“He has not followed the usual sequence”: Ronald M. Berndt’s Secrets*

Geoffrey Gray

Maybe, in the end, even the lies we tell define us. And bet- ter, some of them, than our most earnest attempts at the truth.1

Ronald Berndt has always averred that a person’s career has a lot to do with both family background and the opportuni- ties provided to pursue particular interests.2

3 ONALD MURRAY BERNDT (1916-90) and Catherine Helen Berndt R (1918-94) had highly successful careers in anthropology that ex- tended over fifty years among Australian Aborigines and briefly in the New Guinea Highlands. They were a private and at times secre- tive couple. What is not realised is that fabricated a seamless story about his schooling and university attendance in order to establish himself in the discipline of anthropology. It is a narrative of destiny: a precocious boy, his interests not fully appreciated, keen to advance, forced by circumstance (and his father) to undertake ac- counting, but finally finding his vocation and success. It was a fabri- cation that was widely accepted and promulgated by colleagues and acolytes alike. It was designed to deceive. Why he persisted with such an elaborate and elegant deception is the subject of this paper.

Geoffrey Gray, “‘He has not followed the usual sequence’: Ronald M. Berndt’s Secrets,” Journal of Historical Biography 16 (Autumn 2014): 61- 92, www.ufv.ca/jhb. © Journal of Historical Biography 2014. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

RONALD M. BERNDT’S SECRETS 62

Becoming an anthropologist From Ronald Murray Berndt’s first encounter with living Aboriginal people at Ooldea Soak in August 1939, when he was part of a two- week expedition conducted by the Museum of and the University of ’s Board for Anthropological Research, he wanted to be an anthropologist. To achieve that ambition he applied in September 1939 to enrol in the Diploma of Anthropology at the . He explained to A.P. Elkin, professor of an- thropology at the University of Sydney, that it was his intention to study anthropology “to better fit myself for a life time of work in ethnological fields.”4 He was however ineligible under the by-laws of the university.5 To overcome this problem, the September meeting of the Faculty of Arts resolved that Elkin would “make proposals for the amendment of the By-law [Chapter X, Section 74] to provide for special cases such as that of Mr. Berndt,” which he did. 6 The amended regulation was adopted at the meeting of the Faculty of Arts on 15 April 1940, when Berndt was also accepted as a candidate for the Diploma; it was approved a week later by the Professorial Board. At that meeting a summary of Berndt’s curriculum vitae was pre- sented and accepted:

Mr. Berndt is a matriculated student of the where he attended lectures in Commerce. He is also a qualified accountant and last year was appointed Honorary Ethnologist in the Adelaide Museum. He does field work in Anthropology under the auspices of the Board for Anthropological Research, University of Adelaide, and published several short but useful papers on the results of his field research. Three of these have been published by the Royal Society of South Australia and two in Oceania.7

In what seems now a remarkable act to alter the regulations to enable one prospective student to enrol, Elkin must have seen in Berndt a worthy candidate. That the poorly qualified Berndt was en- thusiastic and determined is evidenced by his early publications. El- kin was able to support this type of determination, ambition and en-

63 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY thusiasm for anthropology. In all likelihood, Elkin saw in Ronald Berndt a version of himself—a self-made anthropologist. It was in Elkin’s room that Ronald Berndt first met Catherine Helen Webb, a New Zealander who had completed a Certificate of Proficiency in Anthropology at the and had a BA from Victoria University College, Wellington.8 She was enrolled in the Diploma in Anthropology. Their first meeting is the stuff of aca- demic legend and there are several versions. By one account, Cath- erine “was in Professor Elkin’s office soon after arriving in Sydney and came face-to-face with her husband to be. It did not take long for the budding anthropologists to realise the extent of their common in- terests, and to begin to plan a life together.” 9 John E. Stanton, Berndt’s literary executor, has them meeting “in Professor Elkin’s study on their first day in the Department of Anthropology.” 10 Else- where, Stanton claimed the meeting in “Elkin’s study [was] on their second day at university.”11 Minor variations notwithstanding, each version stresses the trope that they were always together on their grand journey in anthropology: “their dedication to their writing, and to each other, never wavered from that time,” as Stanton put it.12 Ronald Berndt was admitted as a candidate for the Diploma in Anthropology on 22 April 1940; Catherine Webb on 28 October 1940. They were married in April 1941; he was twenty-four, Cath- erine twenty-two. They became Elkin’s long-desired husband-and- wife combination: “I realized that this field-work combination of man and wife was an ideal one, for their particular gifts were com- plementary, just as their opportunities for working respectively with native men and women were also complementary.”13 As their careers took shape, Catherine subordinated her own ambitions and increas- ingly devoted herself to developing and making Ronald’s career. Ronald acknowledged his debt often, for example dedicating Love Songs of Arnhem Land to her: she “has been and continues to be my constant companion on all our fieldwork,” 14 acknowledging that there were “tremendous advantages” in working as a team during fieldwork.15 Noted for their enthusiasm and stamina in the field, their

RONALD M. BERNDT’S SECRETS 64 near fifty-year partnership was one of the most industrious “ever en- countered” in anthropology.16 At the end of 1955, Ronald was appointed to the newly cre- ated position of senior lecturer in anthropology in the Department of Psychology at the University of (UWA), a result of Ken Walker, professor of psychology, obtaining funds from the Carnegie Corporation to develop anthropology as a subject in the university. Ronald Berndt is often presented as the founder of an- thropology at UWA, but according to Walker he “had nothing to do with founding anthropology at UWA, [although] he did play a part in developing it.”17 Ruth Fink, a graduate of the University of Sydney, had been appointed a research fellow the year before.18 There was no corresponding position for Catherine, a consequence of university by-laws on the employment of married women.19 She held part-time and honorary positions only. Ronald retired in 1981; he was emeritus professor at UWA until his death in 1990 and a frequent presence in the department. In this paper I examine the way in which Ronald Berndt cre- ated a triumphant narrative about the path by which he found his vo- cation in anthropology, enjoying the success he always knew he was destined for. Initially the narrative was pragmatic in its purpose, later transforming into a self-fulfilling truth: over time he grew into the new persona his storytelling created—the successful and eminent scholar. It was a fabrication he assiduously maintained throughout his life, one reproduced by his colleagues and acolytes repeatedly: in several obituaries, a brief biography in the Festschrift for Ronald and , a biographical piece on the website of the Berndt Museum at UWA, and the entry on Ronald Berndt in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.20

Secrets and deceits People narrate their own history through the stories they relate to col- leagues, friends and family members.21 Catherine herself was reflex- ive, stating that a “truthful” narration of the self is virtually impossi- ble: “People always use the past selectively, whether it is their own

65 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY past or someone else’s. Even reasonably well substantiated ‘facts’ can never be seen in their total context, and the ‘whole-truth’ is an elusive and largely relative concept.”22 This is further complicated by the perceived nearness of the past. What may appear to be in the past for the biographer often remains in the present for family members and colleagues of the dead person and may bring forth pain, hurt and aggression, often directed toward the writer for revealing these se- crets about the past. Lies and secrets from the past may have a direct impact directly on their own sense of themselves, and on their fami- lies and reputations in the present. Freud warned about the dangers of writing biography, or delving into the self: “Anyone who writes biog- raphy [or autobiography] is committed to lies, concealments, hypoc- risy, flattery and even to hiding his own lack of understanding.” 23 Allan Patience pointed to a related problem, the reluctance by biog- raphers of Australian men to delve into the inner spaces:

To inquire insistently, deeply is seen as trespassing—even blundering—into domains where privacy, or apparent inex- plicability, is kept under very tight wraps…. [Y]ou don’t go there—perhaps for fear you may unearth (contradictions, vulnerabilities, bravery and/or cowardice, sexual ambiguity, loneliness, psychic woundings)…24

