- page -
http://www.cdu.edu.au/cdupress
Go Back >> List of Entries
and exploitation of, Aborigines started some of the rumours. The rumours were very effectively stopped when,
despite being essentially a pacifist, he was drafted into the Army in 1941—shortly after the birth of his first child,
also named Theodor. He found being a Private demeaning to the point of contemplating suicide, but cheered up
when he was commissioned, and moved to Intelligence. Unfortunately, ‘Intelligence’ lacked intelligence and his
abilities were not as well used as they might have been.
During the war years, Ted was based away from the Centre, first at Enoggera in Brisbane and later at the
Royal Military College at Duntroon in Canberra. He returned home whenever leave allowed and, by war’s end, a
daughter Shirley had been born, with another son John to follow.
In 1946, he was appointed Lecturer in English Literature and Linguistics at the University of Adelaide, where
he was employed until his retirement in 1973 and was ultimately appointed Professor of Australian Linguistics in
- Almost two thirds of his life, in fact, was spent in Adelaide. Much as he was to hugely appreciate his return
journeys to Central Australia, he increasingly became an academic, and over the next 25 years produced some of
the greatest books ever written about Central Australia. First rate public lectures, and booklets, generally reached
a wider public and often covered a wider range of subject matter—Aborigines’ love of homeland and European
history; Aboriginal songs and poetry and an essentially republican perception of Australia’s destiny; the life of the
Aranda artist Albert Namatjira and a view of Australia in the Pacific and Asia rather than Europe; assimilation
as opposed to multi-culturalism, but with an enlightened approach which challenged the strict orthodoxy of
the assimilation policy. A visit to Geneva, and the ideals of the United Nations, led him to reflect on a world
civilisation. Many of his subjects of these brief, erudite statements were to be developed further in his more major
works. Of these, Aranda Traditions (1947), the prize-winning Journey to Horseshoe Bend (1969) and Songs of
Central Australia (1971) are probably the greatest. However, chapters in Australian Aboriginal Art (1964) and
Australian Aboriginal Anthropology (1970) are illustrative of other influential writings, and for anyone interested
in Central Australia’s history no work should be overlooked.
In the process of these endeavours, the son became increasingly as had been the father. He engrossed himself in
writings, and discussions with friends about his interests, yet ignored his children’s wishes for similar discussions.
He read widely of the works his father, missionary Reuther of Killalpaninna Mission, Spencer and Gillen and
many others, yet rarely acknowledged them in other than an aside or back handedly. His father’s ghost became the
albatross he could not let go. Sir Baldwin Spencer, for instance, in 1927, had cast a ‘slur’ on his father’s work—
yet, more significantly, he and Gillen had published in English to world acclaim whereas his father had delayed and
published in German to a restricted audience. For the rest of Ted’s life this haunted him. Even in Songs of Central
Australia, published 44 years after Spencer’s ‘slur’, Ted criticised Spencer and Gillen for incorrect spellings when
they had stated that they were not linguists and would do their best. And he berates them for arranging for the
performance of ceremonies that were clearly agreed to by the Aborigines of the time, even if they were latter day
dissenters. (Precisely the same criticism could be levelled against Ted, yet it would be equally invalid.)
Why did he not translate and have published his father’s work, upon which Journey to Horseshoe Bend rests
as much as it does on Ted’s reconstruction? Why did he attempt to dissuade a young historian from research on the
background and early history of the Hermannsburgers? Why are bibliographies absent from many of his works?
The answer surely lies in the God like shadow cast by his father, and jealousy of his own reputation. He did not
substantially plagiarise, yet he was strongly influenced by other works (rarely acknowledged) and ‘mined’ the
same material by way of his own genuine research. In the final analysis, though, he did acknowledge the true
sources—his Aboriginal friends and informants.
He could be charming and generous, yet friends and friendly acquaintances became enemies overnight if he
believed they had transgressed in his or his father’s areas of interest. His criticisms of C P Mountford and his
works on Ayers Rock (1965) and Winbaraku (1968) contain fair comment, but also fail to acknowledge that
which is new or unique and are often pedantic and personal. That his father and he wrote of such mythological
journeyings as had Mountford, but had not received the latter’s popular acclaim, goes a long way towards such an
explanation. And that Mountford received honorary degrees goes a considerable way further. From his childhood,
Ted had wished for a father who would reach out and reward him by simply unbending from his stern attitude.
He had sought a scholarship, a prize, in his adolescence and had been rejected by a father figure academic. He had
been crushed in his rank of Private and elated when the Army, that monolithic ‘male’ exemplified by the famous
Kitchener recruiting poster, had rewarded him with promotion. Now the university was his father figure, handing
out rewards to the ‘wrong’ people. Even back in 1959 when, in the interests of justice in a democracy, he gave
expert testimony on behalf of Rupert Maxwell Stuart (accused of rape and murder), justice turned out to be a
stern wide eyed patriarchal male rather than a blindfolded woman. Strehlow angered ‘the Establishment’ and felt,
though there appears to have been no truth in it, that the hierarchy of the University of Adelaide cold-shouldered
him.
At about this time it seems that tensions began to increase in both his academic world and family life. Three of
his assistants felt obliged to resign over his unreasonable demands and actions. And while Strehlow reached out
for acclaim from his fellow academics, he failed to unbend and, like his father, did not reach out to share with
his children his interests and writings. His grants, extremely substantial, enabled him to do the work that both he
and his supporters desired, yet the fruits of the research became personal collections when clearly there had been
understanding that the University of Adelaide and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) would
directly benefit.
In the late 1960s he was, in the words of one of his sons, suffering a ‘mid life’ crisis—largely self-inflicted.
He fell in love with Kathleen Stuart, herself married and with a family, and totally cut himself off from Bertha and
his children. He and Kathleen lived together and he acknowledged her as his wife in the corrigenda to Songs of