Roy Parkes was the Head Teacher at the Port Germein Primary School in South Australia from 1928-1939. In 1935-1936 he organised his students to interview old residents of the Port Germein area to compile 'A village survey of Port Germein' (3 vols). One of the teachers at the school, Gwenda McMurtrie, talked to some of the Aboriginal people then living at the nearby Baroota Aboriginal Reserve, and recorded a list of about 60 Nukunu words.

The Nukunu vocabulary and a series of photographs taken by Parkes between 1911 and 1935 were donated to the South Australian Museum in early 1976 by Mrs N Robinson of Jamestown. At that time Mr Parkes was living at an aged care facility at Riverton in the mid-north of South Australia.

In 1936 Tindale obtained additional information from Roy Parkes on the Nukunu people and additional vocabulary items. See letter from Parkes to Norman B Tindale (see AA 338), dated 22 March 1936 in Tindale's journal Notes on the Kaurna or Adelaide tribe (1935), pp. 92-7.