Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt

Ronald M. Berndt

• Born in Adelaide, 14 July 1916.
• 1940: began to study anthropology at the University of Sydney with Professor A.P. Elkin; married Catherine H. Webb.
• Fieldwork at Ooldea (S.A.), Arnhem Land (N.T.).
• Bachelor of Arts in Anthroology (1950) and Master of Arts in Anthropology (1951), University of Sydney.
• 1950: Edgeworth David Medal for Anthropology (Royal Society of New South Wales)
• 1951-3: Fieldwork at Kainantu (PNG).
• 1953-4: Nuffield Fellowship.
• 1955: Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science (supervisor, Professor Raymond Firth).
• 1955-6: Carnegie Corporation Travelling Fellowship.
• 1956: established the Centre for Anthropology, University of Western Australia.
• 1958: Wellcome Medal, Royal Anthropological Institute.
• Head of the Department of Anthropology from 1961.
• Established the Anthropology Research Museum (now the Berndt Museum of Anthropology) in 1976.
• Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Western Australia (1956); Reader (1959); Professor (1962); Emeritus Professor (1982).
• 1987: Honorary Doctor of Literature, University of Western Australia.
• Died in Perth, 2 May 1990.

Significance

‘Ron’s legacy is immense and permanent: the huge outpouring of scholarly works; the Berndt collection which he and Catherine so generously donated to the Anthropology Research Museum...; the scholarship he fostered and nurtured; his unforgettable zest for life and work; and his deep and heartfelt concern for the appreciation of Aboriginal Australians, so many of whom he was proud to call his friends’
—Professor Robert Tonkinson, ‘Eulogy, Ronald Murray Berndt: Tuesday, May 8, 1990, Karrakatta Cemetery, Perth’, Anthropological Forum 6 (1990), p. 141.

Emeritus Professor Ronald M. Berndt’s passing leaves a great gap in Australian, and indeed world, anthropology. His outstanding contribution to knowledge of Australian Aboriginal societies was made in close collaboration with his wife, Dr Catherine, who will continue their work.

‘Prof.’, as he was widely known, was born in Adelaide to an Australian-born French Huguenot mother and a German father. He was proud of his ‘revolutionary’ forebears: not only the Huguenot connection and that he was born on Bastille Day, but that one of his ancestors was Martin Luther’s secretary. Named by his mother after the Murray River of South Australia and addressed as Murray by her among few others, his parents had a profound influence on their only child. His father was singularly unsuccessful in trying to engender an interest in football (Prof. preferring to sit in the stadium reading Gibbon or Herodotus instead of watching the game!), but his own fascination in the study of other cultures found an early admirer. They regularly took long walks, lasting all day, which took in the Adelaide Library and the South Australian Museum, as well as visiting the homes of his father’s friends, crowded with the curiosities of many cultures. He began to collect from an early age, often saving his sixpences from lunch to buy a book, or an artefact. He was photographed, at the age of 8, dressed as an ‘Aboriginal warrior’, a favoured costume! (He had intended to publish this in the Memoirs but was unable to even make a start on this writing despite his great interest in this project.)

His father encouraged him to take on some sort of professional training when he left school, and he embarked on a course (short-lived) in accountancy. He subsequently developed a strong dislike for mathematics, even though (as Head of Department he had to cope with it throughout his career.) Instead, he was attracted more and more into Anthropology, starting with a childhood fascination with the Great Pyramids of Egypt, even teaching himself to read hieroglyphics. He started his writing career with a series of modest articles on numismatics for his uncle’s country newspaper. Later, he was appointed Honorary Ethnologist in the South Australian Museum. N.B. Tindale and C.P. Mountford encouraged him to further develop his interests, and he met a number of local Aborigines, including Albert Karloan, who were regular visitors to the Museum. Karloan invited him to Murray Bridge, and here Prof. carried out his first ‘real’ research which, continued a few years later with Catherine, has been prepared for publication by Melbourne University Press as A World That Was (1993).

