IN THE SPRING OF 2009 I travelled to Helsinki to conduct some unique research. I was developing a British Sign Language (BSL) display system to be installed in new galleries being built by Royal Museums Greenwich in readiness for the 2012 London Olympic Games. As the Finnish winter began to thaw I made my way to the galleries of the Heureka Science Centre in Helsinki. Here I saw firsthand how Heureka handled communicating with its visitors in a multitude of languages.
Helsinki was founded as a port town in 1550 by Swedish King Gustav I and since that time has been one of the Baltic Sea’s most cosmopolitan trading hubs. This is evident in its museums, where it is not uncommon to encounter as many as six languages in labels, interactives and audio guides. At Heureka the task of communicating in so many languages was achieved by an elegant software system which meant
Museum Director and CEO Kevin Sumption in our Eora First Peoples gallery, in front of three of the museum’s Saltwater barks. These paintings explain how the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory are spiritually bound to their coastal lands, and were used as evidence in a 2008 native title case that legally confirmed Yolngu ownership of their coastal waterways. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM
that all of the museum’s digital interactives could be operated in Finnish, Swedish, English and Sami.
As a tool, language is vital in making sense and meaning of any museum experience. This is what drove the ANMM to be the first national cultural institution to ensure all of our new permanent galleries were capable of meeting the needs of Mandarin as well as English speaking visitors. When our new Action Stations pavilion opened in November last year it included interactives, films and labels on board HMAS Onslow and HMAS Vampire in English and Simplified Chinese. After all, the museum is situated in Australia’s most popular tourist precinct, Darling Harbour, which in recent years has experienced unprecedented growth in visitors from China.
In addition to making the museum more accessible and engaging to international visitors, the choice of language is also a powerful symbol of respect and
inclusiveness. I believe a critical challenge lies ahead. Today only 18 Indigenous languages in Australia are known to be spoken fully across all generations, while another 145 exist in one form or another, and many of these languages are endangered. I believe museums can play an important role in the revitalisation and reclamation of Australia’s first languages. In consultation with Indigenous communities and ANMM staff, the museum will this year start to develop new and meaningful ways to include Indigenous Australian languages across the museum, both written and spoken. In this and many other ways the museum will continue to explore the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of the world’s oldest living culture.
Kevin Sumption
Messages from ships,
caught in quarantine
Join us in April for a weekend of maritime heritage and engaging activities
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An online educational game brings convict experiences to life
Endeavour sails to south-eastern Australia
Iconic images of
Transforming a
Your
Rough
The
Living
Small
Buckaroo
World
Vale
tours, talks and excursions
Crete 1941 – Then and Now, Saltwater Songlines and more
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01 Part of a tradition that lasted for nearly two centuries, the historic inscriptions at North Head represent numerous moments, vessels and languages. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM
Mariners are often adept at creating unique mementoes, from nautical tattoos to scrimshaw and decorative ropework. As historian Dr Peter Hobbins explains, sailors and immigrants also carved a spectacular gallery of messages and images into the sandstone of Sydney’s former Quarantine Station.
‘WENT UP ON THE CLIFFS at the North Head’, wrote Arthur Livingstone in his diary on 1 May 1901. ‘On the sandstone … are several designs of house flags & ships names that have been there. Some are painted in all different colours, nicely carved & look very well’. Livingstone had just returned from China, having served with the Victorian Naval Contingent sent to quell the anti-Western uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion. Quarantined after a case of smallpox appeared on their troopship SS Chingtu, he was delighted to note that the ship had ‘been there twice preveious [sic]’. Even as he was writing, Livingstone’s comrades were busy etching their own elaborate memorial to their stay, on an isolated clifftop facing the Tasman Sea.
Like countless visitors before and since, Livingstone marvelled both at the visual displays carved and painted into the sandstone of this tilted headland, and the lengthy tradition that they perpetuated. Since 1835, when the immigrant ship
Canton was quarantined for smallpox, people detained at North Head, at the entrance to Sydney Harbour, have created a rich gallery of messages comprising names, dates, pictures, frames and sometimes indecipherable symbols.
From 2013 to 2015, a team of archaeologists and historians from the University of Sydney documented and unravelled many of these ‘stories from the sandstone’. Carefully recording each inscription – or at least those that haven’t eroded away or disappeared under lush vegetation – the archaeology team preserved a detailed record for future generations. The historians, meanwhile, focused their energies on delving into shipping records, government documents, military dossiers and private letters to connect these carved names with their creators. As the following selection of tales suggests, North Head’s historic inscriptions join Sydney Harbour to ports worldwide, linking sailors to ships, immigrants to epidemics, and gravestones to global history.
