The 100th Anniversary of the Wallal Eclipse Expedition and its historical meaning
Einstein Plate of Australia Eclipse (Wallal, Australia) - University of California Special Collection
Content warning: Some sources linked in this publication contain names or pictures of Aboriginal people who have since died (indicated by [picture]), or contain terminology considered inappropriate or racist today.
21 September 2022 was the 100th anniversary of the 1922 international expedition to observe a total solar eclipse at Wallal, on the 80 Mile Beach in Western Australia. As well as being a major scientific achievement, the Wallal Expedition also offers insights into the history of Australian science and science policy, colonial history, and changing relationships with Indigenous peoples. As the scientific history has been told in detail elsewhere, this article chiefly focuses upon the social history the Wallal expedition brings into view.
In 1922, teams of scientists from the USA, the UK, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand travelled to Wallal, and mounted parallel expeditions to Goondiwindi in Queensland and Cordillo Downs in South Australia, drawn by the chance to definitively test Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In the days before space-based telescopes, a total solar eclipse was the only way to test Einstein’s prediction that the sun’s gravitational field would bend the light of stars close to it in the sky, by comparing pictures of the position of the stars in the night sky with pictures of their apparent position in the temporary ‘night’ of an eclipse. Previous eclipse observations to test Einstein’s theory had been thwarted by World War I, clouds, and equipment failure. At cloudless Wallal, the W. W. Campbell team from the University of California’s Lick Observatory was able to photograph over 100 stars, publishing a definitive vindication of General Relativity in June 1923.
The Wallal expedition marked a significant shift in Commonwealth support for Australian astronomy and observational science. Up until World War I, the major Australian Government activity under its constitutional power over ‘astronomical and meteorological observations’ (s. 51(viii)) had been disputes with the states over whether the Commonwealth should pay the expenses of various formerly state-funded observatories. After World War I, the Australian Government became interested in science’s potential to play a ‘nation-building’ role. In 1920, the Australian Government passed the Institute for Science and Industry Act 1920 which established the Institute for Science and Industry (ISI), now CSIRO, and in 1923, after many years of delay, it formally established the Commonwealth Solar Observatory (CSO) at Mt Stromlo.
The 1922 Wallal expedition itself met with and was supported by the Hughes Government, both financially and in-kind, with the Royal Australian Navy managing its logistics and transport. Some 35 tonnes of equipment were transported, by train and boat, from Sydney to remote Wallal and back. The Australian Government’s success in managing the expedition contrasts markedly with the unsuccessful 1871 inter-colonial solar eclipse expedition to Cape York, which was marred by logistical difficulties and inter-colonial bickering, including disputes in the newspapers and an offer from the participating scientists to sell their bed-linen in order to repay the Queensland Government’s expenses.
Notwithstanding the Australian Government’s new enthusiasm, then as now government required that scientific research meet national interests. The Director of ISI assured the government and the public that the expensive Wallal observations ‘may yet prove to be… of great practical importance’. However, while scientific research often pays off, it is frequently in unexpected ways. Understanding and measuring general relativity eventually proved essential to GPS navigation systems - not something envisaged in the 1920s. Comparably, the Australian Government was persuaded to invest in the CSO at Mt Stromlo by a contemporary theory that solar fluctuations could predict drought, which was subsequently disproven. But the Mt Stromlo Observatory proved vital to Australia’s World War II effort, the birth of radio astronomy (which led to CSIRO’s development of Wi-Fi) and to understanding the expansion of the universe (no practical applications yet). Currently the WA Government states that Australia’s leading contribution to ‘big’ astronomy, the Square Kilometre Array, will have ‘applications… including oil and gas and mineral resources’.
As well as being a history of science policy, the history of Australian astronomy is also a history of colonialism and changing attitudes to Indigenous peoples. Observing the transit of Venus provided scientific cover for Captain Cook’s mission to chart and claim the southern continent. This mission was made significantly easier by the indigenous Pasifika navigator Tupaia’s geographical and astronomical knowledge, which steered Cook from Tahiti to New Zealand. In the late 19th century, the scientists’ fears of Indigenous attack in ‘unexplored’ Cape York contributed to the 1871 Queensland expedition’s failure. This frontier climate of fear also provided justification for the Queensland Native Police’s genocidal frontier violence, which continued until after World War I in the Cape.
By the time of the Wallal expedition, Indigenous knowledge was not valued, nor Indigenous people feared. While the Nyangumarta people present were apparently curious [picture] about the telescopes and eclipse, details of their opinions or beliefs were not recorded in any well-documented sources. Nevertheless, the Wallal expedition may not have been possible or successful without the expedition’s use of ‘two scores’ or more of effectively enslaved Nyangumarta people ‘attached’ to Wallal Downs station as free labour [picture]. More generally, Wallal Downs station would not have existed without the earlier brutal ‘pacification’ [inc. picture] of the north-west frontier by the Western Australian police, which made the area available for white settlers to run sheep and cattle. Today, Aboriginal participation in astronomy and space industries is increasingly valued both for their ownership of vital sites and astronomical knowledge, but both Indigenous sky knowledge and western astronomy are threatened by the rush to commercialise space.
As historian Ray Sumner has pointed out, the Wallal observations are largely uncommemorated (except at the University of Western Australia), despite their scientific importance and the public and media interest at the time. He attributes this to the incongruity of ‘big science’ with the ‘conventional’ post-Federation historical narrative of ANZAC, pioneer agriculture and ‘the sheep’s back’. The 100th anniversary, and the future total solar eclipse of 22 July 2028 (which passes over both Sydney and the northwest) are opportunities to reflect that Australia’s history is also a history of science, and the history of science is also a history of politics, colonisation, and Indigenous peoples.