Dr Aedeen Cremin and author Tim Dobbyn spoke on 13 October 2025.
Read Aedeen’s review of Black, White + Colour.

Tim Dobbyn is the author of Black, White + Colour – A biography of Mervyn Bishop, Australia’s first indigenous professional photographer.

Tim is a former journalist who started at Australian Associated Press in 1981 before moving to the United States in 1987 to work for Reuters. After taking a break from daily journalism, he worked freelance jobs before starting work on the Mervyn Bishop biography in 2018. He and his family have known Bishop since 1962. He lives near Washington D.C. with his wife Sheila and two impossible dogs.

Aedeen Cremin: Thank you for a beautiful book which introduced me to Mervyn Bishop, a very interesting man, who happens to be a very good artist, but is also an old family friend of yours. How is he?

Tim Dobbyn: He is now 80 years old and has had a number of medical issues but on the whole, he is well and living happily in Dubbo; his children keep an eye on him.

Aedeen Cremin: What drove you to write this?

Tim Dobbyn: I was working as journalist with Reuters in the States and got a generous pay-out when I left. But I still had the urge to write, and now I could afford to take the time to do it. Mervyn’s life was certainly a very good topic. His career was interwoven with that of Aboriginal Australia?though he never sought to capitalise on that. He was a craftsman who wanted to do the best work he could.

Aedeen Cremin: And his work is certainly very inspiring. The published book reproduces many of his images, in back and white, and of course we all know the Lingiari-and-Whitlam shot. But to me his pictures of children are enchanting, and I was charmed to read that his own favourite is that of the ‘Cousins, Ralph and Jim’, two young Aboriginal boys in a rowboat.

Tim Dobbyn: Yes, but we should not forget that he has taken many Whitefella images, which are just as evocative so we certainly can’t pigeonhole him. Mervyn himself was not particularly conscious of his Aboriginality when he started off at the Sydney Morning Herald, where all his friends and colleagues were White.

Aedeen Cremin: It was largely thanks to your father Alan Dobbyn, that Mervyn got to work at the SMH. Why did he choose to help him?

Tim Dobbyn: My late father was a Depression-era kid and strongly believed, not in charity, but in giving people a hand where he could. Mervyn of course repaid his trust by doing very good work.

Aedeen Cremin: Mervyn was often at your family home. Did you think of him as a personal friend?

Tim Dobbyn: Not really, for he seemed to me to belong to my parents’ generation, so he was their friend, not mine – though, of course, I liked him – and his wife, Elizabeth, who was also a remarkable character.

Aedeen Cremin: Part of Mervyn’s success has been his ability to get on with everybody. The observations you share in the book show him to have great charm and a sense of humour, though he has his idiosyncracies, such as playing golf.

Tim Dobbyn: There I part company with him. Golf is absolutely not my game.

Aedeen Cremin: Would Mervyn have been equally successful in an earlier time?

Tim Dobbyn: He is a hard worker and made the best of his situation, but he certainly would not have had those opportunities before World War II. It was only after the war, with an increasing need for workers that Aboriginal people started to be valued, not as citizens, but as workers.

Aedeen Cremin: Yes, I noticed that Mervyn’s father, Minty, worked as a shearer and was paid the same wage as a White man. I also noticed that Minty kept in touch with the Punjabi side of his family. Did Mervyn also do so?

Tim Dobbyn: There is large extended family on both sides and there are contacts, but not particularly close.

Aedeen Cremin: Is Mervyn religious?

Tim Dobbyn: He certainly has happy recollections of his Anglican childhood, when he was an altar boy, and the Brothers were kind to him. Today, he is pleased to live close to Dubbo’s Anglican church.

Aedeen Cremin: I was not very happy with the cover of the book, Black children in a school bus. What do you think?

Tim Dobbyn: Well, both Mervyn and I approved it, and you may be falling into the trap of seeing the children as Aboriginal, rather than just a bunch of schoolkids, some of whom are wondering ‘who is this man and why is he taking our picture?’.

Aedeen Cremin: Thank you. I look forward to your next book.

This book review is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Related story: Review: Black, White + Colour