Telling lies, deception and fabrication, according to various authors writing on the subject of life writing, are part of life although such actions do not characterise it.25 This paper is not about lying per se; rather it focuses on the way stories are constructed so that past stories, past events or shall we say “the truth” is denied, forgotten, re- formed, or elided. Sisella Bok says that when “we undertake to de- ceive others intentionally, we communicate messages to mislead them, meant to make them believe what we ourselves do not be- lieve.” This can be done by gesture, disguise, action or inaction, even through silence. A lie is “any intentionally deceptive message”; lying “forms part of a [deception],” that is to say, it is “best to stay with the primary distinction between deceptive statements—lies—and all the other forms of deception.”26 Erving Goffman conceptualises lying

RONALD M. BERNDT’S SECRETS 66 and deceit as, “the intentional effort of [an] individual to manage ac- tivity so that a part of one or more others will be induced to have a false belief about what is going on.”27 Pertinent to this discussion is the way a deceit can transform into an uncontested truth. Lies are not static: “making a lie has con- sequences, not only for the dupe but also for the liar, and after a while a statement that began as a lie may no longer fit easily under its initial rubric.” The end result of this deception is that often the dupe becomes a collaborator in the continuance of the lie. The dupe, as in the case of Berndt’s story, is often subordinate (a colleague) and has no reason therefore to question, let alone challenge, the perpetrator of the deception.28 A lie can be so widely accepted as truth, that the teller of the lie can only amend or rectify it at great cost to himself and his relationship with others. It can become in the mind of the teller a truth, and this transformation frees the teller of the lie.

A liking for privacy and secrecy We gain an early indication of Ronald Berndt’s liking for privacy in his wartime security dossier, a dossier compiled as a result of his be- ing of German descent.29 It was reported in the dossier that he “en- gages himself in his studies in his bedroom and spends a large por- tion of his time there.”30 Catherine was happy to share his liking for privacy and secrecy. They lived very private and secretive lives. They had no children. Few were allowed into their domestic world and fewer into the inner sanctum of that world.31 Such a private life excludes others and enables secrets and deceits to be kept away from the gaze of the outsider. To be sure, Ronald appears as the dominant figure in both their private and professional lives. Catherine wrote short private devotionals to him and signed herself “wife,” while he replied “your husband.”32 We can also deduce a tendency to control in the public sphere by the way he ran the Department of Anthropol- ogy as his fiefdom.33 There were other ways in which Berndt exercised control in the public sphere that underscore a propensity for secretiveness and deceit. Two examples will suffice: the first relates to a German doc-

67 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY toral scholar, Franz Josef Micha, who undertook research between 1959 and 1960 at Gordon Downs, a cattle station in north west West- ern Australia owned by the Australian Investment Agency (Vesteys). Micha sought Berndt’s advice before he travelled north and met the Berndts when they visited Gordon Downs sometime later. Micha told me that he did “not learn those major details of [the Berndts’] experi- ence which, later, I did find printed in their book End of an Era” al- though “we [he and the Berndts] did speak on the aboriginal labour situation.” It was only in the mid-1990s that he became aware of their research and their employment with Vesteys in the mid-1940s.34 The other example relates to the decision of the Berndts to restrict access to their field notes until thirty years after Catherine’s death in 1994. Even when they were alive they did not give others access to their field notes; Ronald, the anthropologist Peter Sutton told me, read passages from his note books in response to queries from him but would not allow him to see and read the field notes for himself. An added dimension is that by the time the field notes—dating from 1939—will be made available most of their academic contemporaries will be dead, as will most of their Aboriginal informants. 35 Ronald and Catherine also controlled knowledge by contextu- alising it within an extensive collection of information they had col- lected, which was unavailable to the reader. In many of their books readers were informed that what was presented was only a part of the data they had collected:36 what was left out would be the subject of future publications. For example in his introduction to Djanggawul (1952) Ronald explained:

it is our plan to present in one volume the substance of the Djanggawul cult…. The second volume is devoted entirely to the interlinear phonetic renderings, with detailed notes at- tached…. This arrangement still leaves untreated a great deal of material relating to Djanggawul. It is planned, there- fore, to present at an early date the complete Millingimbi version of the song cycle…. There is also a mass of material relating to the rituals themselves, and to dreams. Here we are able to give only a brief sketch [Ronald had prepared a manuscript “Daughters of the Sun”].37…In addition, there is

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the women’s attitude towards the Djanggawul ideology, their ritual behaviour, the songs and stories they know and their place in the general configuration…. [T]his will be treated later in some detail by Catherine Berndt.38

This applied to their collecting of Aboriginal art and artefacts, as well. For example: “only brief descriptions of each [crayon] drawing have been inserted here; each drawing contains a great deal of detail, which ideally requires considerable explanation, not possible in this volume.” 39 In this way the Berndts controlled not only the way knowledge was produced and delivered to the reader but pre-empted potential criticism of their analysis and evaluation of field data. An analysis and critical evaluation of their published work is therefore constrained by the difficulty of examining unpublished and unavail- able material.

A life in anthropology From a young age Ronald was an inveterate collector, which proba- bly sparked his interest in anthropology. Family and close friends emphasise his passion for collecting Asian art and artefacts. Berndt also published small items in numismatics in his uncle Theodore’s newspaper in the township of Kadina (Yorke Peninsula). Ronald of- ten stayed with him when he was a young man and Theodore was a witness at his marriage to Catherine. From the age of twelve Ronald haunted Adelaide’s antique dealers and bookshops to “acquire desirable objects.”40 He was al- ready making a collection of mostly Asian material, “often saving his sixpences from lunch to buy a book, or an artefact.”41 By the end of the 1930s he had built quite a collection of “Japanese toggle buttons and miniatures.” 42 His Asian collection was an intensely personal one, known only to a few intimates.43 Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard make no reference to Ronald’s passion for collecting Asian art and artefacts, or for that matter his interest in collecting per se. Rather, they emphasise Ronald’s enthusiasm over his “father’s col- lection of Aboriginal artefacts” and infer that this led him to read ethnology.44

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Tonkinson and Howard also omit the death of Ronald’s mother when he was twenty-five.45 This creates an uninterrupted line, making Berndt’s father the dominant figure in his young life and in his looming interest in anthropology: together they attended the State library and museum, and his father’s collection became a catalyst for his later interest in anthropology. Kate Brittlebank, to the contrary, infers that he had a difficult relationship with his father and was en- couraged in his collecting by his mother.46 It is probable that Ronald had difficulties with his father. He collected a number of “father fig- ures,” including his Uncle Theodore [Berndt], J.B. Cleland, A.P. El- kin—“we looked upon him as our close classificatory father”—and Albert Karloan, who Ronald described as “my spiritual father and mentor.” Ronald first met Karloan at the South Australian Museum.47 Albert Karloan, seventy-five years of age, was born at a time when Aboriginal life was under greatest threat of disintegration. In 1882, Karloan, along with two other youths, was “one of the last … to un- dergo full initiation rites in the lower River Murray region.” With his death, a great wealth of knowledge about Aboriginal cultural and so- cial life was lost, and additionally, “the Manangki dialect died with him.” Berndt met a number of Aboriginal people through Karloan and “these early associations with large numbers of Aborigines had a marked impact on his future career in anthropology.”48 Karloan “in- vited Ronald to his home in Murray Bridge, where Ronald did his first ‘live’ research.” Karloan became the “aspiring anthropologist’s first teacher in Aboriginal culture.” Berndt maintained contact with him until Karloan’s death in February 1943.49 Bill Wigley, the younger brother of Ronald’s friend Jim [James Vandeleur] Wigley, told me that it was Jim who collected Aboriginal artefacts, encouraged by Ronald’s father Alfred (de- scribed by Bill as an “eccentric jeweller”). He too remarked on Ronald’s interest in Asian art and artefacts.50 Jim Wigley, Ronald’s “artist friend” as Catherine described him, accompanied Ronald to Murray Bridge in late 1939 and early 1940.51 Soon after his discharge from the army Wigley joined Ronald and Catherine at Daly River, in the . Ronald described Wigley as “rather unassum-

