Samuel White's luckless devotion to ornithology, from pioneer wealth in South Australia, taken up by son Samuel (Bert)
Samuel White and his son Samuel (Bert) White, both devoted to the study of birds.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
The run of bad luck dogging Samuel White (1835-80) didn’t not deter his son Samuel (Bert) White (1870-1954) from following him in a South Australian life devoted to ornithology.
Their bird collecting was enabled by wealth from the pioneer work of John White and his brother George who arrived among South Australia’s colonists on the Tam O’Shanter in December 1836. John White, a builder, brought materials and nine employees to set up farms, stations and a home property at Reed Beds, Fulham, at the River Torrens mouth.
John White's son Samuel arrived from England with his mother and brother in 1842. In the 1850s, Samuel White managed his father's station, Tatiara, in the colony’s south east and pursued his ornithological interests with inherited wealth after his father's death in 1860.
In 1863, he collected birds along the Murray River and later north of Lake Eyre, though forced to abandon a dray with his specimens. In 1865, an expedition west of Spencer Gulf, he found a new blue wren, malurus callinus, but lost all except two male specimens when a boat capsized. He forwarded the malurus to zoologist John Gould (who’d visited South Australia in 1839).
In 1867-68, he and brother William collected in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. He presented the South Australian Museum with bird skins from North Queensland in 1970.
In 1880, White sailed in his own vessel Elsea to Sydney, where he left his family. He sailed up the eastcoast to the Aru Islands, where he obtained birds of paradise by trading guns, shot, powder, axes and other goods with the natives. After collecting 800 to 1000 birds, trouble broke out with the crew. White fell ill, and with arsenic-damaged hands, he returned to Thursday Island, where he left the Elsea. His expedition had cost £5000 and, shorting after returning to Sydney, he died of pneumonia.
White was intelligent and highly cultured, but he published nothing and made no lasting contribution to ornithology. Despite instructions in his will, the bird collection at his home, Wetunga, at Fulham, was dispersed after his death.
He requested his executors to have his children educated in “the protestant faith, and on no account have them sent to schools or churches where the Romish faith is taught”. His son Samuel (Bert) was educated at several Adelaide private schools, he claimed to have received his best schooling at Christian Brothers' College and he retained allegiance to Catholicism. But he did follow his father’s devotion to birds.
