolysis on underground cables.

During 1938, Mountford, taking a year-long sabbatical from the PMG, served as an acting ethnologist at the museum and conceived of taking a camel expedition to central Australia with the intention of studying the artistic expressions of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankuntjatjara peoples. Adolphus Elkin dissuaded the Carnegie trust from financing Mountford's endeavour, citing his amateur status. Nonetheless, he garnered support from the museum board for anthropological research and from private sponsors. Collaborating with Lauri Sheard and camel handler Tommy Dodd, and accompanied by Bessie, the four-month expedition in from Ernabella to Uluru in 1940 resulted in an examination of the art and mythology surrounding the landmarks Uluru and the Kata Tjuta. The results of this endeavor were showcased through photographic exhibitions and a prize-winning colour film created in 1940, which subsequently became the foundation for the book Brown Men and Red Sand.

In 1942, he embarked on a journey through the MacDonnell Ranges, meticulously documenting the art associated with sacred objects. His experiences were captured in the film Tjurunga. Notably, Mountford also produced another influential film, Namatjira the Painter, and the illustrated book The Art of Albert Namatjira (Melbourne, 1944), works which contributed to shaping his later career.

Charles Mountford filming on location in the Mann Ranges, South Australia. Mountford used film made on expeditions to Central Australia in 1940 and 1942, to produce his first documentary film 'Brown Men and Red Sand (Walkabout)'. Courtesy State Library of South Australia

Mountford's publication Brown Men and Red Sand (1948) joined 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), which revised Australians' concept of 'The Centre" from the picture presented in J. W. Gregory's The Dead Heart of Australia (1909).

Representative of the era's inclination towards "modular and portable" forms of travel documentation such as writing, film, and lecture tours, Mountford's films capturing Central Australia's essence prompted a lecture tour to the United States in 1945; when colour films Mountford had made, including Brown Men and Red Sands impressed the British Parliamentary Delegation when they were shown them, South Australian Premier Thomas Playford IV took Mountford to Canberra, where he showed the films to diplomats, politicians and the Department of Information, with the result that Mountford was funded by the Commonwealth Government to conduct showings and lectures in America and Britain.[6]

Members of the 1948 AASEAL Expedition party, on Groote Eyland, Charles Mountford 3rd from left, middle row. Mountford-Sheard Collection, State Library of South Australia

The Curator of the South Australian Museum, Philip Jones, pointed out that by the 1940s, Mountford's engagement with Aboriginal art was advanced in anthropology in Australia before any market for such art had emerged and prior to the recognition of collectible Aboriginal artists. Furthermore, Mountford grasped that Aboriginal art is fundamentally inseparable from narrative, place, and identity, understanding it as a shared cultural heritage transmitted through song and ceremony.[7]

Mountford gained recognition in the USA for his exceptional communication skills and expertise in Aboriginal culture, which were enhanced by his adeptness with visual media.[8] With the support of the Australian Director-General of Information, Mountford conducted two lecture tours in the US in 1945 and 1946, drawing an audience of four thousand Society members in Washington DC,[9] and an account of his expediitons was featured in the January 1946 editon of National Geographic.[10] This eventually paved the way for the establishment of the American-Australian Arnhem Land Scientific Expedition of 1948,[11] comprising American and Australian experts in various fields, including flora, fauna, archaeology, anthropology, photography, filmmaking, and health.

In 1949, Australia members of UNESCO engaged Mountford's assistance in creating a photographic publication showcasing bark and cave paintings.[12] With sponsorship from the Commonwealth Department of Information, Mountford returned to Oenpelli in 1949, accompanied by professional photographer W. M. Brindle, and they produced the book Australia: Aboriginal Paintings, Arnhem Land, one of UNESCO's world art series.[13] From 1956 to 1964, a series of volumes documenting the expedition was published, including Mountford's own on Aboriginal art.[14][15][16][17]

Foundation member and past president, Anthropological Society of South Australia; foundation secretary, Australian Anthropological Association; Fellow, Royal Anthroplogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland; Member, Board for Anthropological Research, Adelaide University. Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia; Acting Ethnologist, South Australian Museum, 1937-38; twice President, Adelaide Camera Club; Member, Explorers' Club, New York, USA.[4]

• 1945: Australian Natural History Medallion[4]
• 1949: National Geographic Society Franklin L. Burr award[18]
• 1955: O.B.E. in the Civil Division[19]
• 1955 Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (South Australian branch) John Lewis gold medal; Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Queensland branch) Thomson gold medal;[1]
• 1971: Royal Society of South Australia Sir Joseph Verco medal[1]
• 1973: University of Melbourne honorary Litt.D.[1]
• 1976: University of Adelaide honorary D.Litt.[1]

There is a collection of Mountford's photographs, journals, sound recordings and other works created, written and gathered by Mountford in the State Library of South Australia, known as the Mountford-Sheard Collection,[20][21] which has been inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World. It is of cultural significance to Aboriginal Australians, particularly those in central Australia, the Flinders Ranges (Adnyamathanha people), Arnhem Land (Yolngu people) and the Tiwi Islands (Tiwi people), and the material is respectful of the people whose lives it documents.[22] Mountford's articles on allied subjects were published in The Bulletin, Walkabout,[23] Pacific Islands Monthly, Australasian Photo-Review and others now digitised and publicly accessible at the National Library of Australia. His publications contributed to the global exposure of Aboriginal art and the development of an international market for it and, as noted by Berndt, such artworks were sold for increasingly high prices in the USA and London by 1954.[24]

• The Art of Albert Namatjira (1944)
• Brown Men and Red Sand (1948)
• Australian tree portraits (1956)
• Records of the American-Australian scientific expedition to Arnhem Land: Vol. 1 Art, myth and symbolism (1956)
• The Tiwi: their art, myth and ceremony (1958)
• Ayers Rock, its people, their beliefs and their art (1965) – his M.A. thesis which became a popular paperback
• The Dreamtime (1965), The Dawn of Time (1969), and The First Sunrise (1971) – in collaboration with artist Ainslie Roberts
• Winbaraku: and the myth of Jarapiri (1967)
• Australian Aboriginal portraits (1967)
• The Aborigines and their country (1969)
• Nomads of the Australian Desert (1976) – withdrawn after sale for cultural reasons[1][28]

• Bright Sparcs Biographical entry
• Mountford-Sheard Collection of the State Library of South Australia
• State Library of South Australia: SA Memory page