Across Australia

Eminent biologist Sir Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929) was born in Lancashire but moved to Australia to take up the chair in biology at the University of Melbourne in 1887. As a member of the 1894 Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Spencer made the acquaintance of F. J. Gillen, an advocate of Aboriginal rights, with whom he later formed a working partnership. Spencer and Gillen returned to Alice Springs in Central Australia in 1896–1897, to carry out observations on the local Aboriginal tribe, the Arunta. These observations were published in 1899, in The Native Tribes of Central Australia (also reissued in this series), which represented the most comprehensive study of Aboriginal customs and habits. Gillen and Spencer continued to undertake fieldwork until 1903. Volume 1 of Across Australia (published in two volumes in 1912) describes the region's topography, and the customs and beliefs of the Arunta.