Edgar Almond Wells

Edgar Almond Wells (4 September 1908 – 4 May 1995) was an Australian minister in the Methodist church. He is known for his work as superintendent of the Aboriginal mission at Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia in the early 1960s, when the Yirrkala church panels and the Yirrkala bark petitions were created.

Early life and education Edgar Almond Wells was born on 4 September 1908 in Lincoln, England. He was the second son of nine children of James Robinson Wells, who worked in insurance but was also a Methodist lay preacher, and Elizabeth Agnes Wells (née Sayers).

After leaving school Wells worked with an iron, steel, and metal merchant on farm machinery. After being sentenced to a twelve-month good behaviour bond for theft at the age of 17, he migrated to Australia. He became active in the local Methodist church near Cleveland, Queensland while working on farms, and was appointed as a probationary minister at Yeppoon in 1930. As Thomas Theodor Webb (1885-1948) before him, Wells became interested in the art of the Yolngu people not only for the income it brought to the mission when sold, but also as means of to understand better the Indigenous people's culture. The Musée d'ethnographie de Genève in Switzerland holds a wooden carving of a cormorant (wurran), a clan totem collected by Wells. He encouraged the creation of bark paintings and other crafts which were made available for sale. During their time there, assisted by a Commonwealth grant, a school and a hospital were built. He respected the local culture, and used the local Gupapuyngu language in the school and in church services. Ann worked in the dispensary and store, and started writing children's stories based on Aboriginal myths. In 1963, she published an account of their ten years spent at Milingimbi.

Around 1960, Wells was appointed superintendent minister at Coolangatta in Queensland, but in 1961 the couple returned to Arnhem Land, with Wells as superintendent at Yirrkala mission, During the Wellses' time there, the Yirrkala church panels were created for the new church, which opened in July 1963. Wells to sent telegrams to Methodist Church leaders, newspaper editors, the leader of the Labor Party Opposition, and various others in protest. Leaders of the various Yolngu clans created the Yirrkala bark petitions and presented them to the House of Representatives in August 1963. Sources vary as to how much Edgar and Ann Wells helped to draft the text of the petitions, which were written in both Yolngu Matha and English, Ann typed them up. The paper petitions were attached to sheets of bark with painted borders which were adorned with images of local fish and animals.

He declined the new posting, and returned to Queensland, where he served as a circuit minister near Brisbane before retiring in 1974.

Annie died in 1979, and Wells moved to Melbourne sometime after her death. In 1971 her book This is Their Dreaming: Legends of the Panels of Aboriginal Art in the Yirrkala Church, which provides detailed descriptions of the Yirrkala Church Panels, was published by the University of Queensland. She published only one work after leaving Yirrkala, Forests Are Their Temples (1979).

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