John Tunney (naturalist)

John Thomas Tunney (1870–1929) was a naturalist and collector of animal specimens, active in the west and north of Australia.

Biography

Tunney was born 11 October 1870 in Kojonup, Western Australia and educated in Albany. His mother and father were Mary and James Tunney. He worked for the Post Office as a messenger, in a construction gang, and joined survey parties operating in remote regions of the state. He died near Kojonup on 10 June 1929.^[1]

Before his death, Tunney was reported to have requested that his family destroy his diaries and that was his wish was fulfilled, however, the letters between Tunney and the museum's director allow some insights into his field work.^[2]

Works

Tunney began collecting for the

Woodward loosely instructed Tunney to gather cultural material of the Aboriginal peoples, encountered while he was obtaining biological specimens, and the 'John Tunney Collection' became the foundation of the museum's records and exhibits of the local inhabitants. The methods of collection were not specified by Woodward or recorded by Tunney and this amounted to an indiscriminate and casually assembled series of objects. Tunney was untrained and inexperienced in science or anthropology, beyond his employment and obvious care as a biological collector, and did not continue to contribute to this area of research.^[2]

References