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Spencer and Gillen travelled by buggy from Oodnadatta to Borroloola during 1901–02, and made the first
use of wax cylinder sound recordings in the field and pioneered movie camera documentation. Their results were
published in The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904); Across Australia (1912) was a popular version.
When the administration of the Northern Territory passed to the Commonwealth, Spencer proposed an expedition
by scientists to evaluate its problems and potential. The 1911 Preliminary Scientific Expedition included Spencer
and J A Gilruth. Spencer returned to Darwin in 1912, as Special Commissioner and Chief Protector of Aborigines.
For some weeks until the arrival of Administrator Gilruth, he was the most senior official in the Territory.
His decisive actions and the opposition that they aroused anticipated the issues that characterised the Gilruth era.
His far-reaching and costly blueprint for Aboriginal welfare was tabled in Parliament in 1913, but was forgotten.
Although paternalistic and authoritarian, it advocated the creation of major reserves.
During that year, Spencer’s own fieldwork was hampered by a severe leg injury, resulting from an infected
accidental spear wound. However, he visited Melville Island and Oenpelli, where he completed significant
anthropological research and filming, assembling the major ethnographic collections described in The Native Tribes
of the Northern Territory of Australia (1914). Less successful was his 1600 kilometre return drive to Borroloola,
as a passenger in Gilruth’s car.
Spencer initiated the collection of bark paintings at Oenpelli and he donated them and his entire ethnographic
collection to the National Museum in 1917. He accumulated a major collection of paintings by Australian
impressionists and his patronage of Streeton, Heysen and Norman Lindsay, amongst others, was an important early
factor in their careers. The sale of his first collection in 1919 proved a landmark in the recognition of Australian
art. He was awarded the 1926 Society of Arts medal.
Spencer was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1900; he became a Companion of the Order of
Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) in 1906 and was knighted in 1916. His honorary doctorates were awarded
by the universities of Manchester and Melbourne. He retired from his biology chair in 1919, but he twice returned
to Central Australia. In 1923, he reported to the federal government on Aboriginal welfare issues at Alice Springs
and Hermannsburg. His recommendations were ignored once again. Another visit there during 1926 resulted
in some modifications to his anthropological views. However, The Arunta: A Stone Age People (2 vols 1927)
largely recapitulates his earlier presentation. Wanderings in Wild Australia (2 vols 1928) is a popular rewrite of
his previous books.
Spencer and his wife had two daughters; a son died at birth. Lillie Spencer was active on Melbourne social
welfare committees and was the second President of the Lyceum Club. Their interests diverged and she spent much
time in England. Around the period of his retirement, Spencer suffered from alcoholism. His later association
with Jean Hamilton evidently steadied his health. They left Australia for England in 1927 and two years later they
sailed to Tierra del Fuego. Spencer intended to compare indigenous belief systems there with those of the Aranda.
He died from angina pectoris on 14 July 1929, in an isolated snowbound hut, on Navarin Island. He was buried at
Punta Arenas, Chile.
Spencer achieved distinction in many fields of science and the arts, and people called him ‘friend’, across a
spectrum from governors and English intellectuals to unlettered frontiersmen. Late nineteenth century evolutionary
theory determined his mechanistic views on Aboriginal society. These are unacceptable today. Within his times,
however, his stern, paternalistic welfare policies were far in advance of government or popular opinion.
R R Marett & T K Penniman, Spencer’s Last Journey, 1931; D J Mulvaney & J H Calaby, So Much That Is New, 1985; W B Spencer (ed),
Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, 4 vols, 1896.
D J MULVANEY, Vol 1.SPIDER: see NGAPUNUNSTACK, ELLEN MARY (ELLA) (1929– ), medical practitioner, public servant and community organiser,
was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on 4 May 1929, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Stack. Her childhood
was spent in Sydney where she was educated at the Brigidine Convent at Randwick. At the age of 14, she received
an Australian Music Associateship for the piano from the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney.
In 1955, she graduated from the University of Sydney as a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery,
after which she practised medicine at the Eastern Suburbs Hospital in Sydney, and in 1957, she became a general
practitioner at Merrylands in New South Wales.
On 15 June 1957, Stack married Thomas (Tom) Lawler, an agricultural scientist, who later established the
economic viability of cotton growing in the Namoi Valley of New South Wales. In 1961, Dr Stack and family went
from Narrabri to Darwin where the Northern Territory Administration had secured the services of Tom Lawler to
oversee and advise on the rice crops grown in the Top End at the time and to determine suitable tropical pastures
for the Top End.
The 1960s were predominantly spent raising their three children, Matthew, Damien and Luke, and running
a private general medical practice that Dr Stack had set up in 1962. Having maintained a special interest in
obstetrics and gynaecology, by the time Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin in 1974, she had delivered approximately
2 500 Territorians.
The private medical practice in the Darwin suburb of Parap and the family home at Fannie Bay were both
destroyed by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day, 1974. Immediately after the Cyclone, Stack was given the
responsibility of caring for the health needs of 11 000 people who went through an emergency centre at Darwin
High School before being evacuated from Darwin. After the Cyclone, she remained a community health doctor
at the Peel Street Clinic where she was also instrumental in implementing health policies and procedures for