Let us proceed with a discussion of the aboriginal’s hair. As in the youthful individuals of most races of man, including the European, the Australian is born with a rudimentary, short body-hair, known as the lanugo. This growth covers practically all surfaces of the child’s figure, but is thickest on the back.

The colour of this infantile coating of hair is not, as one might have expected, black, but fair, and casts a pretty golden sheen over the sombre skin. In later adult life this growth of hair becomes stronger, and darkens to complete blackness. In ripe old age, the hairs turn grey.

Many of the old men have a remarkable hairiness of the body, amounting almost to a hypertrichosis. In these cases the hairs are up to an inch long, and cover especially thickly the back, the chest, the thighs, and buttocks (Plate VII, 1). Amongst the women quite pretentious beards are of rather frequent occurrence (Plate III, 2).

With regard to the hair which covers the scalp, we find that, in the majority of cases, it is wavy. It is by no means uncommon, however, to find the Australian’s hair distinctly frizzy; straight hair is least frequently observed. The male aboriginal generally wears his hair in long loose curls; often these are matted together artificially with grease and red ochre into long, pendant, sausage-like masses. In the central region of Australia, the men pull out the hair growing on the upper portion of the forehead, each hair being removed separately. A hair-string band is worn over the cleared portion of the forehead, and this, at the same time, keeps back the locks of hair. Very often, in the central as well as in the northern districts, the hair thus tied back is worked up with a pad of emu feathers into a chignon, which is tied round and round with human hair-string (Plate IX). The women are frequently asked to cut their hair short, and to deliver the clippings to their husbands, who work them up into coils of string, out of which they subsequently fashion hair belts and a variety of other articles in daily use. Occasionally one sees an aboriginal whose hair stands about his head after the type of a Struwwelpeter, or it may hang from the scalp like a mop. The last-named types were more plentiful on the north coast than in central Australia, but a number of cases were recorded among the Aluridja and Wongapitcha.

The men of the same west-central tribes decorate their hair with wooden pins whose surfaces they cut longitudinally over certain sections, so that the shavings, which form, curl outwards but still remain attached to the rod. The ornaments which go by the name of “elenba” remind one of trimmed skewers occasionally seen in butcher-shops. One or two of them are worn long at the back of the head (Plate IX, 2), or a number of them short, as a fringe above the forehead. The women of the same districts try to make their hair look attractive by attaching to the tips of the matted locks numerous seed-capsules of the Bloodwood eucalyptus. The hairs are rammed into the open ends of the seeds and kept there by small plugs of wood or blebs of resin. The little ornaments dangle about the forehead and shoulders and are known as “dindula” The seeds of the Currajong are similarly used. Vide Plate VI, 2.

The colour of the adult Australian’s hair is almost invariably black, but often of different intensities over different parts of the scalp. When a hair is pulled and examined under magnification, the part which had been embedded in the follicle is not infrequently discovered to be colourless or brownish.

By far the most remarkable, and genetically perhaps the most important, subject in connection with the colour of the Australian aboriginal’s hair is the juvenile blonde. In 1903, I first came across a number of children of the Ulparidja group of the Wongapitcha, in the Tomkinson Ranges, who had heads of hair of a flaxen colour. Since then, I have seen many similar cases among the Aluridja, in the Lilla Creek district, several Wongapitcha from south of the Musgrave Ranges, at Ooldea, and a limited number among the western Arunndta, on the Finke River, south of the MacDonnell Ranges. The colour of these children’s hair varied from a straw-yellow, through light brown, to dark brown (Plate X, 1).

It appeared that, towards the age of puberty, the shade became visibly deeper; after which it gradually changed to dark brown or black. This change of colour I have recently been able to watch very closely in the hair of two young gins who have been under daily observation for over four years.

Among the adults, such blondes are unknown; two or three cases of brown hair in grown-up persons, however, came under our observation among the Aluridja, west of the Finke River.

True albinism has not been authoritatively established, as existing among the Australian aboriginals. The case of a young woman was reported from the Depôt on the Victoria River, who is said to have been quite “white,” and to have had “red” eyes. This albino, I was informed, was photographed by the local constable shortly before she died in 1921.

