Ingamells, Rex (1913-1955), was an Australian poet who in the late 1930’s led the Jindyworobak movement in Australian literature. This movement was an attempt to combat European and American influences on Australian writing by infusing Aboriginal legends and thought processes into the old colonial literary style. Ingamells took the name jindyworobak from a book on Aboriginal culture. The book defined it as an Aboriginal word meaning to annex or join. It referred to the fusion of Aboriginal and colonial cultures that Ingamells and his followers tried to achieve. Ingamells established the Jindyworobak ideals in the pamphlet Conditional Culture (1938). The Jindyworobak movement only lasted about a decade and could not hold back the tide of internationalism that flooded into Australian literature beginning the 1940’s.
Ingamells’s own poetry first appeared in Gumtops (1935) and Forgotten People (1936). His other works included five books of verse, notably the epic The Great South Land (1951), an 8,000-line narrative poem describing Australian history. He also wrote a historical overview of the Jindyworobak movement called Jindyworobak Review 1938-48. In 1944, he edited a school anthology of Australian poetry called New Songs for an Old Land. The best of his own verse appeared in Selected Poems (1944). He was awarded the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1951.
Reginald Charles Ingamells was born on Jan. 19, 1913, in Ororoo, South Australia. He died on Dec. 30, 1955, in an automobile accident.