The Forest Monarch – fever, filth and a scandalous first mate
When the young Yeates family boarded the immigrant ship Forest Monarch at Southampton on 25 August 1858, they may have been cautiously optimistic about a new life in New South Wales. However, disease and tainted supplies fatally marred their voyage – and their stay at Sydney’s Quarantine Station.
Born in England in 1826, Daniel Yeates was the elder of two brothers, both of whom became stonemasons. He married Mary Anne Nixon in 1848, and they emigrated with four children: Thomas (born 1848), Sarah Ann (1850), William (1856), and Maria, delivered in 1858, just before they boarded Forest Monarch. En route to Australia, the ship’s schoolmaster noted that Sarah was suffering from poor health, while her mother and the infant William were plagued with diarrhoea and fever. William died from pneumonia on 16 October, while ‘debilitas
et scorbulus’ – weakness and scurvy – claimed Mary Anne on 22 December, just one day after their ship finally entered Sydney Harbour.
For many on board, her death came as no surprise. The captain, Thomas Russell Anderson, and first mate, Andrew MacFie, had overseen a lengthy 110-day voyage. Upon arrival it was apparent that food and water supplies had proved insufficient for such a long journey, while the few remaining provisions were spoiled. Discontent was rife, with one crewman complaining that the sailors were treated no better than slaves – and definitely worse than convicts.
On immigrant vessels of the 1850s, the ship’s surgeon superintendent was responsible not just for treating ailments, but for the hygiene, morals and spiritual wellbeing of his community of up to 1,000 passengers. While Dr Leon Crane remarked that most of the single women on the Forest Monarch behaved ‘unusually well’, he was less satisfied with the conduct of its captain and mate – especially towards women. In one instance during quarantine, while they were still confined on board, MacFie chased a woman across the deck and wrenched a cap from her hands. This scandalous behaviour resulted in a flurry of letters between Crane, Anderson, MacFie and the powerful New South Wales Colonial Secretary, Charles Cowper.
Dr Crane, nevertheless, was particularly unimpressed with this batch of immigrants, blaming their lack of diligence in cleaning the ship for the fever and measles that afflicted more than 90 passengers.
In Sydney, investigation by the Immigration Board held the shipping company in contempt of their charter agreement.
The ship’s provisions were old and of poor quality, while its milk stocks were bad and the stores of medical comforts – including porter, wine and gin – were all significantly deficient.
Furthermore, throughout the journey the Forest Monarch ’s decks had not been kept clean, allowing an accumulation of filth – meaning anything from dirt and refuse to human excrement – which ‘caused much discomfort to the passengers’.
Almost all passengers aboard sailing ships suffered sea-sickness, but serious disease outbreaks were relatively rare
Quarantined for measles on 21 December 1858, all but 21 of the Forest Monarch emigrants were released into Sydney
by year’s end, although a handful remained until early February. During Daniel Yeates’ time at North Head he carved a large, public inscription dedicated to the voyage, listing the significant crew members: Anderson, MacFie and Crane. Whether this was to commemorate a successful passage, or to hold them accountable for its ills, remains unknown. Most likely, Yeates also completed the simple but intricately embellished headstone which survives as a more intimate memorial to his wife.
Equipped with such skills, he soon secured work as a mason in rural Maitland, in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney. Later joined by his brother, the widower became an active member of the Church of England congregation, by 1862 crafting both a stone font and pulpit for the substantial fee of £662. A proud local newspaper described the pulpit as ‘one of the most perfect works of art in the colonies’ – another fine monument enduring long after Yeates’ death in 1879 from pneumonia.
Little Isaac Lowes’ solitary grave
The lonely grave of Isaac Lowes was once far from solitary. As one among 102 known burials in the Quarantine Station’s Second Burial Ground, his story echoes that of many children who sailed to the Australian colonies in the 19th century: susceptibility to disease and early death.
01 Isaac Lowes’ grave now stands alone in the former Second Burial Ground, but the nearby bush is dotted with remnants of more than 100 graves dating from 1853 to 1881.
02 The stone cairn in the foreground of the image is the only survivor of the original boundary markers erected by convicts in 1837 to mark the limits of the quarantine ground beyond. Arrivals and their possessions were brought ashore by launch to the wharf at Quarantine Beach, while those afflicted by disease were treated in the hospital on the cliff top above.
03 Before the growth of the neighbouring suburb of Manly, North Head was an isolated, if often pleasant, place of detention.
