Back in the Stone Age

A very detailed and intimate description of the life, personal and tribal, of the Central Australian Aboriginals; their characteristics, beliefs and superstitions; their tools and weapons; together with a discussion of the results of their contacts with the whites, their present condition and their probable future.

Dr Chewings writes with the authority of personal knowledge gained by long, patient and acute observation in his travels in Central Australia from 1881 into the 1930s. A major work with photographs from the Spencer and Gillen expeditions. Out of print for 80 years.

About the Author

Charles Chewings was born in 1859 at Woorkongoree station, near Burra, South Australia. He travelled to the Finke River in Central Australia in 1881 with two camels and found them so useful that he imported more of them and started a carrying business. He Went to Europe in 1888 and studied geology at University College London and University of Heidelberg, obtaining the degree of Ph.D.

After returning to Australia, Chewings worked in Western Australia reporting on mines before going back to South Australia to resume camel carrying. He was much interested in the Indigenous Australians and made a careful study of them. He became a mining consultant in Coolgardie, Western Australia, in 1894, and later worked in Central Australia for almost 20 years. He worked on a dictionary of the Aranda language and towards the end of 1936 published a popular book on the Indigenous Australians titled Back in the Stone Age. He died IN 1937.