Representations of Indigenous people have long been used to promote tourism to remote regions by colonising powers. The Santa Fe railroad’s romanticisation of Native Americans or ‘Indians’ and its glorification of western expansion are legendary (Fig 5.4).^[4] Pictures of Indigenous Australians or ‘Aborigines’ have been likewise used for tourism marketing purposes. Even before the first train rattled through Heavitree Gap into Alice Springs in 1929, tourism interests created images to entice travellers to the ‘Dead Heart’,^[5] which the government had earmarked for speedy development. This story reveals how Gwoja Tjungurrayi or Jimmy escaped from a narrow definition of Aboriginality imposed on him by tourism image-makers like Holmes, which identified him as the remnant of a vanishing ‘Stone-Age’ race. It shows how he developed relationships, created an environment and took advantage of unusual opportunities to produce counter-images and create a new understanding of Aboriginality.

This paper begins by surveying Holmes’ use of the captured images of Tjungurrayi to render Central Australia into a tourist site/sight and make it attractive to three target market groups by educating them to see and relate to place and people in particular ways while they were there. It then draws a biographical sketch of Tjungurrayi and sets his lived experiences against the stereotypical views promoted by Holmes. The story concludes with a saga of a stamp, in which Tjungurrayi’s identity and life were revealed to tourists, and a series of articles generated by a new regime of image-makers. These latter writers included Tjungurrayi in their production of images to create a new understanding of Aboriginality.