“As a full-blooded member of my race I think I may claim to be the first – but I hope, not the last – to produce an enduring record of our customs, beliefs and imaginings.” – David Ngunaitponi (Unaipon)
David Ngunaitponi (Unaipon) was an indigenous Australian preacher, author, and inventor born under the rule of the British Empire (1872). At age 13, he left school to work as a servant for C. B. Young, where Young encourages Unaipon’s interest in philosophy, music, and science. In the late 1890s, he traveled to Adelaide in search of opportunities to pursue any of the three fields he was passionate about, but struggled to find work due to his race. He began a job as a storeman for an Adelaide bootmaker. Regardless, he still spent years trying to create a perpetual motion machine in his spare time. While he was not able to complete this device before his passing, he engineered 19 inventions on the road to building the perpetual motion machine. One of the most prominent of these inventions was the modified sheep shears, which are still used as the basis for modern sheep shears. Tragically, due to his background, he received no financial return or credit for this innovation, besides a short newspaper report in 1910. Unaipon also invented a centrifugal motor and a mechanical propulsion device. Further, he was known as the Australian Leonardo da Vinci for his mechanical ideas for pre-WWI drawings for a helicopter based on the principle of a boomerang. Unaipon has also made strides as a writer. Obsessed with the use of correct English, he became the first indigenous Australian author to be published after being commissioned in the early 1920s to assemble a book about Aboriginal legends. Due to his writing and speaking skills, he was highly sought after as a public speaker. Unaipon was also an activist involved in political issues surrounding Aboriginal affairs supporting Aboriginal self-determination. For his work, he was awarded a Coronation medal in 1953 and received the FAW Patricia Weickhardt Award for Aboriginal writers in 1985 posthumously.