All photographs Ursula K Frederick
01 In the foreground of this spectacular view of South Head is the crossed key and anchor symbol of the German Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping line. Photograph Ursula K Frederick
02 The Aberdeen Line’s clipper Smyrna was a sister ship to the more famous Samuel Plimsoll, which spent many years as a hulk in Fremantle Harbour, Western Australia, before being destroyed as a hazard to shipping in 1947. Unknown artist, image courtesy Aberdeen Art Gallery
Discontent was rife, with one crewman complaining that the sailors were treated no better than slaves – and definitely worse than convicts
For most mid-19th-century immigrants who set out for Australia from Ireland, Scotland or England, life aboard a sailing ship was no less healthy than staying at home. Although almost all passengers suffered sea-sickness, serious disease outbreaks were relatively rare. This was largely due to the system of shipboard organisation copied from the convict system in the 1830s, requiring good ventilation, regular airing of bedding, insistence on using toilets, segregation of the sick, and provision of a doctor and matron. Children, however, bore the brunt of sickness and death en route.
On the Aberdeen Line’s Smyrna, which sailed from Plymouth on 30 May 1878, Isaac’s father Joseph Lowes became part of the ship’s sanitary regime. Under the control of surgeon superintendent Dr Charles Gibson, Joseph earned £3 during the voyage for serving as a constable responsible for hygiene and order in the ship’s married quarters. Smyrna was a sister ship to the famous clipper Samuel Plimsoll, but its ’tween-decks height was one foot (30 centimetres) lower, leading to complaints that not enough fresh air flowed through – especially when sewage leaked from the water closets and sloshed about beneath the cabins.
A blacksmith from Northumberland, England, 37-year-old Joseph Lowes travelled with his wife Frances (aged 37), sons Samuel (17) and Isaac (6), and twoyear-old twin daughters, Sarah and Margaret. Despite Joseph’s efforts, and the attentions of Dr Gibson and Matron Elizabeth Bant, upon arrival in Sydney on 19 August 1878, the ship was quarantined for numerous diseases among its 453 passengers, including measles, scarlet fever, typhoid fever and ophthalmia (eye inflammation).
Nine deaths at sea were followed by another four after landing, all victims being aged seven years or younger. Dying on 25 August, Isaac Lowes was buried alongside fellow immigrant Thomas Convoy, aged four, with both of their families remaining in quarantine until late September. While the Loweses settled in the Sydney area and had another son, Joseph, the Convoys and seven of their surviving children moved to Orange in western New South Wales.
Overlooking the station, the Second Burial Ground went out of use during the city’s smallpox epidemic of 1881. After most of its markers were pulled up and stored in 1928,
Isaac’s headstone remained among only a few left in situ, and is the only one regularly tended.
While the Smyrna sank after a collision south of the Isle of Wight, UK, in 1888, and has recently been visited by divers, an elaborate commemoration of its quarantine also remains at North Head. It was probably carved by Welsh monumental mason Benjaman Layson, whose daughter was apparently stillborn and buried at sea. Perhaps the most poignant story from the 1878 voyage, however, was that of the daughter of Cornwall immigrants Richard and Mary Hollow, born and then dying during the 81-day journey. Before her body was committed to the deep, she was christened after the ship: Smyrna Jane Hollow.
SS Chingtu – a silent party to Chinese–Australian relations
For a modest and largely forgotten vessel, SS Chingtu was a surprisingly important participant in several key developments marking Australia’s relations with China. It was quarantined in Sydney four times, and numerous North Head inscriptions still recall its Pacific journeys.
Built in Scotland for the China–Australia route, Chingtu joined sister China Navigation Company steamers Changsha, Taiyuan and Tsinan in 1886. Growing demand from the Australian colonies had driven both an increase in the number of vessels sailing to East Asia, and significant improvements in their onboard appointments and amenities – particularly refrigeration.
Nevertheless, from its delivery voyage in 1887, Chingtu was haunted by smallpox. It was detained in Sydney that February, and returned in June 1888 and again on 8 August 1893. Sailing from Hong Kong, a case of smallpox had erupted between Darwin and Thursday Island, off northern Australia. After arriving in Sydney, the ship anchored off the Quarantine Station while the two crewmen were hurried to the hospital hulk Faraway, moored just off nearby Spring Cove. Although Japanese sailor Gamornolo Takijou was re-diagnosed with mere acne, Chinese man Ah Yee remained a smallpox suspect but was eventually released.
