AustLit

During the 1930s, a number of Australian writers attempted to create an indigenous form of expression that evoked the spiritual nature of Australia. Encouraged by P. R. Stephensen's Foundations of Culture in Australia, Rex Ingamells began a movement that he called Jindyworobak, an Aboriginal word found in the glossary of James Devaney's The Vanished Tribes (1929). Ingamells adopted the word (meaning 'to annex, to join') to direct reader's attention to the culture of Australia's Aborigines, believing that Australia's true character could be expressed by drawing from this source. He gave an address in Adelaide on the topic in 1937 and published a version of that address in July 1937 as an editorial in the first issue of the magazine Venture: An Australian Literary Quarterly.

The Jindyworobak movement attracted writers from many areas of Australia, providing enough material to publish the annual Jindyworobak Anthology until 1953. But Venture: An Australian Literary Quarterly survived for just one issue, containing, in addition to Ingamells' editorial, several poems and a short story by Flexmore Hudson, now known as one of the major Jindyworobak writers.

The magazine was revived in 1939 as Venture: Jindyworobak Quarterly Pamphlet, sent each quarter to members of the Jindyworobak Club. New contributors to this second series of the Jindyworobak magazine included Victor Kennedy and Max Harris (qq.v.), the latter showing signs in his poetry and prose of the modernism that would later emerge in another Adelaide magazine, Angry Penguins. When war broke out, Jindyworobak writers looked briefly at international issues, devoting the October 1939 issue of the magazine to a discussion of the role of the the creative artist during war. In February 1940 an 'Aboriginal Number' was produced, printing articles such as Dr Charles Duguid's 'The Aborigine of Australia' and C. Jutsum's 'The Unknowable Aborigine'.

Unable to finance the annual anthology and the quarterly magazine, Ingamells channelled less funds to the latter. In an attempt to continue the magazine on a small budget, the last two issues of Venture: Jindyworobak Quarterly Pamphlet were printed by Ingamells on a roneo copier. Aboriginal issues featured prominently in these last issues with several anthropological articles and excerpts from James Devaney's The Vanished Tribes supporting the Jindyworobak position. Nevertheless, Ingamells was unable to continue and the last issue of the magazine appeared in May 1940.