IDNO

LS.109261.TC1

Description

On Catalogue Card: "Mabuiag & Badu
Side view of 2 girls’ heads:
"Alalan", of Badu
& "Gaiba", of Mabuiag." [manuscript in ink]

On Catalogue Card, from record P.712.ACH1, ID 8/3/2012: "2 girls, Alan (Badu), Gaiba (Mabuiag)."

Portrait showing head and shoulders of two women back-to-back. On the left is Alan (Alalan) from Badu; and on the right is Gaiba (Gawada) from Mabuiag, with a shoulder-length extended ear lobe. [Jude Philp 6/2/1998, updated JD 9/11/2009, from record P.712.ACH1, ID 8/3/2012]

Place

Oceania Australasia; Australia; Torres Strait; Mabuiag; Badu

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Alan (Alalan; Alalam; Asau); Gaiba (Gawada)

Photographer

Finsch, Otto (Dr)

Collector / Expedition

Haddon, Alfred Cort

Date

4 - 15 November 1881

Collection Name

Teaching Slide CollectionHaddon Unmounted Collection

Source

Haddon, Alfred Cort (Dr)

Format

Lantern Slide Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Publication: This photograph appears in Reports IV: plate II. Fig 1 and 2, to illustrate ear elongation and hair styles. The plate has the caption "Fig. 1 Alalan, Badu. Fig. 2 Gaiba, Mabuiag (pp. 9, 10, 30). From a photograph by Dr Otto Finsch, 1882". [Jude Philp 6/2/1998, from record, P.712.ACH1, ID 8/3/2012]

Related Archive: In ‘green box archive’ C46/1 on back of Reports proof is written " Otto Finsch 2 Badu women Alalan (Badu) + Gaiba (Mabuiag). Alalam or Asau wife of Iola of Badu. Gaiba or Gawada wife of Paipi. Photo by O. Finsch 1882 checked by A.C.H. 1898." [Jude Philp 11/3/1999, from record, P.712.ACH1, ID 8/3/2012]

Photographer: Haddon notes that ‘his good friend’ Dr Otto Finsch was at Mabuiag November 1882. The glass plate negative envelope identifies this as one of his Mabuiag photographs. [Jude Philp 6/2/1998, JD 2/4/2011, from record, P.712.ACH1, ID 8/3/2012]

Bibliographical Reference: From Report I: page 13 "Dr O Finsch, who explored so much of the northern coast of New Guinea, paid a visit to Torres Straits in 1882, but did not find much there to interest him as a collector." [Jude Philp 6/2/1998, JD 2/4/2011, from record, P.712.ACH1, ID 8/3/2012]

Publication: Image published in 'Between wealth and poverty: Otto Finsch on Mabuyag, 1881' by Hilary Howes. In Memoirs of the Queensland Museum | Culture Volume 8, Part 1, 2015, p.237 and captioned: "FIG. 8. Photograph by Otto Finsch (c.1881) Portrait of two women back to back. Left: Alan (Alalan) from Badu, right: Gaiba (Gawada) from Mabuiag. Reproduced in Haddon (1912: Pl II fig. 1). N.22996.ACH2. Reproduction courtesy of the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge."
Related text on p.236 includes: "While on Mabuyag he produced plaster casts of a total of eight locals. Seven were men ... The eighth cast was of a young woman, Gaiba, aged around 20 (Finsch, 1909a). ... These casts, however, were not fated to join those listed in Finsch’s descriptive catalogue: all eight of them, together with those depicting people from Cape York Peninsula, were ‘irretrievably lost’ as a result of the ‘negligence’ of Finsch’s agent on Thursday Island. ...
In addition to the ill-fated plaster casts, Finsch took photographs of Gauri, Mau, Gagai, Au-ub and Gaiba, and obtained hair samples from each of them. Although the hair samples, unlike the casts, reached Berlin safely, they subsequently went missing." [JD 06/01/2021]

Date: The date was previously recorded as "November 1882" based on Haddon's note, but it is noted in Otto Finsch's fieldwork journals that he departed Thursday Island for Mabuyag on 4 November 1881. (Finsch, 1881-82: 81-83).
"Finsch departed Mabuyag on 15 November 1881, reaching Thursday Island the following day. He spent 20 November – 22 December 1881 in Somerset, far north Queensland, returning to Thursday Island just before Christmas, and in January 1882 departed Torres Strait for south-east New Guinea (Finsch, 1881-82: 118-150)." [Source: Howes 2015, pp.224, 247, JD 06/01/2021]