Soon after the Australian colonies federated on 1 January 1901, Chingtu once again
anchored off North Head. Arriving from Hong Kong on 25 April, it was awaited by a flotilla of citizens and dignitaries eager to welcome home New South Wales and Victorian naval parties after eight months in China quelling the Boxer Rebellion. No longer colonials, these Australian bluejackets had joined an International Field Force that boasted soldiers and sailors from America, Austria, Britain, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan and Russia.
Smallpox, however, appeared again off Thursday Island. This time it afflicted Thomas Symonds, a member of the New South Wales Marine Light Infantry – a shortlived formation modelled on the British Royal Marines, allowing soldiers to serve with naval forces without being labelled ‘sailors’. Quarantined in Sydney, some servicemen absconded without permission, while one burned his arm with a cigar, creating a fake vaccination scar to obtain earlier release. Luckily, it seems he was not incubating smallpox.
Most personnel, however, served out their quarantine. Victorian Charles Harvey carved his name into the cliff face at North Head, alongside his rank: ‘AB2’, for ablebodied seaman. Harvey, sadly, died in Port Melbourne in 1907 after being dismembered by a train, apparently while walking home drunk. Also awaiting his return to Melbourne, Arthur Livingstone noted on 8 May that one of the New South Wales infantrymen had developed smallpox. On 21 May he added that the man had died the previous day, being interred near midnight in the Quarantine Station’s Third Burial Ground. Having survived the Chinese campaign with his brother Sydney, Charles Walter Smart still lies at North Head, forever misrepresented on his expensive headstone as ‘W. C. SMART’.
RMS Aorangi – the regular returnee
Built in 1924 by Glasgow’s Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, RMS Aorangi regularly carried mail and passengers on a trans-Pacific service between Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Operated by the Canadian–Australasian Line, the ship accommodated up to 947 passengers plus numerous staff. When launched, Aorangi was hailed as a triumph of naval architecture, one newspaper deeming it ‘the largest,
01 Exposed to weather, walkers and above all, salt-laden sea air, the Quarantine Station’s inscriptions are slowly but surely disappearing. To preserve a permanent record, University of Sydney archaeologists have measured, described, sketched and photographed over 1,500 separate carvings.
02 Researchers at work beside an inscription from SS Gunga, 1885.
03 Nautical images are a constant theme among the North Head carvings.
All photographs Ursula K Frederick
In 1975 the Quarantine Station welcomed evacuees from Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy and Vietnamese children orphaned after the fall of Saigon
the most powerful and the speediest … [and] the most luxurious and palatial vessel that has sailed the Southern Seas’. Unfortunately, its state-of-the-art facilities did not preclude passengers from contracting infections, with suspicion of smallpox seeing the vessel quarantined at North Head in 1926, 1929, 1930 and 1935.
Fortunately, no deaths occurred during any of these detentions. During the 1930 incident, however, reports about shortages, boredom and vermin at the Quarantine Station abounded. These complaints resulted in the formation of a Passengers’ Committee led by Sydney University’s outspoken lecturer in public administration, Francis Bland. A letter written from North Head to the Federal Minister for Health, Frank Anstey, criticised ‘the stained condition of much of the bed linen and the cracked crockery and decrepit cutlery’.
By the time of Aorangi ’s final quarantine in 1935, much had changed. Facilities and procedures had been upgraded, but rising immunisation rates and wireless reporting of diseases reduced the number of ships quarantined, and both the function and facilities of North Head were increasingly seen as relics. ‘As passenger traffic is growing and the old steerage class of passenger has disappeared’, remarked Arthur Metcalfe, Chief Quarantine Officer for New South Wales in 1935, ‘the Quarantine Station is not suited for modern passenger traffic’. With concerns regarding whether
the facility could handle two ships of Aorangi ’s size, only one more large liner – Strathaird – was detained before World War II, with RMS Mooltan suffering a similar fate in 1949.
A large and striking inscription in the station’s Wharf Precinct commemorates Aorangi ’s 1930 and 1935 quarantines. Its albatross may reflect imagery adorning Canadian–Australasian Line promotional materials of the era. Another, less formal text panel from 1930, painted in a black tar-like substance, suggests a more personal – and perhaps more political – story. It records the names of eight of the vessel’s crew beneath a roughly painted Southern Cross, comprising four stars as depicted on the New Zealand flag. All worked as providores on Aorangi, and the line ‘SO SAY WE ALL’ suggests a unanimous verdict – probably against their enforced stay.