He was invited to join a scientific expedition to Ooldea, on the Trans-Australian Line, sponsored by the University of Adelaide Board for Anthropological Research. Professor J.B. (‘Bertie’) Cleland and Professor T. Harvey Johnson both encouraged him to obtain formal training in the discipline, and he travelled to Sydney in 1940 to study under Professor A.P. Elkin. At the time, this was the only place where Anthropology was taught in Australia.

Travelling to Sydney was a major event in a personal sense, as well, for it was there, in Elkin’s study on their second day at university, that he met his wife-to-be, Catherine Helen Webb, a 22 year old New Zealander. They were married in 1941, honeymooning in the Adelaide Hills while Prof. wrote (in collaboration with Harvey Johnson) a paper on ‘Death and Burial at Ooldea’, and Catherine painstakingly wrote an essay on Durkheim. Their dedication to their writing, and to each other, never faltered from that time.

A small grant from the Australian National Research Council enabled Prof. and Catherine to travel to Ooldea for a year's solid fieldwork, camped in their tents in the sand hills some distance from the Mission but closer to the main Aboriginal camp. Conditions were difficult: their experience at Ooldea was to provide the experience they would later need for work in even more remote communities. It also yielded a vast amount of social anthropological material on traditional Aboriginal culture in this region and the adaptations already being made to external pressures. Their Ooldea Report was published in Oceania, subsequently as an Oceania Monograph, and remains virtually the only full ethnography from the Western Desert.

While continuing their graduate studies at the University of Sydney, the Berndts’ completed a survey of Aboriginal-European relations in South Australia and western New South Wales for the A.R.C., the first ‘applied anthropology’ project to be undertaken in Australia. It was subsequently published, in a revised and very much narrower form, as From Black to White in South Australia (1951).

They were encouraged by Elkin to travel to the Northern Territory in 1944, who had arranged their appointment as anthropologists/welfare officers to the Australian Investment Agency (owned then, as now, by Lord Vesty) in order to investigate reports of atrocious Aboriginal labour conditions. The context in which this research was carried out was simply untenable: Vesty’s viewed them as ‘recruitment officers’; a role Prof. and Catherine the refused to adopt. Their persuasive questioning and quasi-independent investigation caused considerable concern among vested (no pun intended) interests in the Northern Territory. Conditions were nothing short of atrocious. The concern of the Administration reflected the support it leant to the project. Prof and Catherine decided to resign in 1946 because of constant interference and obstruction by Vesty’s company, but not before they had obtained the material they needed for their report to Elkin and the Federal Government. Their confidential report to the Government was a decisive critique of Vesty’s, and was secured for many years, only one original and two carbon copies existed. The Federal Government’s then Minister for the Interior received one; the then Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney received the other (i.e., A.P. Elkin). The third copy sat, for many years, on the Berndt’s bookshelves. A revised and expanded version of this report was published as The End of an Era (1987).

After working for several months on the Daly River, cut off from the outside world by floodwaters, they returned to the University of Sydney where Elkin appointed them to their own research positions within the Department. The small income they derived from these freed them to travel to north-eastern Arnhem Land, to Yirrkala and later elsewhere, to conduct detailed anthropological research. Their project was strongly supported by E.W. Chinnery, Director of Aboriginal Welfare in the Northern Territory, even if it had C.P. Mountford in tears at the thought that the Berndts would go before him. W. Lloyd Warner’s classic study, Black Civilization provided an inspiration for their work in this area, which they continued to visit to in several field trips right through to the early 1980s. Several major monographs resulted, including Kunapipi (1951), Djanggawul (1952), An Adjustment Movement in Arnhem Land (1962), Love Songs of Arnhem Land (1976), and Man, land and myth in Northern Australia: the Gunwinggu people (1970). Their love of Arnhem Land and its people never dwindled: they seriously contemplated settling for ever on the north-eastern coastline, but to be anthropologists, they knew they had to leave, yet to return not once but many times again.