Erythrism, too, is practically unknown; the only cases of the latter on record are four from the Tully and Bloomfield Rivers, discovered by Dr. Walter Roth. Red hair is, however, not appreciated by the aborigines, who incline to hold it to ridicule.

When, therefore, we consider the likely significance of fair-haired aborigines, from an anthropological standpoint, we cannot ignore the claims of atavism. Noticing the phenomenon so abundantly developed, as it has been our good fortune recently to record, one is inclined to behold in it a primitive feature, which was originally typical of the ancestral hordes from whom the aboriginal Australian has sprung. This assumption is strengthened by the light colour of the lanugo regularly observed in the children.

The question arises whether the dark colour of the Australian’s skin (and hair) is entirely a secondary development due to climatic influences. The superficial nature of the pigmentation in the aboriginal’s skin is in support of such reasoning. It is known that the hair of some Arctic explorers, after a protracted sojourn in the frigid zones, has turned from dark to fair; and the same has been reported of alpine guides. We shall see presently that there is evidence of great antiquity of man in Australia; his occupation of the land dating back in all probability to the early Tertiary period. Geology teaches us that the climate has fluctuated considerably since and before that time. Consequently, it is quite within reason to assume that, in the earlier days of his racial existence, there may have been no need for any considerable accumulation of pigment cells within his skin, as a means of safeguarding his system against a sun, anything like so severe as is nowadays reigning over Australia. From later Tertiary times onwards, however, the climate of central and northern Australia has been continuously hot or tropical.

We are further strengthened in our theory by the fact that the hair of the Tasmanians is known to have been generally lighter in colour than that of the Australians. Sydney Hickson even described the Tasmanian hair as light golden brown in colour. Tasmania has, we know, since the later Tertiary at all events, enjoyed a decidedly colder climate than Australia proper.

One point remains unexplained; namely, why the occurrence of light-coloured hair among Australian children should be geographically restricted. Apart from the tribal groups in central Australia, which I have mentioned, I know of no other record except one by Professor Klaatsch from a coastal district in Queensland.

The hair of an aboriginal turns grey at a riper old age than is the case of the European’s. It seems, moreover, that the hair of the women retains its colour longer than that of the men.

Baldness is comparatively rare among the aborigines; only a limited number of cases have come before the writer’s personal notice.

The old Arunndta men are very particular about their appearance. When one is stricken with baldness, he constructs a pad, resembling a skull cap, out of emu feathers, which he ties on top of his head with human hair-string and wears regularly to hide the bareness of his scalp. He refers to this feather-wig as “memba.” Aluridja men adopt a similar fashion, but call the article “lorngai” (Plate VIII).

The men all over Australia, as a rule, can produce quite comely beards, but the methods they adopt of dressing them vary according to locality. In the River Murray and other southern districts, long square full-beards were the vogue. The Yantowannta and other tribesmen of the Cooper’s Creek and Lake Eyre region turn the point of the beard back upon itself into a loop, and, by winding fur-string around it, keep it fixed in that fashion (Plate VII, 2). North of the MacDonnell Ranges, and on some of the islands off Arnhem Land, the older men keep the upper lip clean by pulling out the hairs one by one. Along the north coast, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Buccaneer Archipelago, the men over a certain age are allowed to singe off, or shave with a sharp chip of stone or shell, the entire beard including the upper lip. The women of the King Sound tribes are required to help the men remove the hairs; a man will lie for hours, with his head upon his lubra’s lap, whilst she busies herself pulling the hairs from her husband’s chin. The old men of the Cambridge Gulf tribe twist each end of the moustache and surround it with a cylindrical layer of beeswax, from which the tips project on either side like the hairs of a paint brush. The beard is divided into two equal bundles of hairs, the ends of both of which are treated in the same way as the moustache. On some of the islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago, the men shave the upper portion of the moustache below the nose, leaving only a narrow fringe of hairs, immediately above the margin of the upper lip.