RONALD M. BERNDT’S SECRETS 70 ing and possessed of not too much money. He is a trained artist…. He has done a little work among ‘half-castes’ both in S[outh] A[ustralia] and in Victoria.” Berndt also extolled Wigley’s practical skills. He had built his own house, “‘to make ends meet.’”52 Wigley’s task was to record and collect “examples of native art—such as draw- ings, basket work and other handcrafts (these of course will go to the Dept. Anthropology, together with series of his own drawings). Also he is to act as an observer, so that later his work should form a basis for our own.” 53 Ronald maintained this friendship until the late 1950s, when “Wigley’s drinking became a problem for Catherine, who as a result asked Ronald to distance himself from Wigley. It is about this period that the friendship deteriorates,” his colleague John Wilson remembered.54 Berndt was interested in contextualising and understanding the artefacts he collected, which was complimented by some of his read- ing matter which formed part of his collection.55 He told an inter- viewer in 1975 that, as a young man, “because of my family back- ground and the kind of socialisation processes to which I was sub- jected, I was encouraged to read widely, and not especially in a guided fashion. From the stimulating novels of Rider Haggard,56 to the more systematic (but equally speculative) works of Herodotus, Josephus, James Frazer and [A.C.] Haddon, among many others.” We know too that he was buying art books. But it was primarily the “exoticism of other cultures which at first attracted me to Anthropol- ogy,” he told his young readers in 1976.57 In May 1939, Berndt was appointed honorary assistant in eth- nology at the South Australian Museum, although he had been “working in his spare time on ethnological questions for the past nine months….[u]nder the guidance of Mr. [C.P.] Mountford.”58 In Au- gust 1939, as part of an expedition headed by J.B. Cleland which in- cluded T. Harvey Johnston, , and Alison Harvey, he spent two weeks at Ooldea. He wrote a report—”Social Anthropol- ogy. Ooldea. 27/8/39”—which resonates with the style of Rider Hag- gard. He combined the exotic, science, and the ancient in his report.59

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When he was in New Guinea he drew comparisons with some of the events described in King Solomon’s Mines:

Our progress consisted of scenes reminiscent in some ways from those of King Solomon’s Mines. The terrain was tough and at times very steep; the track, often edged with jungle, was slippery and narrow. A long line of carriers (more than we wanted), with boxes lashed to poles, stretched out further than I could see. At the head was Catherine, mounted on her horse and surrounded by plumed and decorated men with their bows and arrows, singing as they danced and walked along.60

There are other versions of the story that explains how Berndt came to choose anthropology as a career. Catherine claimed it was Albert Karloan, Ronald’s primary Jaralde informant who first sug- gested to Ronald that he should do anthropology. 61 This version is indirectly disputed by Ronald himself when he commented that “[a]s my approach became more focussed, I linked myself to the South Australian Museum and through the encouragement of certain mem- bers of the Board for Anthropological Research of the University of Adelaide I was able to join an expedition to Ooldea. It was at this juncture, while I was on the field—and before I had had any formal training in Anthropology—that my mind was made up.”62 And again: “[Ooldea] was an exciting and crucial event that firmed up my ideas of devoting my career to anthropological research.”63 It was T. Har- vey Johnston, professor of Zoology at the University of Adelaide, and John Burton Cleland, professor of Pathology at the University of Adelaide, who encouraged him to attend the University of Sydney under Elkin and “thus enabled me to receive [my] initial training.” 64 In mid-1941, Ronald and Catherine Berndt spent nearly six months in the field: Ooldea Soak was Catherine’s first fieldwork (as it had been Ronald’s) and her “first experience with Aboriginal peo- ple. My husband was with me and we worked as wife-husband team, but our perspectives were different. He concentrated on men, and I concentrated on women.”65 The Berndts may have modelled them- selves on Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune: they replicated the older

RONALD M. BERNDT’S SECRETS 72 couple’s division of labour in the field. Catherine regarded Mead as an exemplar for women anthropologists, and although there is no evidence that Ronald admired Fortune in the same way, the men shared a strong interest in studying violence and sex.66 Elkin had ar- ranged for Catherine, accompanied by Ronald, to go to Ooldea (she was funded but Ronald was not, as he had no formal academic quali- fications and was therefore ineligible).67 Her research formed the ba- sis for her thesis which was a requirement for the Diploma in An- thropology. In their case it became a joint thesis, Ronald having abandoned his idea of writing a thesis on the Jaralde people of the Lower Murray River.68 In April they were awarded their Diploma, conferred on 22 May 1943. It was Ronald’s first formal academic qualification. War with Japan severely restricted the possibilities for anthro- pological research on the Australian mainland, as well as in areas to the north, particularly Papua and New Guinea. Ronald was also under surveillance because of his German ancestry. Nonetheless, Berndt hoped to “get to New Guinea—in a semi-military capacity—in a po- sition where there would be opportunities to study the natives and carry on anthropological work at the same time.”69 By mid-January 1942 such plans were forestalled by intense fighting in New Guinea but he still hoped to find work “dealing with the natives directly or indirectly in Northern Australia.”70 Was it possible, he asked Elkin, “to obtain any position in which I (or with my wife) could have deal- ings with native problems…. Perhaps under Mr. [E.W.P.] Chinnery [director of the Northern Territory Native Affairs Branch]? …[A] departmental position…would enable me to do something that was helpful, while Catherine continued with her writing up.”71 While they waited to hear from Elkin, they continued their re- search at Murray Bridge without any institutional support. 72 They moved between Ronald’s father’s house in Adelaide, and Murray Bridge, Tailem Bend, Wellington and Point Macleay (later known as Raukkan). As a consequence of his mother’s death, Ronald told El- kin, “we had two rooms vacant in our house, and under the present Adelaide billeting system we were asked to take a number of soldiers

73 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY or sub-let the rooms. Fortunately my father (whose business has been closed down as non-essential, jewellery) chose the latter course.”73 Ronald was very anxious that all his belongings, including his arte- fact collection, be moved out of those two rooms. He had written to his father from Dunedin, New Zealand, where he and Catherine were staying, stressing that nothing of his or his mother’s be moved:

I cannot imagine what the home must look like with the two front rooms to let. It will be awful having other people in our Home. Please use nothing of mine in their furnishing; move my things from the Hall…. Please take care of things in the Dining Room, my bookshelves, desk, books, orna- ments, weapons things on sideboard and the big carpet I bought also of all the cutlery and the blue dinner set I bought before Catherine came—please do not use it.74

There is resonance in the way he made another home at the Univer- sity of Sydney; as in his father’s home at Prescott Terrace, Rose Park, he also filled the department of Anthropology with his objects.75 His attachment to his things is illustrated in his description of the events which led to the dispersal, in 1956-57, of some of the Aboriginal and New Guinea artefacts he and Catherine had collected; the material was part of the University of Sydney ethnographic collection, held in the Anthropology department. The newly appointed professor, J.A. Barnes,

was, or appeared to be, quite uninterested in items of mate- rial culture, and saw them as cluttering up the Department. He had previously assured me by letter that all items col- lected by myself would remain untouched, and kept until I could come over to Sydney to go through them, pack them and arrange to have them trans-shipped to . However, when I was eventually able to visit Sydney, I found that a large number of my items had already been taken to Can- berra, and deposited at the Institute [of Anatomy].76