They completed their studies, with Catherine receiving a MA with first class Honours in 1949, and Prof. his BA (1950) and MA with first class honours (1951). Prof. and Catherine knew they needed to obtain their doctorates to complete their professional training and, feeling already too closely identified with Aboriginal studies, decided to focus their attention on a very different field. Leading anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Margaret Mead urged them not to shift to the newly established Australian National University, as Nadel encouraged, but to study overseas; after deep consideration, they chose the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Firth himself.

Prof. and Catherine travelled by flying-boat from Sydney to Port Moresby, setting off the day after Catherine slipped in the street and sprained her ankle. She did not realise the hardships this would cause until she had to be sat on a donkey and was carried into the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. It was an inauspicious beginning to what they would both subsequently refer to as their most difficult research.

They worked in a district far south of Kainantu that, at the time, was only just being brought under the administration. `Pacified' was the term used by the administrators. Elkin, then maintained an armoury at the Sydney Department, and Prof. was supplied with E.H. Stanner’s pearl-handled pistol, in a leg-holster, in protection against possible hostility. It was never used, although I recall Prof. recalling that he wondered whether he would, on more than one occasion, have to fire the pistol! In the air, as a threat, needless to say. He always wondered what ever happened to the pistol, let alone the amoury.

Two periods of research between 1951 and 1953 yielded material for their doctoral dissertations, which were written up at L.S.E. after a sometimes ‘interminable’ voyage by ship to London. They greatly enjoyed their life in London, loving their walks between L.S.E. and the London University, (always via the British Museum), and between all this worked very intensely on their writing-up. Catherine focused on myth (a two volume work which, in such length, remains unpublished). Prof's Excess and Restraint (1962) caused quite a controversy among anthropologists, some of whom claimed it was ‘all made up’. Several subsequent researchers have, in their own records, concurred with some of the more ‘outlandish’ practices Prof recorded.

A Carnegie Fellowship enabled Prof. and Catherine to make their first visit to North America, on their way back from London to Australia. The experience of meeting so many anthropologists (many of whom were rather different from the ‘British school’) greatly influenced the style they sought to establish in what was to become their own department. In particular, their visits to the Lowie Museum and Kroeber Museum provided the inspirational base for the establishment of the Anthropology Research Museum at the University of Western Australia which, its Board of Management hopes, will be renamed by this University as the Berndt Museum of Anthropology in recognition of the contribution of both Prof. and Catherine to anthropology in Western Australia. The University of Western Australia remains the only tertiary institution in Western Australia to offer a full undergraduate and post-graduate programme in Social Anthropology in this state.

Although they could have returned to Sydney, they chose to settle in Perth (‘the crayfish were so cheap’, Prof. always [somewhat regretfully] recalled). They were also excited at the prospect of having the opportunity to set up an entirely new department, only the third in Australia after Sydney and the Australian National University. Prof. applied for and was subsequently offered a newly established Senior Lectureship in Anthropology at the University of Western Australia funded, on an interim basis, by the Carnegie Corporation. He immediately sought to develop teaching in the discipline.

Right from the start, Catherine was employed in a part-time capacity only, a perplexing arrangement for any newcomer such as myself, but one which reflected the discriminatory policy of the day that spouses should not be permitted to teach in the same department of the University. Many of us are familiar with F.D. McCarthy’s experience. Nevertheless, as Prof. said many, many times, the Department could simply not ever have got off the ground without her: she shared the same heavy teaching load as fully-tenured staff through all the years up to Prof’s retirement, she introduced the teaching of Linguistics at the University of Western Australia, and her contribution to the development of the Department was always by Prof. as an equal one, even though this was not recognised by the University until it conferred an Honourary Doctorate in Letters to Catherine in 1983. In 1987, Prof was similarly honoured.

To begin with, what was known as the Centre of Anthropology was housed in the Department of Psychology located in Little Irwin Street at Crawley. Catherine managed, somehow, to evade Professor Ken Walker’s attempts to sidetrack her into Psychology research, since she and Ron saw that this would have prevented the development of Anthropology as a separate discipline. The first classes were held in 1956, with six students in the second year unit; a third year unit commenced the following year, and postgraduate studies were added in 1959.

