ABSTRACT
In May 1867 a young Italian scientist set out in search of 'authentic' Indigenous Australians. Aged twenty-two, Enrico Giglioli (1845-1909) was travelling around the world on the diplomatic and naturalists' expedition of the Italian warship, Magenta. When his teacher, Filippo de Filippi, died in Hong Kong, Giglioli was forced to take over as ship's naturalist, arriving in Melbourne, Victoria, a little more than thirty years after its invasion by the British. Encounters between Europeans and Indigenous people have great analytical significance, for 'even in the midst of massacre and revenge', in such meetings 'preexisting understandings, preconceptions from both sides of the encounter, were engaged, brought into confrontation and dialogue, mutual influence and ultimately mutual transformation'. Nonetheless, there was widespread agreement that Aboriginal bodies would provide evidence for 'ancestral relations' between races that had come to look different over time.