There is a similar insistence that his collection—and he was clear in his recollection that it was his collection—be untouched and that the

RONALD M. BERNDT’S SECRETS 74 custodian of his artefacts, in this instance Elkin, take a responsibility for material under his care, an echo of Berndt’s instructions to his fa- ther in 1942. Wherever the collection resided Ronald marked out a claim that that space was home. On completion of their (joint) thesis—published as A Prelimi- nary Report of Fieldwork in the Ooldea Region, Western South Aus- tralia—Elkin wrote to A.J. Gibson, honorary secretary of the Austra- lian National Research Council (ANRC), seeking funding for his prized husband-and-wife team.77 Elkin, as Chairman of the ANRC’s Anthropological Committee, recommended the distribution of re- search funds and was able to provide regular funding for their re- search. Ronald’s military exemption however brought forth resent- ment and opposition by some members of the Aborigines’ Protection Board, the University of Adelaide Board for Anthropological Re- search, and the Museum.78 It was an unpleasant circumstance and El- kin’s attempts to find work for the Berndts elsewhere led to their em- ployment with Vesteys as liaison and welfare officers between Au- gust 1944 and May 1946. From there, Elkin arranged funding for their research at Yirrkala, and other parts of north-eastern Arnhem Land. Remaining in the field enabled them to collect ethnographic data and build their collection of Aboriginal artefacts and art. 79 Ronald was academically poorly qualified and, if he wanted a career in anthropology, obtaining further academic qualifications was an imperative.

A deceit revealed In April 2006, I was working in the University of Sydney Archives searching for material on the University of Sydney ethnographic col- lection and its dispersal in 1956-57, when I came across a date for the conferral of Ronald Berndt’s Master of Arts which was at variance with what I then believed to be the correct date. I asked the archivist to check the date. From her search it appeared that Ronald’s emerging career as an anthropologist was nearly derailed in 1948 when he was refused admission as an Advanced Student at the University of Sydney. At

75 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY the Professorial Board meeting of 24 March 1948, Ronald’s applica- tion “for admission to candidature for the B.A. [Research] degree” was considered. It was stated that he had matriculated in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Adelaide, been awarded the Di- ploma in Anthropology, University of Sydney, and published a “number of articles on Anthropological subjects. On the report of the Professor of Anthropology [A.P. Elkin], Berndt was accepted as a candidate for admission to the… degree.”80 On subsequent receipt of a report from the University Adelaide that Berndt had not matricu- lated, the Faculty of Arts decided he could not be admitted as an Ad- vanced Student after all.81 He was unable to apply for another twelve months, when Elkin personally presented the case and was successful in having Ronald admitted.82 Some six years later, in applications for a lectureship at the University of Sydney, for a post as senior lecturer at the University of Western Australia, and for a Carnegie Travelling fellowship, Ronald stated he had enrolled at the University of Adelaide and had matricu- lated in 1938.

Statement A: Qualifications; degrees obtained; academic awards; membership of learned societies, etc

Age: 38 (born: July 14th. 1916 in Adelaide, South Australia) Previous places of education: 1) Schools: St George’s Church of England, Adelaide 1922-23 St Andrew’s Church of England, Adelaide 1924-26 Pulteney Grammar School, Adelaide 1927-34 School of Mines, Adelaide 1935-38 2) Universities: Adelaide University 1938-39 Sydney University 1940-41 Diploma Anthropology 1941-48 Research 1948-50 BA 1950-51 MA London School of Economics and Political Science,

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PhD course 1953-54 3) Degrees obtained: Diploma Anthropology (Sydney, 1941; Distinction) BA (Research Degree in Anthropology, Sydney, 1950) MA (1st Class Honours in Anthropology, and Uni- versity Medal, (awarded 1951, conferred early 1954)83

This does not tally with the documentary record. His curriculum vitae does more than invent a school history and university entrance; it conflates the years from 1934 to 1939, when he worked in unspeci- fied jobs. I have checked the years he attended with each institu- tion.84 He attended Pulteney Grammar School from 1927 leaving at the end of 1929; Pulteney did not go past year 10 until the early 1950s when it offered year 12.85 He attended the School of Mines be- tween 1930-33, graduating with basic bookkeeping skills, 86 and he did not sit the exams for the diploma of commerce (which did not re- quire university entrance) at the University of Adelaide. He even fudged the dates he was awarded the diploma in Anthropology, stat- ing it was awarded in 1941, when it was May 1943,87 and his BA (Research) awarded 1951 not 1950.88 The latter may simply reflect the course of study being completed one year and the degree con- ferred the next, but no such claim can be made for the former. The CV presented a seamless story of the schoolboy to univer- sity student: a clever scholar sidetracked briefly by satisfying a con- cern of his father that he do accountancy, a practical subject in light of the Depression. In the CV there were no interruptions and the illu- sion of his precocious childhood and adolescence was maintained. He persisted with this manufactured narrative publicly, for example, in his entry in Who’s Who, 1968, again in 1975 when he was inter- viewed for a postgraduate magazine at UWA,89 and indirectly in the biographical sketch by Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard. Tonkinson told me that Ronald and Catherine had checked the bio- graphical sketch “for veracity.”90

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Further education Once Berndt was admitted as an Advanced Student, the Professorial Board appointed an examination committee consisting of Elkin, Ar- thur Capell, Reader in Linguistics, and Professor C.R. McCrae, Pro- fessor of Education. In November 1950 the examiners recommended in “the light of [Ronald’s]…distinguished and original research [de- scribed in their report], a Certificate of Research be awarded to Mr. R.M. Berndt as a qualification for the B.A. degree.” The examiners noted that Ronald also “took the full Anthropology III (Honours) in 1949.”91 The degree was awarded and conferred in 1951. At the same time Elkin awarded him an MA but University regulations stated that this could not be conferred until three years later, April 1954. Elkin encouraged Ronald and Catherine to apply for doctoral scholarships in both the United States and Britain although the ex- change rate with the American dollar was prohibitive and tended to militate against such a move.92 The newly formed ANU was consid- ered but rejected. Elkin sent them to Papua New Guinea to do re- search in the Central Highlands before they departed for the London School of Economics in 1954 where they completed their doctorates in July 1955.93 The following year Ronald applied for the position of senior lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Western Australia. El- kin pointed out to the Registrar that Ronald

had not followed the usual sequence of graduating B.A., go- ing to the field for a year and getting an M.A., and then spending another year in the field as a preliminary to going abroad for a Ph.D. After doing the Diploma in Anthropology he concentrated on field-work for several years before tak- ing the Research B.A. and Honours M.A., in both cases with theses of PhD standard. His present visit abroad brought him a PhD but this was incidental to his purpose for going to England.94

In the meantime, the University of Sydney Senate confirmed Ronald’s appointment as lecturer in Anthropology. Consequently El-

RONALD M. BERNDT’S SECRETS 78 kin advised Ronald to withdraw his application for the UWA posi- tion, which he did. Elkin’s biographer, Tigger Wise, argues that the Sydney appointment was the first step in Elkin’s plan to obtain the Chair for Ronald.95 In 1954, shortly before his mandatory retirement at the age of sixty-five, Elkin persuaded Berndt to apply for the Chair, which he did. It was an ill-advised and palpably premature bid for a Chair. 96 It was fortuitous that UWA was unable to fill the posi- tion and offered it again to Ronald at the end of 1955. Ken Walker told me that there were only two serious candidates, Berndt and K.E. Read. Walker wanted a “specialist in Aboriginal culture” and Read was a New Guinea specialist.97 Ronald, Ken Walker told me, was the only suitable candidate and “we knew we’d get Catherine for free. We appointed her Honorary Lecturer at once.”98 Ronald accepted El- kin’s advice and resigned from the Sydney position. He explained his decision to the Registrar:

Since the Sydney Chair has now been filled by an anthro- pologist with no previous experience in Australia and the Pacific, I have come to the conclusion that my services would be most useful… in Western Australia, where there is the possibility of establishing a strong department with em- phasis in these fields, with which I am relatively well ac- quainted.99

Elkin was confident that at the end of five years, “or soon af- ter, it will become a separate Department and a Chair,’100 a view sup- ported by Walker: “[I] told him if the students were sufficient in number and quality, I was 90% sure that in about 3 years a chair would be established, and he would be the inside candidate.” 101 Berndt was elevated to professor in 1963. My contention is that without Catherine’s unpaid position the department would have struggled. Catherine’s own career was subsumed by Ronald’s, help- ing him develop and expand a department of anthropology.