Prof. was promoted to Reader in 1959, and appointed Peter Lawrence as his first tenured staff member in 1960. The Centre became a Department in 1963, and the Chair was advertised a year later. The University Administration procrastinated considerably over the appointment, so Prof. threatened to accept the offer of a Chair at the University of California, Davis. He was suddenly offered the Western Australian Chair; the very next day!

Prof. remained Head of the Department until shortly before his retirement: at the time of his original appointment to the Chair, he was appointed Head as Professor of Anthropology. At that time, all Professors were also Heads of Department automatically, until their retirement. Nevertheless, Anthropology was the first Department to implement a Student Advisory Committee, well before the radicalisation of Australian campuses in the late 1960’s, and this continued until the mid 1970's when the political pressures that initiated it were apparently dissipated.

This period also saw the most dramatic growth in the Department, from two established staff in 1960 to sixteen full-time staff in 1978. The Department was relocated from the Fairway buildings into the long-awaited new Social Sciences Building in May 1976. This also saw the formal establishment of the Anthropology Research Museum to house collections assembled by staff and students of the Department, as well as the unsurpassed Berndt Collection. Despite the heavy demands of administration and teaching, Prof. and Catherine insisted on maintaining what some others could view as an almost obsessive regime of research writing; for the both of them, writing up the results of their research was the essential goal: all other considerations would have to be subsumed.

As the years passed, they were able to return to the field less frequently, and focused instead on writing up as much as they could. Prof often said how much he enjoyed writing, he couldn’t let a day go by without writing more than a few pages, by hand at first, in his incomparable script, then revising them and typing the draft out himself on his old Imperial ready for his typist. He never wrote in the mornings, preferring to allocate that time for administration and, in retirement, to coming into the Department for four mornings each week to tackle an ever increasing volume of correspondence.

It was in retirement, too, that he relaxed from the demands of heading the Department and the responsibilities associated with this position. He enjoyed morning tea in the Tea Room; bewailing the steady encroachment of the Department of Economics into the Social Sciences Building and, in particular, the loss of most of `his' fought-for Tea Room to computers! His fight continues!

The writing went on, deliberately and with great dedication, and he would often say ‘There just isn't enough time. I need another thirty years’. Despite the great volume of the Berndts’ publications, these really represent only the tip of an iceberg. What he really meant is that he needed another three hundred years! This really is not an exaggeration.

Sadly, he didn't get more than two of these years following his diagnosis of cancer. In fact, he died very close to two years after his diagnosis, delayed by the incompetence of his family physician. Yet he worked on, with Catherine beside him, both maintaining their well-established pattern of life as a matter of principle: he always said that the most important thing was writing. How many of us have all been told that!

They were equally determined to complete as much writing as they could. The publication of The Speaking Land (1989) prompted a further volume, this time on song poetry, as a companion volume to be called ‘The Singing Land’. Sadly, and quite ironically, Prof completed almost all of his chapters (others were being written by Catherine) and had to stop in the middle of the pentultimate chapter, entitled ‘Death and Transfiguration’, when his health suddenly deteriorated.

He shared with all of us his enthusiasm and passion for Anthropology, and in particular Aboriginal Anthropology, as an enlightened disciplinary insight that, he believed, could perhaps help people to appreciate the richness and diversity of each other's societies. His involvement in setting up the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, and years following as a member of its Council; with his wife, his involvement in the establishment of what is now known as the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council; the State (W.A.) Advisory Council on Aboriginal Affairs to the (then) Department of Native Affairs (subsequently reformed under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972 as the Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee); as founder-member of the Aboriginal Advancement Council (W.A.) Inc., and as Founding President of the Anthropological Society of Western Society: all these, and other groups, benefited from the wisdom of his experience. It is an experience so many of us have benefited from. We remember his contribution to our discipline of Anthropology.

It is with profound regret that members of the Editorial Board of Anthropological Forum mark our respect for the passing of the founder of this Journal. We offer our deepest sympathy to Dr Catherine Berndt for this immeasurable loss.

