Resistance in Exile: Anthony Martin Fernando, Australian Aboriginal Activist, Internationalist and Traveller in Europe

Abstract

In the late 1980s, a collection of photographs was forwarded to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies from the Australian Embassy in Berne, Switzerland. Donated by the grandson of Swiss architect and engineer Hans Buser, the collection documents his visit to Northern Australia in the late 1910s. Chronicling Buser’s contributions to the state capital, Darwin, the photographs provide evidence also of his interest in the local Aboriginal people, shown working in the trepang industry, playing cricket and performing ‘corroboree’ at the government’s Kahlin Compound.1 In one image, Buser appears as an intrepid colonial: wearing a white suit, he stands alongside three Aboriginal men adorned in body paint and carrying spears for the camera.2 Although not a settler, he was a white man in northern Australia, and he was eager to record his status as a civilizer on the fast-disappearing frontier.