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A career sacrificed? Ronald Berndt’s success illustrates the androcentric nature of Austra- lian anthropology and the role of personal patronage. When Cath- erine first arrived at the University of Sydney in 1940, this was no doubt preparatory to a career in anthropology.102 As we know, she and Ronald did their first field research at Ooldea, in which Cath- erine, not Ronald, was funded. In their next fieldwork—a survey of acculturation in South Australia—Catherine was again the recipient of funds. Once Ronald was awarded his Diploma, they were both eli- gible for funding. In all these expeditions Ronald assumed control and acted as the main researcher; Catherine looked after the financial and domestic aspects of working in the field.103 She no doubt did this voluntarily but it had an added value for Ronald: he was free to pur- sue his research, unhindered. This is amplified by a perusal of their scholarly publications. With the exception of Women’s Changing Ceremonies (1950) Catherine did not write another single authored book, apart from some children’s books, between 1979 and 1988. Her other books are as co-author with Ronald, who also published six books as the single author.104 Ronald’s first single-authored book Kunapipi (1951) can be construed as the start of his independent ca- reer, although Catherine continued to play an important part in the writing and editing, and in the ideas expressed in the books. Elkin was prepared to support Catherine, and he was sure that if Catherine obtained a scholarship for her research in New Guinea, even if Ronald’s application was unsuccessful, he “would accompany her and I for one would do my best to obtain a grant for the purpose because their conjoint work is so important.” 105 As long as they stayed in Sydney, Catherine was assured of support, both intellectu- ally and financially, and a career in anthropology. When Ronald was offered the position of lecturer at Sydney, he observed, “our friends and interests are there, [and] there are… better opportunities for Catherine’s research.”106 In Elkin’s view, Catherine was “a gifted lin- guist” and a good field worker:

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Mrs. Berndt concentrates on the study of the whole society, its culture and religion, through the women with whom she identifies. In addition she does the main work on the lan- guage. Mr. Berndt works through the men and specialises to a great extent on the ritual which in Australia is so largely the affair of the men. It has been remarkable team work.107

Elkin also ensured Ronald was adequately qualified. Elkin’s task, if we can put it this way, was to “grow up” Ronald as an anthropologist and ensure his qualifications were at least equal to those of Catherine. Once Ronald accepted the position at UWA, Catherine was faced, perhaps unknowingly, with an intellectual death. That is to say, her career as an independent anthropologist was suspended, if not abandoned. She could not work in the same department, except as an honorary or visiting member of staff (without remuneration) and she failed to attract the level of research funding she had done at Sydney. No longer was Elkin able to assist her career; rather she was dependent on Ronald and what could be garnered from UWA. The possibility of Catherine as a married woman having a career ahead of her husband would have been virtually unthinkable at the time. When the rules forbidding women to be employed in the same department as their husbands was changed, Catherine declined the opportunity to take on full-time employment in the department.108

Conclusion One thing we can be sure of was Ronald Berndt’s determination to use whatever means were at his disposal to achieve success: he “was … often typified or criticised [by his colleagues] for being aggres- sive, and always very determined to prevail in whatever he felt strongly about.”109 Above all, he wanted to control his life and those in it. When Ronald Berndt first penned his academic CV, sometime in September 1939 is my guess, it had a pragmatic purpose. He needed to convince both the University of Sydney and Elkin of his scholarly suitability. He succeeded. He again used a fabricated CV in his application to be enrolled as an Advanced Student. When it was revealed that he had not matriculated, Elkin enabled a successful ap-

81 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY plication the following year. Berndt had an opportunity to revise and alter his CV. He was, however, locked into the fabricated CV; chang- ing it would alert Elkin to the extent of the deceit at a time when Berndt most needed Elkin’s support to advance his career. In the truest sense, Ronald Berndt was a self-made anthro- pologist and it is this which I think most appealed to Elkin, who saw in him something of his own self-made quality. He was, as Wise points out, “tailor made for Elkin. It was the start of a lifelong pa- tronage.”110 Elkin overlooked the discrepancies in Berndt’s CV, as he was impressed with his work ethic. Having found the much wanted husband-and-wife team, he did not want any disruptions. Elkin was well rewarded for his support of the Berndts who went on to produce an impressive publication record. Despite retiring in 1955, Elkin did not vacate his position of power and influence. He remained a presence on the campus, attend- ing seminars, offering advice to staff—often unsolicited—in the An- thropology department. He retained the editorship of the journal Oceania until his death in 1979, and remained intimately involved in university politics, retiring from the University Senate in 1969.111 In these circumstances, had Berndt remained at Sydney it is likely that his relationship with Elkin would have been strained. Berndt’s defer- ence and an implicit acknowledgment that he was dependent on the goodwill of Elkin made it difficult for him to act independently. He was beholden to Elkin for his and Catherine’s future and, like a fa- ther, Elkin could be impatient and irritated by his “child’s” diffidence and indecisiveness. Elkin was their “paterfamilias.”112 Elkin described Ronald and Catherine Berndt, in May 1978, as “if I may say so, my anthropological children—of whom I am proud.”113 Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard note that Elkin “disclosed [to the Berndts] that he had always considered them …his ‘spiritual children.’”114 In the obituary they wrote of Elkin, he was the mythic father: “like the mythic beings of his beloved Aboriginal Australia, his spirit will surely live eternally, as an inspiration to gen- erations of anthropologists to come.” 115 Elkin had certainly been gratified that they were continuing a line of descent by promoting

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Aboriginal anthropology at a critical time when, as Elkin saw it, the specialisation was becoming marginalized within Australian acade- mia.116 The Berndts needed, in a sense, to free themselves from Elkin but continued to acknowledge their indebtedness if not gratitude: they therefore needed to create a separate space in which they could work and develop. In this they were also lucky to have moved to Western Australia although this did not diminish their social and in- tellectual relationship with Elkin.117 It is significant that with Elkin’s death the Berndts were able, finally, to publish a version of their 1946 Vesteys report.118 Although he did not censor their report he hindered its publication by insisting on changes to the text; each time it was submitted to a publisher the publisher sought Elkin’s advice.119 They produced a revised version which Elkin rejected in the year be- fore his death.120 This was later published as End of an Era. The Berndts carefully guarded their private life; it was not open to trespass. There was no blundering on the part of colleagues into the domain of privacy so carefully protected. Few people were invited to their home. This was not simply to protect their writing time (they wrote in the morning). Ronald was a secretive as well as a private man. His penchant for secrecy and privacy is illustrated by his reluctance to share not only his private passions (his and Catherine’s personal collection of Asian bronzes) but his anthropological knowl- edge to the point that he embargoed his field notes for thirty years after their deaths. Catherine also embargoed her field notes. 121 Ronald’s secretiveness is further illustrated by the way in which he kept Micha ignorant of their employment with Vesteys, and his battle over ownership of what he perceived as his collection in the Univer- sity of Sydney ethnographic collection. Catherine was always in- volved in these deceptions, fictions, fantasies and strategies: “striking a match—he was a pipe smoker—[Ronald] would say, ‘we are as a single flame.’” 122 J.A. Barnes, a senior member of the department who first met them when they were completing their doctorates at LSE, thought the same, although in less flattering terms: he found them insufferable, even as graduate students in London, on account