John E. Stanton

Student, Colleague and Friend

Catherine H. Berndt

• Born in Auckland, 8 May 1918.
• 1939: Bachelor of Arts in Latin, University of New Zealand, Certificate of Proficiency in Anthropology, University of Otago.
• 1940: began to study anthropology at the University of Sydney with Professor A.P. Elkin; married Ro nald M. Berndt.
• Fieldwork at Ooldea (S.A.), Arnhem Land (N.T.).
• 1949: Master of Arts (First Class Honours, Anthropology), University of Sydney.
• 1950: Edgeworth David Medal for Anthropology (Royal Society of New South Wales)
• 1950: Percy Smith Medal, University of Otago.
• 1951-3: Fieldwork at Kainantu (PNG).
• 1954-5: Winifred Cullis Award, International Federation of University Women.
• 1955: Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science (supervisor, Professor Raymond Firth).
• Visiting Tutor in Anthropology, University of Western Australia (1956-63); Visiting Lecturer and Part-time Lecturer (1963-83).
• 1983: Honorary Doctor of Literature, University of Western Australia.
• Died in Perth, 12 May 1994.

Significance

“Her total commitment, as for Ron, to the Aboriginal people of Australia continued unabated; her world was filled not only with memories of times past, but just as importantly, with the issues of today. She and Ron were both so proud that so many Aboriginal people were taking their rightful place in Australian society, just as Maori people have in her native New Zealand. Catherine was a very private person, very shy with so many ‘pink’ people, as she preferred to call the so-called ‘people without colour’. She was totally relaxed, though, and indeed voluble with the people she felt so much at home with. In many ways, most of her closest friends were Aboriginal people, Aboriginal women, people like her beloved friend and colleague Mundja at Balgo, and the deceased Mondali in Arnhem Land, and also Pinkie Mack in South Australia. There are so many more—no other Westerner has had the privilege, and indeed honour (because that is how she viewed it) of working with so many Aboriginal women across the continent, from so many different backgrounds. ” - Dr John E. Stanton, Eulogy, Catherine Helen Berndt: 23 May, 1994, Karrakatta Cemetery, Perth.

OBITUARY: CATHERINE HELEN BERNDT nee WEBB 8.5.18-12.5.94

A Sad Song of Summer

Sing, sweet cicada,
Sipping summer sap
In searing sunshine!

Don't you realise
The cruel danger that waits hidden among the flowers
To trap you in your summer flight
And still your song forever?
(Or, reckless optimist, perhaps you think
The peril is for others, not for you?)

Sing, sweet cicada,
Sipping summer sap
In searing sunshine!

How nostalgically we will recall your song
When, in a distant place, a distant time
(Or so it seems, looking ahead from the bright happiness of here and now),
We're chilled by bleaker winds and colder alien skys -—
Oh, symbol of our summer garden
And of home!

Sing, sweet cicada,
Sipping summer sap
In searing sunshine!

Catherine Helen Berndt nee Webb rejoiced in the happiness she had found with Ron Berndt; this poem, discovered in personal papers after her death, provides an evocative image of the private world of their home in Peppermint Grove, Perth, which serves to counterbalance the much more widely known public and professional world that dominated her life, and that of Ron, for such a great part.

Known best for her social anthropological research in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea, her writings on the changing status of Aboriginal women and within the arena of oral literature have, among other issues, contributed immensely to contemporary intellectual debate.

Catherine, or 'Dr Catherine' as she was known to so many of her students, was born in Auckland at her great-aunt's home, Tower House. Her mother's parents and their siblings (including her great-aunt) were born in Nova Scotia, where they had settled as religious and economic exiles from the west of Scotland. Later they had moved to Northland, New Zealand, where they purchased land from local Maori. Shipping interests followed, and her grandfather built a towered house as a look-out from which to observe his ships leaving and entering Auckland harbour.

