W.A. Cawthorne draws avid interest in South Australian Aboriginal customs at 1855 exhibit of his 200 sketches
Aboriginal family travelling was one of W.A. Cawthorne's many watercolours and sketches.
London-born sketcher, watercolourist and schoolmaster William Anderson Cawthorne, who arrived at 17 in South Australia with his mother aboard the Amelia in 1841, showed strong interest in Aboriginal culture.
Cawthorne, who had lived in England, Scotland and South Africa, reflected a romantic attitude to wilderness in his writings and, from Victorian perspective and prejudice, he was a keen observer of Aboriginal customs. He did many sketches of Aboriginal people and their implements. Cawthorne frequently visited the “native location”, on north side of the River Torrens, known to the Kaurna people at Pirltawardli.
Among his writings, Rough Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Natives, 1844, was printed in the 1925-26 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, SA branch.
Cawthorne's early career was devoted to schoolmastering. To support himself and his sick mother (also a schoolmistress), he opened Adelaide Grammar School in Currie Street and added to income with freelance surveying and sketching. Cawthorne married his cousin Maryann Mower in 1848. They had two daughters and five sons – the eldest Charles had the second name Witto Witto, believed to be a fictitious Aboriginal name.
Cawthorne was a founder member of the South Australian Preceptors (teachers) Association (1851) and was briefly on the central board of education in 1852. He was sometime superintendent of Holy Trinity Church Sunday school.
In 1852, Cawthorne unsuccessfully joined the Victorian goldrush before becoming second headmaster of Pulteney Grammar School in Adelaide until 1855 when he opened his own Victoria Square Academy. In 1855, he exhibited more than 200 of his sketches at his academy and most interest was “excited by the department illustrative of the manners, habits and customs of the aborigines of this country”.
Cawthorne’s The Legend of Kupirri, composed in the style of Longfellow's Hiawatha, appeared in 1858 and was reprinted around the turn of the century.
