Walkabout: A journey with the Aboriginals

In 1940 and 1942 well-known Australian anthropologist C P Mountford made scientific expeditions into central Australia for the University of Adelaide. He travelled in desert country to the west and southwest of Alice Springs and photographed material which, in 1946 he edited into two films, Walkabout and Tjurunga. Mountford＇s films are an irreplaceable ethnographic record of the life of the Pitjantjatjara people of this area, before extended contact with European culture. In Walkabout, he narrates his experiences on a journey through central Australia with a group of Pitjantjatjara people. Walkabout records food gathering and preparation, hunting, fire making and family life as well as scenes near and on the sacred rock formation, Uluru. In 1974, at the request of the local Aboriginal community, certain sequences showing ceremony were removed from the film, and the two films were combined into one. Mountford＇s original narration has been retained.