The Strehlow Collection
 Extract, H.J. Hillier's illustrations of Aboriginal material culture, Killalparina, SA, 1905 |
 Stone fighting knife (Strehlow Collection ART00015) |
 Hooked boomerang (Strehlow Collection ART00477) |
The Strehlow Research Centre provides a repository for the wealth of material gathered by TGH Strehlow during his lifetime of study of the Aboriginal people of Central Australia.
A brilliant linguist and literary scholar, Strehlow was a dedicated researcher of the social and religious traditions of the Arrernte people, amongst whom he was raised as a child. He gained the trust of the senior lore men to such an extent that they shared the most intimate secrets of men's ceremonial life with him.
The legacy of Strehlow's work is one of the most meticulously documented collections of Australian Aboriginal artefacts, songs, genealogies, photographs and film and sound recordings ever amassed. It is also one the world's largest and best documented collection of men's sacred objects from a single language group. Most of this material is still ceremonially significant and sensitive to the Aboriginal people of Central Australia, and as a result cannot be placed on public display.
The Strehlow Collection includes:
- 1 200 men's sacred ceremonial objects (tjurunga) and their documentation (which includes four-and-a-half thousand Aboriginal song verses and their stories),
- 26 hours (or 16 kilometres) of 16mm movie film of over 800 ceremonial acts,
- 150 hours of sound recordings of stories and songs,
- 8 000 still photographs and colour slides of scenes, ceremonies and Aboriginal people (including Carl Strehlow's early Hermannsburg images),
- 44 Field Diaries, 5 Office Diaries, 3 'London' Diaries and 9 Personal Diaries,
- 150 genealogies (family trees),
- Aboriginal site maps,
- TGH Strehlow's professional and personal correspondence (approximately 10 000 letters),
- Dictionary material - from turn-of-the-century wordlists and vocabularies, to more recent compilations,
- Drafts of TGH Strehlow's published and unpublished writings,
- Newspapers and cuttings compiled by TGH Strehlow, and
- TGH Strehlow’s field equipment, cameras, sound and film equipment.
