Australia's Leonardo Da Vinci

Preacher, author, activist and prodigious inventor, David Unaipon was a remarkable Australian. He braved the ignorance and prejudice of White Australia and, for decades in his quiet, scholarly, courtly way, he preached his truth and pursued an astonishing sweep of interests.
                                                                                                                                     Mark McGuinness

How did the gentle face of David, son of James and Nymbulda Unaipon of the Narrinyeri people, come to smile at thousands of Australians from the $50 note they swap daily at shop counters? How did an Aboriginal boy, educated in a humble mission school at the mouth of the Murray River around 150 years ago, come to be compared to one of the Western world’s greatest geniuses - Leonardo da Vinci?

Born the bastard son of a peasant woman in a small Italian village, Leonardo da Vinci developed an unparalleled range of skills as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. In spite of his poor beginnings, he was soon plunged into a 15th century world rich with brilliant artists and inventors who nurtured what his contemporaries acknowledged as his ‘God-given talents’. He is still widely considered one of the greatest geniuses of all time.

Four centuries later and half a world away in South Australia, educational opportunities for marginalised children were much more sparse and only a handful of unlikely mentors fostered young David Unaipon’s gifts. First, his father James, the earliest of the Narrinyeri people to embrace the message of Jesus, took his young son with him as he walked his tribal land singing the songs and stories of his people and sharing the ancient biblical narratives around their campfires in his native language.
 
David absorbed his father’s intelligent way of steering between the two cultures.   I  can almost smell the perfume of the burning gum leaves and see myself sitting in a canoe while my father snares wildfowl and fish. That life had a great charm for me and I have never wanted to shake off the association of my early ... days.
 
Then came the strict but sincere George Taplin and his wife Martha, who pioneered the Port Macleay school where David soaked up maths, science, history, music and English literature at a rapid rate. James Unaipon worked with the missionary on the translation of the Gospels into the Potawolin language. George felt a deep obligation to protect the indigenous people from unscrupulous settlers who introduced sly grog and abused the tribal women. He wrote,  I think that we who are placed among them by the Providence of God and have any means of doing good to them, will be accountable to a great measure for their blood.

In 1885, at 13 years old David was taken to work in the Adelaide household of an aristocratic Scots sheep station owner and wine grower, Charles Young. He was the leader of a Christian organization concerned with Aboriginal health and welfare, passionate about education. On meeting the bright, well-instructed and well-mannered lad, Charles urged him to study philosophy, music, literature and science. Not only did the young Narrinyeri tribesman devour Shakespeare, Milton, Isaac Newton’s Laws of Physics and the Bible – he learned Latin and Greek as well!
 
Remarkably, this lad who grew up listening to the sound of clap sticks and didgeridoo sitting beside his father at tribal dances in the Coorong wetlands, mastered the complex music of Handel’s Messiah on the organ. I suspect what spoke to him was the story that inspired the music - the 3000-year-old Jewish song-line tracking the ancient prophecies of the Deliverer who would come from the Creator to rescue people of all nations.
 
David had a saying he used all his life. “If you want to know whether the Bible works, look at me.” The breadth of his achievements tells you what he meant. He saw a natural connection between many of the beliefs he learned in childhood in the beautiful Coorong and the ancient Biblical narrative. He voiced the belief that his faith was the foundation for his many talents and achievements.
 
John Bunyan’s timeless story of a man journeying on a quest for faith - Pilgrim’s Progress – must have appealed to the nomadic sensibility fostered in David by his Aboriginal father, because he memorised all 100,000 words!
 
More than that - for seventy-plus years he acted out his own solitary pilgrimage - walking from community to community telling the stories of Jesus and gathering those of his own people. Like his father, he believed there was good in their past and in spite of the dispossession and mistreatment that had done permanent damage to their culture, he searched all his life for bridging moments where Jesus brought the two cultures into conversation.
 
David was fascinated by language and spoke formal English better than most white Australians. He was the first Aboriginal to publish books, in particular the Aboriginal Dreaming stories to ensure "an enduring record of our customs, beliefs, and imaginings." Tragically, he was denied credit for this seminal work Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals.

David is best known as an inventor and it’s clear that it was his faith that harnessed his boundless curiosity.  Between 1909 and 1944 he made patent applications for some 19 other inventions, but the patents lapsed. His fascination for perpetual motion led him to figure out how to turn the formerly circular motion of the cutting blade into a more efficient horizontal movement, revolutionising Australia’s shearing industry. He lacked the funds to develop his ingenious idea and it was stolen from him and widely adopted.
 
Decades before helicopters took to the air, David transferred the time-tested flight of the boomerang into modern aerodynamics. In 1914, he predicted, An aeroplane can be manufactured that will rise straight into the air from the ground by application of the boomerang principle ... the boomerang is shaped to rise in the air according to the velocity with which it is propelled, and so can an aeroplane. This class of flying machine can also be carried on board ship, the immense advantages of which are obvious.
 
The genius of this Aboriginal graduate of the Port MacLeay Mission School has only been properly recognised in recent times. On reading his story, it seemed to me that David Unaipon’s greatest contribution to present-day Australia was not so much his brilliant inventions, but his understanding of the fresh opportunity that Jesus’ brave and sacrificial life offered to all people.
 
Although David encountered discrimination and neglect all his days, it was this discovery that buoyed him to serve his people both as unofficial spokesperson for Aboriginal rights and to keep walking long miles and patiently preaching it for long years to his scattered, disenfranchised people.
 
“In various places of the Bible I found the blackfellow playing a part in life’s programme ." " In this Book I learned that God made all the nations of one blood and that in Jesus Christ colour and racial distinction disappeared…In my despairing moments Providence enabled me to take heart again and continue my advocacy of the rights of the Aborigines to occupy a more worthy place in the life of the nation. (My Life Story 1954 & Memorial plaque, Point MacLeay Mission Church)