ABORIGINAL GENIUS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 141, 12 December 1923, Page 9

ABORIGINAL GENIUS

David Unaipon, the son of the aboriginal chief of the Narrinyeri tribe, a full-blooded aboriginal from the Port M'Leay Mission Station on the Lower Murray, claims to have invented a contrivance by means of which aeroplanes can rise vertically from the ground without first running along for some distance in order to gain impetus. How he accomplished this, and the devices he intends to use to raise the machine, Unaipon will not disclose at the present moment. He is applying for patent rights; but when the manufacture of some special appliances has been completed, he says that ho will be prepared to demonstrate. Unaipon is a remarkable man in more ways than one. He is a religious preacher, a research student) and an inventor of more things than thete new appliances—or whatever

they may be—for raising aeroplanes. Ine sheep-shearing machine is practioally his, for he claims to have discovered how to adapt lateral motion for the use of the machine, while the adaptation of parabolical motion to steam and internal combustion engines—thus doing away with cranks—is another of his discoveries. His sermons, which are powerful and well thought out, and, moreover often alarmingly direct, have caused no little stir in Sydney, where he has just finished conducting a series of missions. He is the product of a mission station. He was born on one, educated on one, arid has lived on one practically all his life. That he was educated he owes to his father, the chief, strangely enough, insisted upon his taking advantage of the- schooling which the Port M'Leay Station offered. The rest, apparently, is due to David himself for he is a man with a well-shaped head, big, brown, thoughtful eyes, and the stoop of the student. He talks grudgingly—save of religion—but with a conciseness that is as unusual as it is pleasing. .