EW Pearson Chinnery (1887–1972) occupied a number of senior positions in the Australian colonial administrations of the territories of Papua and New Guinea in the 1920s and 1930s. He was an important administrative official at a time when Australia took significant steps to improve the quality of the field staff in the territories. However, Chinnery is not regarded as an important figure in the history of Australian anthropology.

This paper offers some explanation as to why he is largely ignored, but seeks first to examine how and why Chinnery developed in interest in ethnology during his initial service in Papua and later when a student at Cambridge in 1919 and 1920.