From resource to relic –and back again
After World War II, rising immunisation rates, global campaigns against disease and the transition to air travel saw the Quarantine Station gradually decline into irrelevance. Serving over the 1960s and 1970s as a detention centre for stowaways and visitors whose visas had expired, it also welcomed evacuees from Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy in early 1975. Later that year it housed Vietnamese orphans rescued
during ‘Operation Babylift’ after the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War. Declared surplus in 1984, it was handed back from the Commonwealth to New South Wales, coming under the management of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Happily, the importance of the Quarantine Station’s historic inscriptions was appreciated, and they have been protected and documented over the past decades. However, with more than 1,600 carvings still remaining in place – alongside numerous gravestones and other graffiti – our stories from the sandstone have only scratched the surface of its rich history.
Led by archaeologists Associate Professor Annie Clarke and Dr Ursula Frederick, and historians Professor Alison Bashford and Dr Peter Hobbins, the Quarantine Project was a university–industry linkage initiative supported by the University of Sydney, Mawland Q Station and the Australian Research Council (sydney.edu.au/arts/research/ quarantine). All photographs taken at North Head Sydney Harbour National Park have been taken under a licence from the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage.
Managed under lease from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NSW), the Q Station welcomes visitors seeking accommodation, conference facilities, ghost tours and history tours. For more information, please visit qstation.com.au or call (02) 9466 1500.
Artefacts from the Quarantine Station’s collection feature in the exhibition Rough Medicine, showing at the museum until 5 May; see page 54 for more information.
As early as 1814, the convict transport Surrey was quarantined in Sydney Harbour for typhus fever, an unpleasant and often fatal disease. By 1832 the need for a reserved quarantine ground saw North Head, at the entrance to Sydney Harbour, gazetted for this purpose, landing its first detainees in 1835. After a fever-prone decade in the 1830s, the requirement for permanent facilities was confirmed as shipping arrivals – and infected immigrants – boomed with the gold rush of the 1850s. By the 1870s, concern had shifted largely from measles and typhus, typhoid and scarlet fevers to smallpox, which seriously afflicted Sydney in 1881. Subsequent epidemics – of bubonic plague in 1900, smallpox again in 1913, and ‘Spanish’ influenza in 1919 – saw many Sydney residents sent into quarantine. Between 1835 and the last interment at North Head in 1925, the Quarantine Station’s three burial grounds held the bodies of over 570 detainees and Sydney citizens who died of epidemic diseases. From the 1930s, however, the isolated staff community living at North Head led a quiet life, although disinfecting post-war immigrants’ belongings and imported goods kept the site active into the 1970s.
Italia, Suomi and Nippon: quarantine in many tongues
A wide variety of sailors, immigrants, travellers and residents underwent quarantine at North Head from 1835 to 1984. If many had limited literacy into the 1870s, a large number also spoke – and wrote – in other languages. The carved, painted and scrawled inscriptions at North Head include messages in Italian, Finnish, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tongan and Fijian. Some are poetic, while others are embellished with wonderful artworks or motifs, including carved faces, flags, life rings and – surprisingly rarely – watercraft. Non-English carvings also conveyed messages to specific communities. While one Arabic inscription offers a blessing from the Quran, welcoming fellow Muslims, another in Chinese celebrates the new Republic of 1911, taunting those who still supported the old imperial regime. Echoing the Aboriginal rock art occasionally recorded at North Head, all of these visitors shared a human urge to make their mark.
Classic boats, maritime trades and skills, a wide range of stallholders, live entertainment and plenty to keep the kids engaged – all this and more is in store at the museum’s upcoming Classic & Wooden Boat Festival. Project officer Emma Ferguson and Historic Vessels Curator David Payne give a taste of what you can look forward to in April.
WITH THE PLANNING of the Classic & Wooden Boat Festival in full swing, we can reveal a few things to entice the whole family to Darling Harbour on the weekend of 15–17 April.
Boating and maritime enthusiasts will enjoy the thrilling sight of a fleet of classic and wooden boats, and the chance to engage with boat owners and discuss how they maintain these beautiful vessels. There’ll be a focus on traditional techniques and skills, with demonstrations of caulking and steam bending, displays of vintage tools, specialised talks and line-throwing competitions.
The festival precinct will extend from the main museum building right around the shoreline to Wharf 7 next door and nearby Pyrmont Park, enabling visitors to pick and choose from many displays, attractions, stalls and demonstrations. There will be plenty to engage the kids – storytelling, musical entertainment, and a special ‘Kids’ Boatshed’ play area near Wharf 7, where children can have crafty and creative fun, including making sail boats and competing to race them in a specially designed racing tub.
