Donald Thomson was an altogether extraordinary man. We are fortunate that at last some of his great legacy to us is being published. It was my recent fascinated delight to read his Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (Currey O’Neil, 1983) and now, only a few weeks later, to find this equally fascinating book on my plate for a short review. I knew him, although not well, when he and an assistant and his collections were housed at the University of Melbourne in various parts of that jumble of old buildings on the comer of Tin Alley and Swanston Street which also held Trikojus’s Biochemistry Department. Where he kept his Aboriginal canoes later became our departmental tearoom and what had been his office later became our Professor’s office.