The Road to Australia

The road to Australia was a very long one indeed for Russian ethnographer -- Vladimir Kabo whose lifetime passion has been the study of this comment''s Aboriginal people. Continually denied permission to travel abroad for over 30 years, I dreamed of seeing Australia with my own eyes. At last, in 1990, came the opportunity -- and the vital passport. This eventful memoir records Vladimir Kabo''s early years and education, his time at the front in the Second World War and his banishment to a labour camp during which period he began to formulate his theories about early human society. After ''rehabilitation'' he was finally able to begin his life''s work in the St Petersburg museum among its artefact treasures from Australia, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Perestroika in the late 1980s brought Australian visitors, like Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), and also the possibility of a new life in the country he had studied for so many years. An afterward by archaeologist Rhys Jones provides an appreciation of Vladimir Kabo ''s scholarly work within the context of Soviet anthropological theory and Australian Aboriginal ethnography.