MEMOIR 
38 
to my work, and has had, as you can imagine, many anxious times. 
She is not in good health, and it would not be right for me to go out 
again; so I must regard my field work as finished—except perhaps for 
minor work which will not mean long absence from home.’ 
To this good resolution he remained true for a decade, 
during which he busied himself with plenty of useful, if less 
exciting, tasks at Melbourne. In 1923, however, he accom¬ 
panied Dr. L. Keith Ward, the Government Geologist of 
South Australia, on a fresh visit to the Macdonnell Ranges, 
a considerable area of ground being covered. On this occa¬ 
sion he was delighted when an old Arunta, whom he had 
seen last in 1896, greeted him with the words, 'Unta, Yinga, 
Udnirringita’—that is, 'You and I are Witchetty Grubs’, 
and thus recognized him as a fully initiated member of his 
own totem. Finally, in 1926, Spencer repaired once more to 
Alice Springs and, sadly conscious as he must have been at 
every turn of the absence of his friend Gillen, exerted himself 
to put the finishing touches to their work by revising it 
thoroughly and, so far as it was any longer possible in the 
demoralized condition of the natives, to amplify it as well. 
On this latter journey, as one learns from an article in The 
Australasian ., 'he travelled in an open dray laden with pro¬ 
visions for a Central Australian station, took “pot luck” for 
such food as he could get, and lived again among the Arunta 
as one of them’. Spencer was lucky to find at the station an 
old friend in Sergeant Stott, with whom he had worked many 
years before at Borraloola on the Gulf. With his help he got 
into touch with another old acquaintance of 1896, this time 
a man of the Irriakura (a plant bulb) totem, together with 
two other old men, each reckoned an Oknirrabata or sage, 
the one being a Wild Dog, Gnoilya, and the other, a Wild 
Cat, Achilpa. These latest researches were incorporated in 
The Arunta: a Study of a Stone Age-people (Macmillan, 1927), 
and go to prove that their earlier account of this people was 