83 JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY of their talking “non-stop, speaking in canon; just before one of them came to the end of a sentence the other would begin to speak, and so on indefinitely.”123 Both of them assiduously watched over Ronald’s secrets and the development of his career. In themselves secrets and fabrications in the workplace, espe- cially when seeking employment, are not uncommon. This type of lying varies from falsely claiming degrees to stretching periods of employment, for example. Most often these deceits and lies are unde- tected.124 Why Ronald maintained (and Catherine did not contradict) his fiction about his early life is unknown. We can surmise, however, that when he was appointed professor he had attained a success per- haps undreamed of when he first fabricated his schooling and univer- sity results and attendances but by then could no longer change the story of his life. Its original pragmatic purpose had altered into a jus- tifying and explicating narrative of his success. By persisting with this narrative of his early life Ronald Berndt enabled others to embel- lish and develop this largely fictional story to show that he was al- ways destined to prominence as a scholar. As the anthropologist John Morton explains, a “myth-maker needs to do something else besides distort history. A myth-maker needs to tell a story which affirms and endorses a group’s moral identity. In other words, the defining char- acteristic of a myth is not that it is false, but that it is held widely and strongly to be true.”125

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* I especially want to thank Julia Mant of the University of Sydney Archives. Earlier ver- sions have benefited from discussions with Christine Winter, Russell McGregor and Doug Munro.

Notes 1 David Malouf, Johnno (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1975), 170. 2 Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard, “The Berndts: A Biographical Sketch,” in Going It Alone? Prospects for Aboriginal Autonomy: Essays in Honour of Ronald and Catherine Berndt, ed. Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1991), 18. 3 Like many first and second generation German migrants the Berndt family developed loyalty and belonging to their new homeland. This found tangible ex- pression in the naming of the next generation: Ronald’s middle name Murray was homage to the Murray River, tying him to South Australia as his home (Heimat). Johannes Voigt argued that this often was expressed in a double loyalty to the new homeland and the old fatherland. Johannes Voigt, Australia-Germany: Two hundred years of contacts, transl. Brangwyn Jones (Bonn, Inter Nationes, 1987). 4 R.M. Berndt to Elkin, 3 March 1941, Elkin Papers (hereafter EP): 160/4/1/78, University of Sydney Archives. 5 Minutes of the Faculty of Arts (University of Sydney), 25 September 1939, University of Sydney Archives. 6 Minutes of the Faculty of Arts, 22 November 1939, University of Sydney Ar- chives. 7 Minutes of the Faculty of Arts, 15 April 1940; Minutes of the Professorial Board, 22 April 1940, University of Sydney Archives. 8 Victoria University Calendar, 1936, 121, 123, 125; 1937, 129, 134; 1938, 134, 136, 141; University of Otago Registry and Administration records, MS- 1632/024. 9 Tonkinson and Howard, “The Berndts”, 23. 10 John Stanton, “‘I did not set out to make a collection’: The Ronald and Catherine Berndt Collection at the Berndt Museum of Anthropology,” in The Makers and Making of Indigenous Museum Collections, ed. Nicolas Peterson, Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 517. 11 John Stanton, “Obituary, Ronald Murray Berndt,” Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2/1990: 96, http://www.berndt.uwa.edu.au/Berndt/ 12 Stanton, “Obituary, Ronald Murray Berndt,” 96. 13 A.P. Elkin, “Foreword” to Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, Sexual Behaviour in Arnhem Land (New York: The Viking Fund, 1951), 9-10. See gen- erally, Geoffrey Gray, “‘You are … my anthropological children’: A.P. Elkin,

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Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt, 1940-1956,” Aboriginal History, 29 (2005): 77-106. 14 Ronald M. Berndt, Love Songs of Arnhem Land, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), xx. 15 Ronald M. Berndt, “Into the Unknown!” in Ethnographic Presents: Pioneering Anthropologists in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, ed. Terence E. Hays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 69. 16 Peter Sutton, “Ronald and Catherine Berndt: An Appreciation,” Anthropological Forum, 11:2 (2001), 122. For a list of their publications see Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard, “The Berndts: A Select Bibliography,” in Tonkinson and How- ard, Going It Alone?, 45-63. 17 Ken Walker to author, 12 August 2007. 18 Ken Walker knew Ruth and Elkin also assured him she was ideal for the position; He told me that “My wife and I were close friends of Friedel and Lotte. When we lived in Sydney, we met them at a club the mother of a friend of ours organised for German and Austrian refugees from the Nazis to meet Australians.” Ken Walker to author, 12 August 2007. See also Ruth A. Fink Latukefu, “Like a Film Running Backwards,” in Before It’s Too Late: Anthropological Reflections, 1950- 1970, ed. Geoffrey Gray (Sydney: Oceania Monograph no. 51, 2001), 53-67. 19 Patricia Crawford and Myrna Tonkinson, The Missing Chapters: Women Staff at the University of Western Australia, 1963-1987 (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 1988). 20 Stanton, “Obituary: Ronald Murray Berndt (1916-1990),” 95-99; Robert and Myrna Tonkinson, “Obituary for Ronald Murray Berndt (1916-1990),” Aboriginal History, 15 (1991): 1-3; Tonkinson and Howard, “The Berndts,” 18-26; Robert Tonkinson, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/berndt-ronald-murray- 12202/text21879. It is an all-encompassing story, so much so that Brittlebank, who reveals much about the private lives of the Berndts, uncritically accepts sub- stantial elements of the narrative. Kate Brittlebank, “‘Two people—One Life’: Collecting and the Marriage of Ronald M. and Catherine H. Berndt,” Australian Historical Studies, 39:1 (2008): 3-18. An exception is Howard Morphy, “Obitu- ary, Ronald Murray Berndt 1916-1990,” Anthropology Today, 6:5 (1990): 22-23. 21 See Cassandra Pybus, “Dogs in the Graveyard,” Australian Humanities Review, 16 (1999), Part 1, http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue- December-1999/pybus1.html; Part 2, http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-December- 1999/pybus2.html 22 Catherine Berndt, “Retrospect, and Prospect: Looking Back over 50 years,” in Women Rites and Sites: Aboriginal Women’s Cultural Knowledge, ed. Peggy Brock (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), 1.

