Hi my name is Jane Willcock,
I am the Senior Registrar and Museum
Operations Coordinator at the UQ Anthropology Museum.
One of the key elements about 
working with a collection like this
is that our knowledge is fragmentary,
partial, it's so important to have the
input of researchers in the Academy as
well as in the community to help us
assemble stories. The story I'm going to
tell about these spears is frustratingly
fragmented but the spears are here as part
of a fairly extraordinary life story. The
name of the man who collected these, we have
it, he was very good at talking about
himself but what we don't know is who
made these, what they would have been
called where they were made and what
they would have been used for. But
luckily the man who collected them -
incredible at talking about himself so
we know these details.
His name was Arnold Wienholt, he was born
in 1877 in sort of a small town
between Warwick and Toowoomba. He came from
what we might call squattocracy, very
wealthy business and land owners. He was
educated at Eton and returned to Goomburra station where he assumed work on the
land. Got a bit bored quite quickly so
decided to just pop over and fight the Boer war.
I cannot stress to you what a
big mustache this man had, he was the
ultimate in empire. So as a young man, was
20-22 at the time, he went over fought in the
Boer War, bit disappointed his dreams of
glory were dashed by the fact that he
spent most of his year of duty in hospital.
When he returned he ran as a member
of parliament, so as a state member for
Fassifern even promising to move to the
district if got elected. His
opening campaign speech delivered his
speeches, cleared the floor, opened up a
boxing ring and then invited all comers
to go three rounds with him. Not
only was that successful in that
instance, he continued that throughout
his campaign and was elected. It was the 1910's
that worked in those days. So he served
as member for Fassifern and
then only left that position when he
decided to challenge the sitting Prime
Minister for the federal seat of Wide Bay. It's important that how he expressed,
this was, he sees this in-service of Empire,
he had explained to the residents of
Fassifern that this was his duty for the
seat within Queensland and for the Empire.
He lost.
His response to this was to go
lion hunting in Africa. We know that he
went to Namibia because that's
where he got mauled by a lion and he
went to Botswana, Angola because it is
written on this sphere and Zimbabwe.
Then at the time
that there was an invasion of Ethiopia in
1935, oh I missed his First
World War service, he did First World War
service. In 1935 he went back to Ethiopia
as there was an invasion by Italy. 
He's a 48 year old serving as a war
correspondent, 58 year old, sorry got my
 maths wrong. He's 58 year old War
correspondent for the Courier Mail, he just popped over to Ethiopia. Wrote prolifically to promote
the cause of rescuing the African continent, tried
to raise support, volunteered for the Red
Cross and arranged for the transport and
removal of people away from front line.
Still waiting to be called up, at the
start of the war he was 58 years old. When
he was 60, he sort of just
decided to enlist himself as a
reconnaissance officer. He was leaving
The Sudan for Ethiopia leading a group of
locals and was last seen in 1940 wounded
after a raid. He'd been on his
expedition for just over a week.
A couple of years later the UQ Anthropology Museum opened. These spears were part of the
founding of the museum, donated by his
wife under her remarried name.
She did not leave a note.
