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When the drought broke, Tjintji-wara returned to her Nyarua totem country. All was well for a time, then she
became ill, so the Manager of Tempe Downs arranged for her to be assisted the 150 kilometres to Hermannsburg
Mission. A few weeks later, he and other stockmen were astounded to see a determined figure striding towards
them. Tjintji-wara had rejected the Mission. ‘Too much soup! Too much Jesus!’, she declared.
As she grew older her eyesight began to fail, but she remained a handsome women, with a flowing walk.
Intelligent, active, tough, alert, a storehouse of knowledge of her people’s country and history—Tjintji-wara
was all of these, with a sense of humour too. It is believed that she died in her home country in about 1950.
R Clyne, Colonial Blue, 1987; D J Mulvaney, Encounters in Place, 1989; G Roheim, ‘Dreams of Women in Central Australia’, in The
Psychiatric Quarterly Supplement, vol 24, Part 1, 1950, Children of the Desert II, 1988; T G H Strehlow, Journey to Horseshoe Bend, 1969;
W H Willshire, The Aborigines of Central Australia, 1891, A Thrilling Tale of Real Life in the Wilds of Australia, 1895; police journal records
of the period; interviews with B Bowman.
R G KIMBER, Vol 2.
TJUNGURRAYI, GWOJA (ONE POUND JIMMY) (c1890–1965), Walbiri tribesman, was born in his tribal
lands in the region of Coniston Station, Central Australia, probably in the early 1890s.
He was a survivor of the infamous Coniston Massacre following the murder of the dingo trapper Frederick
Brooks at Brooks’ Soak in 1928. His father was taken prisoner by Mounted Constable Murray, but escaped and
took his family across what became the Stuart Highway into the Arltunga area in Alyawerra land. From here,
One Pound Jimmy gradually moved westwards and settled at Napperby. At Napperby One Pound Jimmy’s wife
Long Rose Nangala gave birth to Jimmy’s three sons, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri (born around 1929), and Clifford
Upamburra (Possum) Tjapaltjarri (born around 1932), with Immanuel Rutjinama Tjapaltjarri somewhere between.
The family lived a traditional lifestyle. Though this was not Walbiri country, One Pound Jimmy had many
connections to the land through his Mt Allan Dreamings.
In the late 1930s, ration depots were set up, including one at Jay Creek, and One Pound Jimmy and his
family gradually gravitated towards Jay Creek. The family trapped dingoes and sold the scalps to the depot.
They supplemented their hunter-gatherer diet with food from the government depot, especially during the harsh
drought experienced in the late 1930s. It was at this time that Jimmy probably started the carving and sale of
boomerangs to whites, and obtained the name ‘One Pound Jimmy’, which was the price he put on all his pieces.
It was in the 1940s, when the family moved from Jay Creek to the nearby Hamilton Downs Station, that
One Pound Jimmy was ‘discovered’. He was already sought after by anthropologists, including Ted Strehlow
and C P Mountford, as a guide, since his knowledge of the countryside and of its traditional associations was
unsurpassed. In the mid 1940s Charles H Holmes, the editor of Walkabout magazine, met Jimmy at the Spotted
Tiger mica mine east of Alice Springs. He described Jimmy as ‘as fine a specimen of Aboriginal manhood as you
would wish to see. Tall and lithe, with a particularly well-developed torso, broad forehead, strong features, and the
superb carriage of the unspoilt primitive native’. A Walkabout photographer was sent out to capture this ‘noble
savage’ on film, and One Pound Jimmy’s photographs appeared in Walkabout (also on the cover of the September
1950 issue), and on countless travel posters and brochures that circulated worldwide. The romantic image was an
instant success, so much so that Jimmy’s photograph was selected for the Australian eight and a half Pence and
two Shillings and six Pence stamps, which circulated between 1950 and 1966, and which sold over 99 million
during this period.
His second son Immanuel Rutjinama took holy orders to become a Lutheran pastor. The youngest boy has
today achieved as great a fame as his father—Clifford Possum’s paintings are sought after world wide, and are
hanging in the world’s most famous art galleries and museums.
One Pound Jimmy died as he lived, out in the bush on ‘walkabout’, on 28 March 1965. He was probably
over 70 at the time of his death. He was awarded a signal honour for an Aborigine of his time, obituaries in both
Northern Territory newspapers—front page heading in the Centralian Advocate, and page 2 (with photograph) in
the Northern Territory News.
Centralian Advocate, 29 April, 1965; V Johnson, The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, 1994; D Lockwood, We, the Aborigines, 1963;
Northern Territory News, 28 April 1965; Walkabout, 1 September 1950, 1 May 1958.
MICHAEL LOOS, Vol 3.
TODD, (Sir) CHARLES (1826–1910), astronomer, meteorologist and builder of the Overland Telegraph, was
born on 7 July 1826 at Islington, London, the eldest son of Griffith Todd, grocer, of Greenwich. He was educated
locally. In 1841, he became an astronomical computer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and from 1848 to
1854 was a junior assistant at Cambridge University Observatory. At Cambridge he assisted in the determination
of the longitude between the two observatories by telegraphic means—a technique he used later in readjusting the
boundary, 141st meridian, between Victoria and South Australia, in favour of the latter. In 1854, he returned to
Greenwich as Assistant Astronomer and Superintendent of the Galvanic Department responsible for sending time
signals throughout England and so began his lifelong interest in electrical engineering and telecommunications.
In 1855 at the request of the South Australian government, Sir George Airey, the Astronomer Royal, nominated
Todd to superintend the colony’s electric telegraph. Appointed with an annual salary of 400 Pounds, Todd reached
Adelaide in the ship Irene on 4 November 1855. Todd immediately saw the importance, not only of linking
Adelaide with Melbourne and Sydney, but also of linking Australia with England. Despite numerous proposals,
however, nothing eventuated until 1870 when the British Australia Telegraph Company agreed to extend the cable