But the festival is not just for rusted-on nautical nuts. You can also relax at our waterfront bar and take in the view, enjoy live entertainment and music throughout the day and evening, cruise around the harbour on a heritage vessel, or wander through the maritime marketplace and look at the vintage and other wares on display and for sale. And for museum members, there will be special events, which you’ll receive news of by email over the coming months.
More than 130 boats will be on show at the festival, including some old favourites as always, but one of the most striking additions will be the immaculate SY Ena, back in Sydney after a short period operating on Port Phillip. After an impressive rebuild in 1986 it was hidden for years under protective covers, rarely seen on the harbour and inaccessible to the public, but now at long last visitors will be able to get up close to Ena and admire its fine lines and outstanding workmanship. Two other craft by the same designer, Walter Reeks, will also feature – the steamer Lady Hopetoun and schooner Boomerang, both from the Sydney Heritage Fleet. At the time of writing it is hoped that three other Reeks vessels will also attend.
Among the visiting yachts we can look forward to some very elegant craft, including the famous ocean racers Caprice of Huon and Fidelis, and one of the oldest yachts on the harbour, the gaff-rigged Kelpie
Motor vessels will be widely represented – for many this will be a first chance to see the restored motor cruiser Martindale, originally built in South Australia. The steamer boat Witch of Endor – a recently built craft styled on classic lines – will also be operating. And of course we can expect a good roll-up of highly polished and highly prized Halvorsens, including the speedboat Miss Ally, displayed ashore on its custom trailer. Also on shore will be other power craft and sailing vessels, including the wonderful replica 18-foot skiff Britannia
Our team is focused on bringing you a must-see event, and best of all, entry to the festival is free! We hope to see you at Darling Harbour in April.
Registrations close soon, so if you are interested in bringing your own boat to the festival, email cwbf@anmm.gov.au.
Follow the festival on Facebook or Twitter #cwbfsydney
01 The festival will feature demonstrations of maritime skills plus plenty of chances to participate. Watch demonstrations of maritime skills such as caulking … 02 Build a basic boat, then test it on the water… 03 Or try your hand in a line-throwing contest. All photographs ANMM photographers
And don’t forget to enter our Instagram photo competition for your chance to win one of seven cash prizes totalling $4,500, including a first prize of $2,000. For details and terms and conditions, see anmm.gov.au/cwbf.
01 Aerial photo of WoodenBoat’s historic main building and visiting tall ships on Eggemoggin Reach. Photograph courtesy of Wooden Boat Publications
The state of Maine, in the north-eastern United States, has a long and distinguished seafaring history, and its rocky Atlantic coast still supports a thriving maritime industry, writes Randi Svensen
LAST NORTHERN SPRING, fresh from three nights aboard the Queen Mary in California, I thought nothing could impress me more than the magnificent elegance of that survivor of passenger shipping. How wrong I was.
As a lover of classic boats, my visit to Maine in the New England region of the north-eastern United States is nothing short of landing in wooden boat heaven. Its waterways are chock-a-block with lobster boats, classic speedboats, motor cruisers, yachts and sailboats, and its shores with skilled professionals promoting wooden boats and keeping alive traditional skills.
The WoodenBoat community
Many Signals readers will be familiar with the international publications WoodenBoat and Professional BoatBuilder, but how many realise that these august magazines are produced in a place so remote and so breathtakingly beautiful that their ‘office’ looks more like a peaceful retreat than the headquarters of a substantial corporation? WoodenBoat Publications, 2.6 kilometres from the coastal town of Brooklin, overlooks the water of Eggemoggin Reach, which laps the shore at the bottom of the gently sloping 24-hectare property. The intensely cold, white winter has passed when I visit and spring growth promises the arrival of a summer to be spent beside, or on, the sea. It is as if nature is waiting to burst out and reward the good people of Maine for their patience in weathering the harsh winter.
My guide for the morning is WoodenBoat magazine’s Assistant Editor, Robin Jettinghoff,
who with her energetic golden retriever Kyrie took time from her busy schedule to show me around. The magazine is just one facet of WoodenBoat Publications.
WoodenBoat magazine was established by Jon Wilson in 1974 in Brooksville, Maine. Wilson thought the boating community needed a newsletter to connect builders of wooden boats to each other and to pass on developments in building and repair methods and technology. Wilson produced the first issue of WoodenBoat in a small cabin he built at Brooksville. He had no electricity or running water and his telephone was 800 metres away, nailed to a tree, because he couldn’t afford to have the phone line connected to the cabin. That first issue was published in September 1974 and Wilson took 1,000 copies to the Newport Sailboat Show in Rhode Island, where he sold 600 copies and 200 subscriptions. WoodenBoat magazine was on its way.