Her mother had been raised at Tower House, as was Catherine and two of her three siblings. After her parents' separation, her mother returned with the children to Tower House: it was a place of fond memories, of playing in a seemingly extensive garden, full of enticing places to hide, or on the stair landing with its stained glass windows, sometimes laying awake at night during a storm, scared that a bogeyman might come down from the tower and through the side door beside her bedroom. The times when she was too unwell for school, she enjoyed the luxury of spending the day rugged up on the chaise in her great-aunt's bedroom, reading favourite novels of exotic and distant places. Catherine always looked back at those years at Tower House as the happiest of her childhood, mediating as they did what she always referred to as 'the great divide', the separation of her parents.

When Catherine was about ten, her father returned from Sydney and joined her mother and the other children in Wellington; Catherine remained at Tower House, attending St Cuthbert's Presbyterian girls' school after going to Ponsonby public school for her primary education. She jumped from second to fourth year, dislocating many of her social relationships with other pupils, and was permitted to take the matriculation exams a year early. After her great-aunt died, she moved to Wellington and attended Hutt Valley High, sitting for a Bursary and entering Victoria College of the University of New Zealand (now Victoria University) at the age of sixteen. No anthropology courses were taught so she studied Latin with French as a second subject.

After completing her BA, Catherine's parents again separated and her mother took all of them (including a younger, third sister) to Dunedin, where Catherine met Dr D.H. Skinner, Director of the Otago Museum, and completed a Certificate of Proficiency in Anthropology under his teaching.

Catherine had long been interested in the worlds of others. Her early reading, combined with visits by missionaries to Tower House who sometimes talked of the far away places in which they worked, had sparked this fascination; it was consolidated by the interest she had in the history of her own family, the lost knowledge of Gaelic among its members, and issues arising from Scots interaction with the English. Some of her friends were Maori who often talked about the problems their people still faced in New Zealand's oft-claimed 'harmony of races'. It is ironic that she discovered her own Maori ancestry so late in life hidden, for unknown reasons, from her and her siblings for so long. Her linkage with the tangatawhenua (the people of the land) of the Tainui canoe in northern New Zealand gave her great pride.

Catherine's mother, before her death in 1940, strongly encouraged her to pursue her interests in anthropology, and it was in Professor Elkin's room at the University of Sydney that on the first day of term she met a fellow student, the young Ronald Berndt. The following year they married and spent six months working at Ooldea. Their life-long professional collaboration had commenced: it was to continue after Ron's death in 1990, as she sought to complete a number of publications they had drafted jointly, most notably A World that was (1993).

I will not reiterate the course of their shared careers, their work among urban Aboriginal people of Adelaide and its hinterland (From Black to White in South Australia (1951 — how they both hated the title!), the Vesty's Survey (End of an Era, 1987), north-eastern Arnhem Land (Man, Land and Myth in North Australia 1970), among much else. All this has already been mentioned in the Obituary I prepared for the Institute for Ron. They both emphasised to me, and others, that they simply could not have achieved the diversity of research, publications and teaching, if it had not been for the constant support, advice, collaboration and encouragement that they gave to eachother.

More particularly, though, Catherine's own list of publications is formidable. In addition to many co-authored works, others frequently cited include Women's Changing Ceremonies in Northern Australia (1950), 'Women and the "Secret Life"' (1965), 'Monsoon and Honey Wind' (1970), 'Digging Sticks and Spears' (1970), and 'Aboriginal Women and the Notion of the "Marginal Man"' (1979). Her children's books gave her particular delight; the most successful include Pheasant and Kingfisher (1987), When the World was New (1988), This is still Rainbow Snake Country (1988) and Humans and Other Beings (1989). She would have been delighted to know that Bookshelf/Horowicz decided just prior to her death to republish North American and international trade editions of these four books, bringing them to a much wider audience.

