David Unaipon (born David Ngunaitponi) (28 September 1872 – 7 February 1967) was a well-known Indigenous Australian of the Ngarrindjeri people, a preacher, inventor and writer. Unaipon’s contribution to Australian society helped to break many Indigenous Australian stereotypes. Unaipon is also featured on the Australian $50 note.
Born at the Point McLeay Mission on the banks of Lake Alexandrina in the Coorong region of South Australia, Unaipon was the fourth of nine children of James and Nymbulda Ngunaitponi. Unaipon began his education at the age of seven at the Point McLeay Mission School and soon became known for his intelligence, with the former secretary of the Aborigines’ Friends’ Association stating in 1887: “I only wish the majority of white boys were as bright, intelligent, well-instructed and well-mannered, as the little fellow I am now taking charge of.”
Unaipon left school at 13 to work as a servant for C.B. Young in Adelaide where Young actively encouraged Unaipon’s interest in literature, philosophy, science and music. In 1890, he returned to Point Mcleay where he apprenticed to a bootmaker and was appointed as the mission organist. In the late 1890s he travelled to Adelaide but found that his colour was a bar to employment in his trade and instead took a job as storeman for an Adelaide bootmaker before returning to work as book-keeper in the Point McLeay store.
On 4 January 1902 he married Katherine Carter (née Sumner), a Tangane woman. He was later employed by the Aborigines’ Friends’ Association as a deputationer, whereby he travelled and preached widely in seeking support for the Point McLeay Mission. Unaipon retired from preaching in 1959.
Unaipon was also an inventor and took out provisional patents for 19 inventions but was unable to afford to get any of his inventions fully patented. His most successful invention was a shearing machine that converted curvilineal motion into the straight line movement which is the basis of modern mechanical shears. Apart from a 1910 newspaper report acknowledging him as the inventor, Unaipon received no credit for this invention.
Other inventions included a centrifugal motor, a multi-radial wheel and a mechanical propulsion device. He was also known as the Australian Leonardo da Vinci for his mechanical ideas, which included pre World War I drawings for a helicopter design based on the principle of the boomerang and his research into the polarisation of light. He also spent much of his life attempting to achieve perpetual motion.
Unaipon was inquisitively religious, believing in both traditional Aboriginal dreamtime and Christian spirituality. Travelling with the Aborigines’ Friends’ Association brought him into contact with many people who were sympathetic to Aboriginal rights, and gave him the opportunity to lecture on Aboriginal culture. Although he was much in demand as a public speaker he was often refused accommodation and refreshment due to his race.
Unaipon was the first Aboriginal writer to publish in English, and was the author of numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, which retold traditional stories and argued for the rights of Aboriginals.
Some of Unaipon’s traditional Aboriginal stories were published in a 1930 book, Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals, under the name of anthropologist William Ramsay Smith. These stories have more recently been republished in their original form, under the author’s name, as Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines.
The last full-blooded member of the Portaulun (Waruwaldi) tribe, Unaipon died in the Tailem Bend Hospital on 7 February 1967 and was buried in the Raukkan (formerly Point McLeay) Mission Cemetery. He was survived by a son.
An interpretive dance based on Unaipon’s life, Unaipon, has been performed by the Bangarra Dance Theatre, while the David Unaipon Literary Award is an annual award presented for the best of writing of the year by unpublished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors.
The David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research at the University of South Australia is named after him, as is Unaipon Avenue in the Canberra suburb of Ngunnawal.