‘It was tough, but there was never a thought of giving up,’ Wilson was quoted in the local press as saying. ‘It was the right idea at the right time.’ Five years later, the magazine was profitable, and current circulation is almost 58,000 copies per bi-monthly issue. WoodenBoat is now aimed at a more general market of wooden boat enthusiasts, while its newer stablemate Professional BoatBuilder is considered by shipwrights all over the world as a ‘must read’ for the latest in boat building and repair.
Completed in 1916, the main building of WoodenBoat Publications is in the original house – a mansion, actually –that was the summer getaway of Alexander
Porter and his family, who lived in Boston the rest of the year. The Porters sold to the Parson family in the 1930s but the property was eventually abandoned. Having been based in the Mountain Ash Inn at Brooklin for three and a half years, in 1981 Jon Wilson bought the still-gracious old house and land and he and his team created their own haven. Plans for a WoodenBoat School, available to all levels of experience, were hatched.
Jon Wilson produced the first issue of WoodenBoat in a small cabin without electricity and with a telephone 800 metres away, nailed to a tree
From the outside, the building still looks as if a wealthy industrialist is about to return for the summer, while inside is a commercial building that radiates professionalism. Although described as ‘a community, not a business’, WoodenBoat ’s operation defies any attempt to categorise it.
The 40-plus staff are warm and welcoming, belying their high level of work ethic and deep commitment to the company. More than one staff member told me how privileged they felt to be working there. Clichéd as it sounds, the overwhelming impression is of one big, happy, passionate and engaged family.
WoodenBoat Inc has expanded over the years to include sister publications Professional BoatBuilder, Small Boats Monthly and Small Boats Annual; IBEX –the International Boatbuilders Exhibition and Conference, held each autumn (this year in Tampa, Florida); the WoodenBoat Show held at the end of June at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut; The WoodenBoat Store; WoodenBoat Books, a research library; online resources; and the world-renowned WoodenBoat School. Instructors, most of them professionals in their trades, teach courses that run for one or two weeks, with about 750 students attending each year. Courses range from ‘Fundamentals of Boatbuilding’ to ‘Sailmaking for Pond Yacht Owners’, and almost everything in between. This year 77 different courses are on offer. Students can stay in nearby boarding houses owned by WoodenBoat Publications or in a camping ground on the campus. The atmosphere is ‘idyllic adult summer camp’ and each course ends with a celebratory Maine lobster cook-up by the water.
My tour begins in the main house, meeting staff as we wander around the corridors of the original family home, now a suite of offices and design studios. With Kyrie leading the way, we then amble down the slope towards the picturesque boathouse on the shore of Eggemoggin Reach, stopping to admire vessels dotted over the extensive lawn between the majestic house at the top of the rise and the waterfront beneath.
The water is tranquil today, but I have no doubt this same waterway would be very challenging in rough weather, especially at high tide when the sea only just covers jagged rocks that lie in wait for an unsuspecting mariner. Maine tides vary almost 3.5 metres and are very fast. There is a tidal phenomenon at nearby Blue Hill Falls, which is not a waterfall in the usual sense but is where an inlet, Salt Pond, meets the sea. As the tide goes out, a ‘waterfall’ is created heading towards the sea. When the tide comes in, the waterfall goes upstream. It’s quite disorienting to cross the bridge over the inlet when the ‘falls’ are reversed from the previous time you crossed.
We take a walk along the property’s long pier to admire the view before strolling back up the hill to the WoodenBoat School building, where staff and volunteers – many of them alumni – are preparing for the first students of the summer. In the courtyard, rigging testing is under way and a steambox is being placed in position. A maze of inside workshops cater for all aspects of the boatbuilding process, and men and women from all walks of life are deep in concentration on their hands-on work. Even in the set-up phase before the students arrive, the camaraderie is infectious.
The last place on my tour is The WoodenBoat Store. Housed in a purposebuilt building, the store is a magnet for boaties. It stocks books, boat plans, model kits, specialised tools, gifts and clothing, as well as housing a mail order department.
Although described as ‘a community, not a business’, WoodenBoat ’s operation defies any attempt to categorise it
01 The boathouse.
02 Setting up the steam-box, used to bend boatbuilding timbers into shape.
03 One of the WoodenBoat School’s workshops.
04 Students leave their mark on workshop posts.
05 Partially completed boats await finishing by students over the summer, seen through an old porthole set in the wall of one of the school’s sheds.