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23 Quoted in Pybus, “Dogs in the Graveyard,” Part 2, http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-December- 1999/pybus2.html. 24 Allan Patience, review of Nugget Coombs: A Reforming Life, by Tim Rowse, in Australian Historical Studies, 39, no.121 (2003): 197. Brittlebank touches on as- pects of this intimacy in the Berndts’ marriage, “‘Two People—One Life,’” 3-18. 25 Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 3-16; J.A. Barnes, A Pack of Lies: Towards a Sociology of Lying (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11, 87-102; Charles M. Ford, Lies, Lies, Lies: The Psychology of Deceit (Washington DC: American Psychiat- ric Publishing Inc, 1996), 6-7, 87-102; Pybus, Dogs”, Parts 1 & 2. 26 Bok, Lying, 13-14. 27 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 83. 28 Barnes, A Pack of Lies, 11, 87-102; Ford, Lies, Lies, Lies, 6-7, 87-102. 29 Geoffrey Gray, Ronald Murray Berndt: Work of National Importance, in Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro and Christine Winter (eds), Scholars at War: Australasian Social Scientists, 1939-1945, (Canberra: ANU Press, 2012), 134-135. 30 Police Report, Sydney, 29 May 1940, National Archives of Australia, Canberra, C123, 16553. 31 Brittlebank, “‘Two people—One Life,’” 9. 32 Brittlebank, “‘Two people—One Life,’” 8, 11-13. 33 “Known fondly as ‘Prof’, he ran his department on the ‘God-professor’ model, jokingly described as a ‘participatory democracy’ in which all staff participated while he made the major decisions”. Tonkinson, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/berndt-ronald-murray-12202/text21879 34 F.J. Micha to author, 20 August 1999. The Berndts worked for Vesteys between 1944 and 1946. They much later published End of an Era: Aboriginal Labour in the Northern Territory (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1987), a version of their final report for Vesteys. Part of the explanation for the delay was that it was so controversial it could only be published forty years later. For a contrary view see Geoffrey Gray, Abrogating Responsibility: Vesteys, An- thropology and the Future of Aboriginal People (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2015), especially chapter 11. 35 Field notes should be available to the descendants of the anthropologist’s infor- mants as they constitute part of their history. For a wide ranging discussion on the uses of field notes see Roger Sanjek (ed.), Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropol- ogy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). 36 Early in his career it was Berndt’s contention that “the role of the anthropologist … should be one of recording data, and presenting these in an accessible form[.]”

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Ronald M. Berndt, Djanggawul: An Aboriginal Religious Cult of North Eastern Arnhem Land (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1952), xx. 37 Published as Love Songs of Arnhem Land, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 38 Berndt, Djanggawul, xxi-xxii. Catherine did not complete this project. 39 Berndt, Djanggawul, xvi. 40 Kate Brittlebank, “Anthropology, Fine Art and Missionaries: the Berndt Kalighat Album,” Journal of the History of Collections, 20:1 (2007), 127-42. 41 Stanton, http://www.berndt.uwa.edu.au/Berndt/ (accessed 8 December 2007). The Berndt Museum is now part of the UWA Cultural Precinct, which is an amalgam to five museums and galleries. 42 John Wilson, e-mail to author, 12 October 2006. 43 “Never … seen by outsiders, and lovingly cared for and displayed by the Berndts in their rambling old house in Peppermint Grove, Perth, the collection comprises over 950 examples of works from the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayan region, Southeast Asia, China and Japan. Media include metal, clay, terracotta, stone and wood and paintings on cloth and paper; the range of objects embraces sculptures and bronzes of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain deities; Japanese netsuke and colour woodblock prints; Tibetan thankas and Indian miniatures and bazaar paintings.” Brittlebank, “Anthropology, Fine Art And Missionaries,” 127. 44 Tonkinson and Howard, “The Berndts,” 21. 45 Ronald’s mother died while he was at Ooldea; he hurried back to be at her side but she died four days after he returned to Ooldea. 46 Brittlebank, “Anthropology, Fine Art And Missionaries,” 128. 47 http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/gallery/ngurunderi/ng2htm.htm See Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt with John E. Stanton, A World that Was: The Yaraldo of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 1993), 1-2. 48 Tonkinson & Howard, “The Berndts,” 22. 49 Catherine Berndt, “Karloan, Albert (1864–1943),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/karloan-albert-10656/text18937, published first in hardcopy 1996, accessed online 14 December 2014. 50 Bill Wigley, personal communication (courtesy of Julian Wigley, his nephew), 10 June 2006. Brittlebank names another school friend, John Nottage, with whom Ronald “often competed to acquire desirable objects.” Brittlebank, “Anthropol- ogy, Fine Art and Missionaries,” 128. 51 R.M. Berndt and C.H. Berndt, The World that Was, plates 3,4,10. On the website of Julian Wigley, Jim’s son, there is an early portrait of Ronald, probably done in the mid 1930s. http://www.wigley.com.au/jim.php For details regarding Wigley’s biography see entry in http://www.daao.org.au/main/read/6602; also interview

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with James Wigley at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2088894; and Catalogue, “James Wigley: Survey 1936-1992,” Melbourne: Niagara Galleries, 1992. 52 R.M. Berndt to Chinnery, 28 October 1945, Chinnery Papers, National Library of Australia, MS 766. See photo http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23608335 which shows Danila Vassilieff working on Wigley’s house at Warrandyte. 53 R.M. Berndt to Chinnery, 28 October 1945, Chinnery Papers, National Library of Australia, MS 766. 54 Personal communication, John Wilson, 13 December 2009. 55 Brittlebank, “Anthropology, Fine Art”, 127-42. 56 Henry Rider Haggard is best known for his exotic African adventure novels, notably King Solomon’s Mines and She. 57 “Professor Ronald Berndt: The man Behind the Mask,” WAASSA [Western Australian Anthropological and Sociological Students’ Association] Newsletter, June 1975, 2-5. Cf. Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field, ed. Jean-Guy A. Goulet and Bruce Granville Miller (Lincoln: University of Ne- braska Press, 2007). 58 Acting Museum Director to Chairman of Museum Committee, 18 May 1939. South Australia Museum Archives. Copy courtesy of Philip Jones. The Museum asked that its employees and honorary assistants not be collectors. Ronald clearly did not abide by this stricture. 59 R. M. Berndt, “Social Anthropology. Ooldea. 27/8/39,” Cleland Papers, Special Collections, Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide. Also see P.G. Jones, “South Australian Anthropological History: The Board for Anthropological Re- search and its Early Expeditions,” Records of the South Australian Museum, 20 (1987): 71-92. 60 Berndt, “Into the unknown!” 72. Ronald also wrote that: “This long line of muscular brown men talked, sang and grumbled as they walked.” Ronald M. Berndt, Excess and Restraint. Social Control Among a New Guinea Mountain People, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), vii. 61 Catherine H. Berndt, “Introduction” to A World that Was, 3, 6-7. 62 “Professor Ronald Berndt,” WAASSA Newsletter (June 1975): 2-5. 63 Ronald M. Berndt, “Aboriginal Fieldwork in South Australia in the 1940s and its Implications for the Present,” Records of the South Australian Museum, 23, no.1 (1989): 59-68. 64 Berndt to J.B. Cleland, 26 September 1951, Cleland Papers, Mortlock Library, State Library of South Australia. 65 Catherine Berndt, “Retrospect and Prospect,” 2. 66 Warwick Anderson, The Collectors of Lost Souls. Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 18; see also Berndt, Excess and Restraint.

