This volume of original essays brings together, for the first time histories of the making and the makers of most of the major indigenous Australian museum collections.

Contents: Introduction 1 -- Nicolas Peterson, Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby -- Part I: Collecting in Its Institutional Context -- 1. Collections as Artefacts: The Making and Thinking of -- Anthropological Museum Collections 29 -- Leonn Satterthwait -- 2. Reflections in a Cracked Mirror: What Collections -- Representing 'Them' Can Say about 'Us' and the Role -- of Museum Collections 61 -- Richard Robins -- 3. An Ark of Aboriginal Relics: The Collecting Practices of -- Dr LP Winterbotham 76 -- Daniel Leo -- Part II: Collecting under the Influence of -- Evolutionism -- 4. Gentlemen Collectors: The Port Phillip District, 1835-1855 113 -- Elizabeth Willis -- 5. 'Annexing All I Can Lay Hands On': Baldwin Spencer as -- Ethnographic Collector 141 -- John Mulvaney -- 6. The Man Who Collected Everything: WE Roth 163 -- Kate Kahn -- 7. The Australian Aboriginal Collection and the Berlin -- Ethnological Museum 190 -- Janice Lally -- 8. Talking into the Wind: Collectors on the Cooper Creek, -- 1890-1910 206 -- Chris Nobbs -- 9. The Dynamics of the Collector-Curator Relationship: -- Interpreting Henry Hillier's Central Australian Collections 235 -- Ian Coates -- 10. 'Your Obedient Servant': The John Tunney Collection -- at the Western Australian Museum 255 -- Ross Chadwick -- 11. Professionals and Amateurs: Different Histories of -- Collecting in the National Ethnographic Collection 281 -- David Kaus -- Part III: Before It Is Too Late -- 12. The 'Idea behind the Artefact': Norman Tindale's -- Early Years as a Salvage Ethnographer 315 -- Philip Jones -- 13. The Reluctant Collector: Lloyd Warner 355 -- Louise Hamby -- 14. Tons and Tons of Valuable Material: The Donald Thomson -- Collection 387 -- Lindy Allen -- 15. Only Sticks and Bark: Ursula McConnel--Her Collecting -- and Collection 419 -- Anne Perusco -- 16. The Art of Collecting: Charles Pearcy Mountford 446 -- Sally May -- 17. Ethnographic and Archaeological Collections by -- FD McCarthy in the Australian Museum 472 -- Val Attenbrow -- Part IV: Transformed Collecting -- 18. 'I Did Not Set Out to Make a Collection': The Ronald and -- Catherine Berndt Collection at the Berndt Museum of -- Anthropology 511 -- John Stanton -- 19. 'The Woman with Men's Business': Helen Wurm 537 -- Margie West -- 20. Aesthete and Scholar: Two Complementary Influences on -- the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University -- ofVirginia 556 -- Margo Smith -- Contributors 580.

Includes index. Includes bibliographical references.