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spoken about rather than by in school texts during this era, with this poem providing a more
personalised view of Indigenous representations.
A third literary representation comes from a popular children’s book of the time, and
although not strictly a school text, was popularly used by school-aged children of the time
and was held in public and school library collections. Reinforcing the position of Indigenous
Australians within the natural environment are the popular artistic and literary works of
Brownie Downing. Of particular note are her Tinka stories, told in colourfully illustrated
children’s storybooks. One such book, Tinka and his friends (Downing & Mansfield, 1964)
tells the story of Tinka, a young Indigenous boy helping Shelley, a young non-Indigenous
(white) girl who wants Tinka to use magic to help her blonde pigtails grow. Throughout the
story, Tinka is shown to be intimately connected with the natural environment, with all his
friends being native animals and Tinka himself able to work magic to make Shelley’s pigtails
grow. A sample of specific references from the text which demonstrate the positioning of
Tinka as part of the natural environment include: ‘Tinka was a piccaninny belonging to the
people who came out of the deep earth of the wide bushland which grows underneath the sun
and is called Australia’ (Downing & Mansfield 1964, pp. 7, emphasis added). Tinka’s
residence is described in the following way:
He was known and loved by all in the bushland, for he was the child of a people
whose wisdom was old when the mountains were still only ant-hills.
…
He lived near a big lagoon…His house was like a new moon turned upside
down with a pole through the top to keep it up, and was made from the skin of a
stringy-bark tree. (Downing & Mansfield 1964, pp. 8)
The written text is accompanied by 42 full colour illustrations placed throughout the 42 page
story. An example of how Tinka is represented visually can be viewed at Source 6.33. This
reinforces the representation of Indigenous Australians as belonging to the flora and fauna of
the natural environment.
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