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Warlpiri and Warumungu, and Donald (‘Donald Spencer’) translated into Warlmanpa (the first tape-recording of
that language). As Donald would comment later, he hadn’t told Hale that he also knew Mudburra, which explained
why no one came to learn that language from him.
He was one of few men whose knowledge of sign language, and botany, matched that of senior women.
Apart from English and the four Australian languages he knew well, he also knew Nyininy, and Alyawarre (but not
well enough to take on teaching them), and had a smattering of Tiwi, and some words of ‘Afghan’ (from cameleers).
More than polyglot, his orderly mind loved comparing and contrasting expressions within or across languages.
He was an expert, for instance, on the ‘patrilect’ affiliations of Dreamings and associated patrilineages.
His mastery of language was just a part of his extraordinary abilities. He was ambidextrous. He knew more
of motor mechanics than most people of his vintage in the area. For instance, he was proud of having owned
and maintained a Willy’s Jeep for a while in the 1960s. He was expert in knowledge of songs and ceremony, and
was involved in ceremony from Harts Range to Borroloola. His knowledge of country combined the best of the
stockman and the ‘memory man’. He was the senior authority on site clearances between Tennant Creek and Elliott
for the railway corridor and gas pipeline (and enjoyed the trips in ‘my riding horse’ helicopter).
Donald’s travel outside his home region began with various cattle droving jobs, including as far as Dajarra,
and Alice Springs. As a Banka Banka employee he once travelled to the Wards’ property Fermoy between Winton
and Longreach. In the late 1960s he worked in the Darwin area: he was employed as a butcher at Bagot Reserve
for some years before 1972, at Snake Bay and Garden Point on Bathurst Island and at HMAS Coonawarra.
He returned to Banka Banka in about 1973. The new opportunities of the Whitlam era meant for Donald the
beginning of the Kalumpurlpa outstation and cattle project. He guided a 1975 trip with Jeffery Stead to a range
west of Banka Banka, on which his tenacity was typified by the way he stuffed a flat tyre with grass to enable them
to limp back home. This trip began the paper trail for the incorporation of the Kalumbulba Aboriginal Association,
and associated outstation and cattle project, for which Donald ‘battled’ for the rest of his life (along with his
mother’s relatives Harry Bennett and Peter Toprail and their families). The outstation emerged in the 1980s;
the first in the area of what is now the Karlantijpa Land Trusts, the result of land claim hearings in 1980 and 1981
in which he was a key witness. (He was also a witness in the Warumungu and McLaren Creek land claim hearings,
as kurtungurlu for Kanturrpa country.) But he also supported the continuing existence of non-Aboriginal cattle
stations, in an appearance on Australian Broadcasting Corporation television in 1984.
In November 1975, his 19-year-old son died at Wauchope, from injuries received in a fight. Another son died
of heart attack, aged 36, about 1987.
His first trip to the south was in 1981 and 1982 when he and his wife, Norah, drove with the writer through
western Queensland to Canberra and Sydney, taking a great interest in everything. They visited the Australian
Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS), where Donald was pleased to note that recordings of languages, including
his, were archived. At the Australian Museum Donald immediately identified a displayed stone knife as being from
Renner Springs, where indeed Spencer and Gillen had collected it in 1901.
Donald attended a great number of the many meetings that characterised Aboriginal-government relations in his
last two decades. He was a member of the Central Land Council for many years, the Northern Territory Aboriginal
Education Advisory Committee, and on the committee of the Jurnkurakurr Outstation Resource Centre from its
inception (October 1983). In August 1983 Donald and Norah both were on the bus to the High Court hearing of an
appeal in the Warumungu/Alyawarra land claim, and then to the 26 January 1988 gathering in Sydney. They drove
themselves and family in the Kalambulba Association truck to the June 1988 Barunga festival and meetings.
All travel with Donald was a delight, but the best was excursions to ‘look around country’ west of the cattle
areas. These trips stepped up as part of land claim activities about the time he renounced alcohol. Site protection
trips for the proposed railway, and then the gas pipeline took place at times in the period 1981–1985, primarily
under Donald’s guidance between Tennant Creek and Newcastle Waters, especially west of Banka Banka and
Muckaty. In later years, without the pressure of land claim or site protection consultations, he guided his family
and the writer several times for many days around uninhabited areas west of Muckaty.
He was the only Aborigine in the Barkly region who effectively used a hearing aid to overcome the deafness
of his last few years. He suddenly collapsed and died during a ceremony being held at Mangarlawurru outstation
(west of Warrego, north-west of Tennant Creek) on the night of Friday 13 January 1989, and was buried on country
of his Dreaming at Marlinja (Newcastle Waters) on Saturday 4 March. He was around 70 years of age, survived by
his wife, and several children and their families.
Banka Banka journals, Fryer Library, University of Queensland; H Tuxworth Collection, Fryer Library, University of Queensland; J Dymock,
‘Sacred Sites Protection and Traditional Information Concerning the Land Affected by the Pipeline Route between Muckaty and a Point
South in the Vicinity of No. 1 Bore’, 1985; T Hosie, ‘Lilaki Country’, VHS video recordings, AAPA (Darwin), 1986; D Nash, ‘Donald
Jupurrula Graham’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1, 1989; G Negus interview, ‘This Land is My Land’, ABC Television, broadcast August
1984; J J Stead, ‘A Report on Visit to Banka Banka re Land Claims’, Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Tennant Creek, (File 75/30/l) 1975;
T G H Strehlow, ‘Report on Trip to Daly Waters’, 10 December 1938, Australian Archives, Northern Territory, CRS F126 Item 59; Transcripts
of the hearings of traditional land claims Warlmanpa, Warlpiri, Mudburra and Warumungu 1980, Kaytej Warlpiri 1981, Warumungu Alyawarra
1985, and McLaren Creek 1988.
DAVID NASH, Vol 3.
GRANT, ARCHIBALD WESLEY (ARCH) (1911– ), motor industry worker, projectionist and Presbyterian,
United and Uniting Church Minister, was born on 5 February 1911 at Timaru in New Zealand, the son of Wesley
Livesy Grant, biograph operator and draper, and his wife Eliza Margaret Grant, nee Penhall, clerk. He was educated
at schools in New Zealand and then at Gosford Intermediate High School in New South Wales, Australia After