Historical information

'Worlingworth', Eltham, home of noted anthropologist the late Professor Donald Thomson and his wife Dorita Thomson.

Covered under Heritage Overlay, Nillumbik Planning Scheme.

Published: Nillumbik Now and Then /​ Marguerite Marshall 2008; photographs Alan King with Marguerite Marshall.; p127

Dubbed as ‘Australia’s Lawrence of Arabia’ anthropologist Donald Thomson lived much of his life in Eltham, at Banoon Road. On his retirement as Professor of Anthropology in 1968, The University of Melbourne professorial board compared Thomson to Lawrence of Arabia because of his work for Aborigines and his controversial personality.
Although Thomson is now recognised for his huge contribution, during his lifetime he suffered opposition and his life has been described as ‘tragic’.1 Thomson failed to gain the recognition as a scientist that he felt he deserved and he failed to alter government policy towards Aboriginal people. But towards the end of his life in 1970, anthropologists were moving towards the type of research he had done and the movement to grant land rights to Aborigines was strengthening.
Thomson is best known for his anthropological fieldwork in Cape York, Arnhem Land and Central Australia, but he is also known for his scholarly contributions to ornithology and ecology.
Thomson documented every aspect of the daily and ritual life of the Aboriginal world of Cape York and Arnhem Land in the 1930s and 1940s. The huge collection in Museum Victoria includes 11,000 photographs, 7500 items of material culture, 1000 botanical and zoological specimens and 4500 pages of field-notes.2 The film Ten Canoes used Thomson’s photographs as a source.
Thomson bought the Eltham property known as Worlingworth in 1934. The single-storey 60-square house standing by the Yarra River was built in 1922-23. It is one of the last in Eltham to survive with its farm setting intact. It is also one of the few substantial residences built in the Eltham Shire from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, which signalled a major change in the area towards the residential municipality it is today.3
The original section, built in the mid 1860s, of rose pink hand-made bricks and stone quarried on the property, was incorporated in the new red-brick house built in 1922.
An immense oak tree by the house grew from an acorn brought by Patrick Armstrong who first bought the land in March 14, 1862.
Armstrong named Worlingworth after his forbears’ village in Suffolk, England. Worlingworth saw grand days when Commander Alan A Barlee (R.N.) bought it in 1922 after winning the Calcutta Sweep. The property then included a nine-hole golf course, a tennis court, a bowling green, a boathouse and a boat-ramp.4
For most of his career Thomson, who was born in 1901, was attached to The University of Melbourne.
In 1935 he represented the Commonwealth Government at Caledon Bay in east Arnhem Land to investigate and mediate for four Aborigines accused of killing five Japanese and three Europeans.
In 1938 Thomson was awarded a PhD in Anthropology at Cambridge University, and during his career, he received several medals from British Societies, who perhaps appreciated his work better than their Australian counterparts.
From World War Two, Thomson suffered a string of hardships, beginning with severe wounding in Dutch New Guinea (for his military service in New Guinea he was awarded an OBE) and he was invalided from service in 1944. That year he was diagnosed with diabetes.
A fire in 1946 destroyed what Thomson regarded as perhaps the best record he had made of Aboriginal life – the 20,000 feet, (6096m) of film he had shot in Arnhem Land. In 1954 he and wife, Gladys, divorced. The next year he married his technical assistant, Dorita McColl.
Several times during his career Thomson had major disagreements. For instance Professor P Elkin constantly opposed his work. He also opposed Thomson when he campaigned vigorously in 1947 against the establishment of a rocket range at Woomera, South Australia, because of the threat it posed Aborigines.
Thomson resigned in frustration from the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board in 1967, after serving for ten years, because he found that his advice was disregarded.
His ashes were scattered over Caledon Bay from the air.

Significance

This collection of almost 130 photos about places and people within the Shire of Nillumbik, an urban and rural municipality in Melbourne's north, contributes to an understanding of the history of the Shire. Published in 2008 immediately prior to the Black Saturday bushfires of February 7, 2009, it documents sites that were impacted, and in some cases destroyed by the fires. It includes photographs taken especially for the publication, creating a unique time capsule representing the Shire in the early 21st century. It remains the most recent comprehenesive publication devoted to the Shire's history connecting local residents to the past.

Physical description

Born digital image file