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67 Geoffrey Gray, A Cautious Silence: the Politics of Australian Anthropology (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press), 149-158. 68 The Berndts fulfilled their promise to Albert Karloan and the Ngarrindjeri by publishing A World That Was, see xvi. 69 Berndt to Elkin, 4 January 1942, EP: 246/ 613. 70 Berndt to Elkin, 11 January 1942, and Berndt to Elkin, 28 January 1942, EP: 246/613. 71 Berndt to Elkin, 16 February 1942, EP: 246/613. 72 Robert Tonkinson, “Foreword” to The World That Was, xxii. 73 Berndt to Elkin, 10 May 1942, EP: 246/613. 74 Ronald Berndt to A[fred] Berndt, 2 March 1942, quoted in Brittlebank “‘Two people—One Life,’” 7. 75 Geoffrey Gray, “‘Cluttering up the department’: Ronald Berndt and the Distribu- tion of the University of Sydney Ethnographic Collection,” reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia, 2:2 (2007), 165-67, for a description (or mapping) of where items were located in the department. http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_2_no2/papers/cluttering_up_the_depart ment 76 Berndt to Minister, Home Affairs and Environment, 23 December 1982. Macleay Museum (courtesy Rebecca Conway.) Barnes recalls that Ronald was “furious … [as he had] neglected to keep Berndt informed about what he doing”. J.A. Barnes, Humping My Drum: A Memoir (print on demand from http://www.lulu.com, 2007), 265. 77 Elkin to Hon Sec, ANRC, 16 February 1943, Records of the Australian National Research Council, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA), MS 482/840. 78 Geoffrey Gray, “Ronald Murray Berndt: ‘Work of national importance’”, in Scholars at War: Australasian Social Scientists, 1939-1945, ed. Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro and Christine Winter (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2012), 133-147, http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ch063.pdf 79 Gray, “‘Cluttering up the department’…” 153-179. 80 Minutes, Professorial Board Meeting, 24 March 1948, University of Sydney Archives. 81 Minutes, Faculty of Arts Meeting, 16 June 1948, University of Sydney Archives. 82 Minutes, Faculty Arts Meeting, 15 June 1949, University of Sydney Archives. 83 R.M. Berndt, Curriculum Vitae, October 1954 (copy in author’s possession). 84 John Moore (Archivist, Pulteney Grammar School), believes the schools are correct as they were feeder schools. 85 John Moore, e-mail to author, 29 August 2006. 86 Cathy Davis (Archivist, University of South Australia), informed me that the entries in the 1933 School of Mines and Industries Annual Report “showed that BERNDT, Ronald Murray gained passes in 3 subjects: Bookkeeping Day Course;

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Intermediate Business Correspondence; Typewriting”. E-mail to author, 13 Sep- tember 2006. 87 Student Record Card, Ronald Murray Berndt, University of Sydney Archives. He and Catherine satisfied the requirements for the Diploma on 15 April 1943. Stu- dent Record Card, Catherine Helen Berndt [Webb], University of Sydney Ar- chives. For a “street photo” of them, probably on the day of conferral, see Kate Brittlebank, “Anthropology, Fine Art and Missionaries, 130. 88 Evidence to this effect is contained in the file on Ronald Berndt in the Records of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University Archives, Series 312. 89 “Professor Ronald Berndt: The man Behind the Mask,” WAASSA Newsletter, June 1975: 2-5. 90 Robert Tonkinson, personal communication, 24 May 2004. Cf. Elkin when the Berndts asked him to check their introduction to his Festschrift—see Tigger Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist: A Life of A.P. Elkin (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 227. 91 McCrae, Capell and Elkin, 20 November 1950, Minutes of the Professorial Board, University of Sydney Archives. 92 They also enlisted the support of the Australian-born Linden A. Mander, profes- sor of political science at the University of Washington (Seattle), who they had met in Adelaide in 1946. See correspondence between the Berndts and Mander in Accession No. 730-7-55, Mander Papers, University of Washington Libraries (Seattle). 93 Catherine H. Berndt, “Mythology in the Eastern Central Highlands of New Guinea,” PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1955; Ronald M. Berndt, “Social Control among Central Highlanders of New Guinea,” PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1955. 94 Elkin to Registrar (UWA), 22 September 1955, EP: 41/4/2/375. Elkin told them that the “main thing [at the LSE] is to make contacts and get everything you can out of the seminars.” Elkin to the Berndts, 3 August 1954, EP: 41/4/2/375. 95 Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist, 219. 96 Geoffrey Gray and Doug Munro, “Australian Aboriginal Anthropology at the Crossroads: Finding a Successor to A.P. Elkin, 1955,” The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 22, no.2 (2012): 351-69; see also J.A. Barnes, “Looking Back and Hardly Believing,” in Gray, Before It’s Too Late, 139-46. 97 Read later became famous for his classic New Guinea study, The High Valley (New York: Scribner, 1965). See also Gilbert Herdt, “Obituary: Kenneth E. Read, Anthropologist,” Oceania, 67, no.1 (1996): 1-6. 98 Walker to Gray, 12 August 2007. 99 Berndt to Registrar, 3 December 1955, University of Sydney Archives, G3/158. 100 Elkin to Ronald Berndt, 2 September 1954, EP: 41/4/2/375.

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101 Walker to Gray, 12 August 2007. 102 Tonkinson and Howard, “The Berndts,” 22-23. 103 Gray, “Anthropological Children,” 93. 104 See Tonkinson and Howard, “The Berndts,” 46-47. 105 Elkin to Secretary, Women Graduates Association, 26 October 1950, EP: 197/4/2/573. 106 Berndt to Elkin, 7 December 1954, EP: 41/4/2/375. 107 Elkin to Secretary, Women Graduates Association, 26 October 1950, EP: 197/4/2/573. Ian Hogbin commented that the Berndts “are good field workers, though I think Mrs. Berndt is the better man of the two (academically speaking).” Hogbin to Mander, 30 July 1946. Accession No. 730-7-55, box 5, folder 5-4, Mander Papers. 108 Brian de Garis, “Government of the University,” in Campus in the Community: The University of Western Australia, 1963-1987, ed. Brian de Garis (Perth: Uni- versity of Western Australia Press, 1988), 103-05, 244-45. 109 Robert Tonkinson, e-mail to author, 15 January 2004. Walker, in his capacity as Berndt’s head of department, found Ronald ‘pushy.’ When Ronald was senior lecturer in the psychology department, he made Walker’s task of establishing a separate department “difficult by antagonising several professors.” In fact Walker specifically asked Berndt “never to push for the creation of a chair.” Walker to author, 12 August 2007. 110 Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist, 166. 111 Elkin took an active role in the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor (President) in 1967. It was a battle royal, with Elkin succeeding in getting his man appointed. “The University is still reluctant to discuss the white-hot rages that time gener- ated. The Senate papers are closed, many of the participants dead, the present vice-chancellor [in 1985] discreet.” As a result Elkin came to occupy “a very spe- cial place in the University hierarchy”. Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist, 236. 112 Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist, 219-20. See also Gray, “Anthropological children,” 101. Berndt repeated this style of patronage with Robert Tonkinson and John E. Stanton, for example. 113 Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, “Obituary: Adolphus Peter Elkin, 1891-1979,” AIAS [Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies] Newsletter, New Series, 12 (1979): 8. 114 Tonkinson and Howard, “The Berndts,” 36 115 Berndt and Berndt, “Obituary: Adolphus Peter Elkin,” 8. 116 Gray and Munro, “Australian Aboriginal Anthropology at the Crossroads,” 351- 69; Gray, “Anthropological Children,” 77-106. 117 See Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist, 227. 118 “Native Labour and Welfare in the Northern Territory,” unpublished MS (copy in the author’s possession.) See also Abrogating Responsibility, 221-239.

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119 See Berndt and Berndt, End of an Era, x-xx, 253-271. Cf. Geoffrey Gray, “Abro- gating Responsibility? Applied Anthropology, Vesteys, Aboriginal Labour, 1944- 1946,” Australian Aboriginal Studies 2 (2001): 27-39. 120 V.S. Greaves (General Manager, University of Western Australia Press) to Elkin, 16 November 1977; Elkin to Greaves, 23 November 1977; and Elkin to the Berndts, 10 January 1978, EP: 76/1/12/272. See also Gray, Abrogating Responsi- bility, 228-234. 121 John E. Stanton (Ronald Berndt’s Literary Executor), explained to me that this was a result of land rights and native title; they were worried their material might be misused, and they would not be able offer personal and knowledgeable expla- nation of their field notes. Personal communication, 21 September 2001. 122 Quoted in Brittlebank, “‘Two people—One Life,’” 4. 123 Barnes, Humping my Drum, 246. 124 Ford, Lies, Lies, Lies, 6-7 (also 87-102). 125 E-mail, 15 September 2006, AASNet [the weblog of the Australian Anthropo- logical Society], http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/aasnet