1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land

The results of this endeavour were showcased through photographic exhibitions and a prize-winning film created in 1940, which subsequently became the foundation for Mountford's first publication Brown Men and Red Sand (1948), and his 1945 lecture tour in the United States which paved the way for the establishment of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land.

The expedition garnered domestic support due to Australia's pro-American sentiments after WWII, as the nation adjusted to post-war changes and Britain's reduced global influence.

From varying disciplinary perspectives, and under the guidance of expedition leader Charles Mountford, they investigated the Indigenous populations and the environment of Arnhem Land.

In addition to an ethnographer, archaeologist, photographer, and filmmaker, the expedition included a botanist, a mammalogist, an ichthyologist, an ornithologist, and a team of medical and nutritional scientists.

A Bulletin article in 1956 noted that the scientists collected 13,500 plants, 30,000 fish, 850 birds, 460 animals, thousands of implements, amounting to twenty-five tons,[3] and photographed and filmed in colour and black-and-white and made tracings of cave-paintings from Chasm Island, Groote Eylandt and Oenpelli.