Walter Baldwin Spencer’s Diary from the Spencer and Gillen Expedition 1901-1902

The transcript below might be described as Spencer’s own ‘camp jottings’. Written for his daughters and his wife it is full of colourful descriptions of the people encountered and daily events on the expedition. It appears that Spencer wrote this diary and sent most of it back to his family Melbourne, but he also made carbon copies. Most of the original material was ultimately lodged with the Melbourne Museum and the carbon copies, which featured Spencer’s original illustration, were left with his daughter Alline Rowan who ultimately donated the materials to the Mitchell Library in Sydney. This transcript thertefore brings together the two collections in order to give a full account of the expedition from March 1901 to February 1902. Missing from the transcript below are the fascinating, original illustrations made by Spencer during the trip. To see these drawings please view the original material on the Spencer and Gillen website.2 It appears that Spencer would first draw his illustrations, which were sometimes traced from his glass plate photographs, on the un-lined paper and then write his entries using the lined overlay paper. Similarly the website contains a large number of the glass plate photographs taken during the expedition and the registration numbers of some of these have been noted in the annotations.