All photographs by Randi Svensen unless otherwise credited
No boatie’s stay on coastal Maine and New England would be complete without visits to at least one working boatyard and a museum or two. En route to Maine, I had spent a day at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and the Sea. This gem is a combination of traditional museum and living history museum and has close ties with the Australian National Maritime Museum. Set in the picturesque New England town of Mystic, which has a history going back to the American War of Independence, each building hosts a different theme.
As well as the museum-style exhibits, there are operational workshops, including a working forge and a workshop for historical clocks and navigational equipment.
Sheds scattered around the seven hectares of museum grounds contain a dizzying array of wooden vessels of many types. The name ‘Herreshoff’ appears over and over. My own
45-year-old yacht is based on a Herreshoff design, so I fall instantly in love with the smooth curves and clean lines of the boats on display … and there are so many of them!
Outside, smaller vessels bob up and down on the river, some of them undergoing restoration by volunteers, but the centrepiece is the tall ship Charles W Morgan. Built in 1841 as a whaler, Charles W Morgan is the world’s oldest surviving merchant vessel. Like the ANMM’s HMB Endeavour replica and the Sydney Heritage Fleet’s restored James Craig, the Charles W Morgan sits at its wharf as a striking reminder of the glory days of sail. It occurs to me that the Mystic Seaport museum is like an amalgamation of the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Sydney Heritage Fleet.
Nearby, a fleet of small, modern fibreglass sail-training dinghies and skiffs line up alongside and on the wharf. Many are sponsored by far-flung yacht clubs whose names adorn the transoms. Further along,
in a small reproduction lighthouse, a video shows life as it was lived by the early lighthouse keepers.
Such is my immersion in the atmosphere that when a horse and buggy pass by it seems quite normal!
Next, I come to the Shipyard Gallery Exhibit, a large boatbuilding and repair complex. In the main shed is an old ferry undergoing restoration, a project that is expected to take more than a year. The viewing platform in the shed gives a bird’s eye view of the extensive work being done by volunteers. It can also be viewed at ground level.
A visitor to Mystic Seaport easily becomes transported back in time. I see groups of school children learning, as I’ve heard it described, ‘by stealth’. With the fun comes an understanding of how their ancestors lived before the days of technology, and as they visit the school-room and run around the grass they see that children in days gone by weren’t much different from themselves.
01 Foggy’s glass panels light up the deck at night. The mast continues down through the bathroom’s shower.
02 Securing Foggy’s deck inserts are laminations of teak, Okume plywood, foam core, plywood and larch. Samples were university tested to ensure structural integrity.
03 Glass ‘bricks’ are also set into Foggy’s topsides.
Under wraps at Brooklin Boat Yard
At the other end of the spectrum is one of several local boatbuilders, the Brooklin Boat Yard. Owner Steve White generously offered to show me his yard – on the condition that I was not to take photographs of a special boat nearing completion.
Intrigued, all was revealed when I saw on the office wall a drawing of the mysterious boat. Amazingly, it looked like a floating version of Sydney’s Frank Gehrydesigned University of Technology building! The mystery was explained: a friend of Gehry’s had taken a 74-foot wooden sloop design by Argentinian naval architect Germán Frers and asked Gehry to style it, using glass ‘bricks’ in the topsides and cabin top, a nod to the curves and brickwork on the UTS building. The owner planned it as a tribute to Gehry and even its name, Foggy, is a play on Gehry’s initials, F O G. Foggy ’s name is impressed in the transom in titanium using Gehry’s own signature
style. In an all-timber constructed boat, there is titanium everywhere! With the exception of the heads, which are carbon fibre, all the hardware on Foggy is titanium, even the sinks, and some pieces were made on a 3-D printer by the Boeing Corporation.
All was revealed when I saw on the office wall a drawing of the mysterious boat
A number of shipwrights go about their work on Foggy quietly and efficiently and the shed is eerily peaceful. There is no noise – even from the giant exhaust unit that removes every particle of sawdust from the work area. The job was a once-ina-lifetime challenge for these highly skilled and experienced shipwrights, but now that the launch of Foggy is close, I can’t helping wondering if they were looking forward
to building ‘normal’ boats again. I suspect that building boats is one thing; making them into works of art is quite another.
My time in Maine finally came to an end, but my favourite reminder of my wooden boat adventure is a sweatshirt from the WoodenBoat Store that bears a Viking proverb in Old Norse, with the translation: ‘Bound is a boatless man’ – or, ‘Without a boat we go nowhere’.
For the people of Maine, that says it all.
Randi Svensen is a maritime writer and the author of Wooden Boats, