Articles
Obituary
Kim Akerman
5 November 1947 - 19 September 2024.
I first met Kim in the late 1950s at the Perth Wildlife Show, held by the WA Naturalists Club in the Perth Town Hall. I was a volunteer and later represented the WA Speleological Group.
Kim, then a high school student, had a display of spectacular native dancing masks from New Guinea and I was a little concerned that the dirty fingered public might be detrimental to them. Kim’s father, Dr. John Akerman had been a medico in PNG, where these items were collected. His mother, Eve, was a journalist. While I only met Dr Akerman that once at the WLS, I kept up a social contact with Eve, then living in Thomas Street, Subiaco. My wife and I called in occasionally to hear the latest of Kim’s wanderings in the Wilds. His elder brother, an oil man, introduced me to Asian antiquities by showing me an exquisite marble head of a Chinese girl, found in Malacca.
Later I remember Kim at the Uni. He was, I think, staying at one of the colleges and his fascination with the material culture of the Aboriginals was paralleled with my interest in mineralogy. I was mucking about with part time mature age studies, a total disaster, but an interesting introduction to the ‘system’. I developed my own system and bypassed the degree beast. Kim developed a combination, but followed his own maps.
Outside Kingswood College at the bus stop Kim was practicing spear throwing skills. “Stand behind that tree and I will aim at it” His aim at that stage was inexpert, and it ricocheted off another tree and nearly speared me.
I ran into Kim on and off over the years. He, Mike Archer, and myself, with our wives had some great dinners. Later all three of us, for greatly varying reasons, divested ourselves of, or were divested by, our partners.
Kim worked in the Kimberley, learning from the old men their secrets, and being initiated into their philosophies. ‘Kakerman,’ as he was known to some, was already becoming a legend.
Years later, and multiple changes in life and self-made careers, I joined again with Kim in publishing his original anthropological works and translations from the Swedish and German masters.
All these are listed on the Hesperian Press website, with the exception of the last. That was being edited and typeset by my daughter Celene when the news came of his passing came from Kim’s wife, Val.
Kim’s health had been precarious for some years, and it was only his will power and determination to finish his self-set tasks, and the care by Val, that kept him going.
We had discussed his unique records and their disposal. He was very disturbed by the closing of anthropological records by many wokey institutions. I believe he countered this with digitisation of his photographs and distribution of hard drives among multiple institutions. He freely gave advice on the importance and value of ethnographic collections, countering the insanity of the communist state of Victoria, in their arbitrary and criminal cases of confiscation.
His carefully curated collections of ethnographica, developed in his field work, and his keen eye for the displaced items in auction houses and online, made his collections a joy to behold by those looking at the old days and old ways.
His most recent book, Scales of the Serpent, on the Aboriginal use of pearl shell, will become a great classic and the contents will resonate among tribals and collectors for generations to come.
A year ago Kimberley men visited him to be taught how to make traditional spear and flaked stone points. They took along a cameraman to record the lost art so as to train a new generation in the making of such beautiful objects.
Kim was also an artist, hand carving countless objects and figures since he was a teenager. Animals, fantastic scenes and motifs were created from mammoth ivory, whale teeth or bone and inlaid with shell, horn or amber, as well as scrimshaw on bone and whale teeth. He made his own carving and engraving tools, including the intricately carved handles.
So passes the last of the great ethnographers of Aboriginal culture. His like will not be seen again.
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Peter J. Bridge
22 September 2024
Dick Kimber
13 December 1939 – 16 September 2024
Writing this morning, 1 November, to a customer who appreciated our obituary of Kim Akerman, (d.19 Sept 2024) I said “I seem to be writing too many obits. A sign of my time” This afternoon a ‘singer of the bush’ mentioned the death of a mutual friend, Dick Kimber. I was a little shocked as this was the first I had heard of his passing.
While memory has its fair clouds, my first meeting with Dick was relating to his book Man From Arltunga which we published in 1986. He had come to Hesperian because of our interest in NT history. We were immediately taken by this expression of the REAL Australia, which fitted so well into our programme of bush history. At that time the multinats were both ignorant and antagonistic to such bush history. They still are. The combination of Dick’s writing, our determination, a few good reviewers and of course, Iris Harvey of the Arunta bookshop in Alice Springs, gave the book its christening, and long life. A reprint with further material, published jointly with the Arltunga Hotel (1996), continues to be well received. It has become a classic of the bush.
Dick’s balanced views of the oft times contentious relationships of black and white in the centre was greatly appreciated. While powerful entities were fulminating against Constable Willshire, Dick was supportive of our publishing his collected works and biography. The vast majority of antagonistic opinions came from those who had never read any of the rare original materials. But the world goes round.
I visited Dick and Marg in Alice Springs and a large correspondence ensued over the years. We were working towards another volume of his desert histories but his chronic illness finally caused that to be shelved. Then Sanghee and I visited Marge and Dick in August last year. It was good.
Dick received many honours for his dedication and work on the Territory and its people. He was happy to hear that we were working on the history of the exploration of the Central Deserts of Australia, which covers the travails of many of the people in which he was so greatly interested.
Peter J. Bridge
1 November 2024.