Catherine's academic and teaching career was equally extensive. In 1950 she received the Percy Smith Medal from the University of Otago, and she and Ron each were awarded the Edgeworth David Medal for Anthropology at the University of Sydney. In 1965 both held travel grants from the Indian University Grants Commission, and in 1968 both were funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation to participate in the International Congress of Ethnological Sciences in Japan. In 1980 she received the New South Wales Premier's Special Children's Book Award, with medal, for Land of the Rainbow Snake. In 1982 she was only the seventh woman to be elected a Fellow in the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Both Catherine and Ron held Australian Research Grants Scheme (ARC) funding over many years to support the preparation of their manuscripts.

After both held a variety of part-time teaching appointments at the University of Sydney, they moved to Perth in 1957 to establish a Centre and then, ultimately, a full Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia. Although Catherine and Ron had decided early in their joint career that her teaching involvement would be on a part-time basis, in part to give her greater opportunity for writing and research without becoming preoccupied with the administration of the Department, she also frequently carried a full teaching load which was not often adequately appreciated. Recognition came, however, when in 1983 the University conferred on her an Honorary D.Litt for her services to Anthropology and the University. Like Ron, she held the position of Senior Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology from the time of his retirement until her death.

For Catherine, though, the years since Ron died were filled with sadness. As I mentioned in delivering her Eulogy, Catherine was always a very private person. Very few of us were allowed into her life; those of us who were found a very compassionate person, interested in world affairs and vitally informed of contemporary issues. She always cherished, though, her friends and colleagues; life revolved around the Department of Anthropology right up to the end. She bequeathed the Asian Collection that she and Ron had assembled over their lifetime to the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, renamed following Ron's death in recognition of their contribution to Australian anthropology. The University has recently accepted this and other bequests from the Berndts, including one to establish a Foundation to promote social anthropological research in Aboriginal Australia.

Catherine was determined to do things her way. Her sense of independence, of self, is an example to us all. She hated the idea that she was getting old, that she would not be able to complete the impossible task that she and Ron had hoped to complete, encouraging so many of us to continue to pursue these and other goals. She also hated to think that she was 'The end of an era'. It may have been a good title for a book, but she certainly did not see it as her (or Ron's) epitaph! They both saw themselves as very much of the present.

Even after Ron's death, she had a clear agenda in her mind — there was so much she wanted to do and, to her delight, she achieved some of these goals. At times, though, she told us that she felt almost paralysed, in a metaphorical sense, in her grief and sense of loss. To whom could she talk, she would ask? We, as friends and colleagues, were important substitutes for Ron, and our support and assistance was appreciated. Close friends like Susan Kaldor, Bob and Myrna Tonkinson, and Sandy Toussaint helped make her last few years comfortable and stimulating. The telephone became a vital tool, too, through which she could maintain contact with others, particularly Ron's cousin Pamela Berndt, and her own sisters Marie Rutherford and Adrienne Woodward, her brother Selwyn Webb, and their families.

For those of us who were nurtured, encouraged, questioned and corrected (how many times corrected!) by Catherine, and Ron, so many of us owe our professional careers. There was always a sense of continuity, of deliberation, of commitment, and of attention to detail — as well as passion. Her editing skills alone taught many of us how to write!

Her total commitment, as for Ron, to the Aboriginal people of Australia continued unabated; her world was filled, not only with memories of times past but, just as importantly, with the issues of today. She and Ron were both very proud to see that Aboriginal people were taking their rightful place in Australian society, just as Maori had done in her native New Zealand.

Catherine was very shy with many 'pink' people, as she preferred to call the 'people without colour'. She was rather more relaxed, indeed voluble, with the people she felt so much a part of her life. In many ways, most of her closest friends were Aboriginal people, women like her beloved friend and colleague Mundja at Balgo, the deceased Mondlami of Arnhem Land and Pinkie Mack of the River Murray, SA. There are many more — no other Westerner has had the privilege, and indeed the honour (that is the way she viewed it) of working with so many Aboriginal women across the continent. I know she would want me to pay tribute to her teachers, these Aboriginal women, her close friends and colleagues, and the many younger students of Anthropology she also knew.

