Chance and wagon leaving Oodnadatta, Central Australia, March 1901

Walter Baldwin Spencer, one of the founding fathers of anthropology in Australia, and Director of the then National Museum of Victoria (now Museum Victoria) from 1899 to 1928, was invited to participate as zoologist and photographer in the Horn Scientific Expedition. This was the first primarily scientific expedition to study the natural history of Central Australia. The expedition took place from May to August 1894. At the end of the Expedition, at Alice Springs in July of 1894, Spencer met Frank J. Gillen, the operator of the Alice Springs Telegraph Station and the South Australian Government Sub-Protector of Aboriginal people. Gillen had for many years maintained an interest in and concern for the Arrernte Aboriginal people.
In 1901 Spencer and Gillen set out on an expedition together to study the Arrernte people, establish 'intimate relations with the natives' and study other groups between the Arrernte and the north coast. The only other European on the expedition was mounted trooper Chance, appointed by the South Australian Government, whose 'long experience of the Centre, his tact in dealing with the natives and his general handiness in all kinds of ways useful, in fact essential, in camp, from shoeing horses to cooking' made him invaluable. Two Aboriginal men were associated with the expedition for its duration, Erlikiliakirra and Purula. Erlikiliakirra, known as Warwick to the white men, was 'first-rate' and 'could pack horses and track them up splendidly' and became indispensable as translator. Other Aboriginal men were engaged for specific tasks when the expedition party made extended stays at certain Aboriginal camps to study the inhabitants. Erlikiliakirra was also known as ‘Jim Kite’.