Charles Chewings
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Charles Chewings (16 April 1859 – 9 June 1937) was an Australian geologist and anthropologist.
Chewings was the third son of John Chewings, was born at Woorkongoree near Mt Bryan, South Australia. He was educated at Prince Alfred College, Adelaide; University College, London and Heidelberg university. After engaging in sheep farming, Chewings in 1881 travelled to the Finke River in central Australia with two camels, and found them so useful that he imported more of them and started a carrying business. In 1886 he gave some account of his explorations in his The Sources of the Finke River. He went to Europe in 1898, studied geology at London and Heidelberg, and obtained the degree of Ph.D. After his return to Australia he was in Western Australia for some years reporting on mines, and going back to South Australia, began camel carrying again. He was much interested in the aborigines and made a careful study of them.
After World War I, Chewings retired to Adelaide and contributed several scientific papers relating to central Australia to the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia. He worked for some time on a dictionary of the Arunta language, and towards the end of 1936 published a good popular book on the aborigines, Back in the Stone Age. He died on 9 June 1937. He married in 1887, Miss F. M. Braddock, and there were two sons and two daughters of the marriage. Chewings was a fellow of the Geological Society of London and of the Berlin Geological Society.
[edit] Reference
- Serle, Percival. (1949). "Chewings, Charles". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
- This article incorporates text from the public domain 1949 edition of Dictionary of Australian Biography from
Project Gutenberg of Australia, which is in the public domain in Australia and the United States of America.