For many of us, Catherine's death is a great sadness, a sadness of loss and a frustration at being able to seek her advice and guidance no longer. Perhaps she is now back with Ron, for this is what she desired beyond anything else. Catherine was very much her own person, humbled by her experience, reflective of her destiny. She has been an inspiration to us all.

John E. Stanton

Selected Publications

• Aboriginal Australian Art : A Visual Perspective / Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt with John E. Stanton
• The Aboriginal Australians : The First Pioneers / Catherine H. Berndt, Ronald M. Berndt
• Aboriginal Man In Australia : Essays In Honour Of Emeritus Prof. A.P. Elkin / edited by Ronald M. Berndt And Catherine H. Berndt
• Aboriginal Sites, Rights And Resource Development / edited by Ronald M. Berndt
• Aborigines And Change : Australia In The '70s / edited by R.M. Berndt
• Aborigines Of The West : Their Past And Their Present / edited by Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt
• An Adjustment Movement In Arnhem Land, Northern Territory Of Australia / Ronald M. Berndt
• Arnhem Land : Its History And Its People / by Ronald M. and Catherine H.Berndt
• Art In Arnhem Land / by A.P. Elkin, and Catherine and Ronald Berndt
• Australian Aboriginal Anthropology : Modern Studies In The Social Anthropology Of The Australian Aborigines / edited by Ronald M. Berndt
• Australian Aboriginal Art / edited by Roland M. Berndt
• Australian Aboriginal Art In The Anthropology Museum Of The University Of Western Australia / R.M. Berndt and J.E. Stanton
• The Australian Aboriginal Heritage : An Introduction Through The Arts / edited by Ronald M. Berndt and E.S. Phillips
• Australian Aboriginal Religion / by Ronald M. Berndt
• The Barbarians : An Anthropological View / by Catherine H. Berndt and Ronald M. Berndt
• Djanggawul : An Aboriginal Religious Cult Of North-Eastern Arnhem Land / by Ronald M. Berndt
• End Of An Era : Aboriginal Labour In The Northern Territory / Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt
• Excess And Restraint : Social Control Among A New Guinea Mountain People / Ronald M. Berndt
• The First Australians / by Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt
• From Black To White In South Australia / by R.Berndt and C.Berndt.
• Kunapipi : A Study Of An Australian Aboriginal Religious Cult / by Ronald M. Berndt
• Looking Ahead Through The Past / Ronald M. Berndt
• Love Songs Of Arnhem Land / Ronald M. Berndt
• Man, Land & Myth In North Australia : The Gunwinggu People / by Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt
• Pioneers & Settlers : The Aboriginal Australians / Catherine H. Berndt, Ronald M. Berndt
• Politics In New Guinea : Traditional And In The Context Of Change, Some Anthropological Perspectives / editors, Ronald M. Berndt, Peter Lawrence
• A Preliminary Report Of Field Work In The Ooldea Region, Western South Australia / by Ronald and Catherine Berndt
• A Question Of Choice : An Australian Aboriginal Dilemma / [edited by] Ronald M. Berndt
• The Sacred Site : The Western Arnhem Land Example / R. M. Berndt
• Sexual Behaviour In Western Arnhem Land / Ronald M. Berndt, Catherine H. Berndt
• Social Anthropological Survey Of The Warburton Blackstone And Rawlinson Ranges / by R.M. and C.H. Berndt
• Social Anthropology And Australian Aboriginal Studies : A Contemporary Overview / edited By R.M. Berndt and R. Tonkinson
• The Speaking Land : Myth And Story In Aboriginal Australia / Ronald M. Berndt, Catherine H. Berndt
• Thinking About Australian Aboriginal Welfare : With Particular Reference To Western Australia / edited by R.M. Berndt
• Three Faces Of Love : Traditional Aboriginal Song-Poetry / Ronald M. Berndt
• Which Paths Leading Where? An Anthropological Labyrinth : Silver Jubilee Address May 17th 1983 / by Ronald M. Berndt
• The World Of The First Australians / R.M. & C.H. Berndt

Full details of these titles are available from the Catalogue of the University of Western Australia Library.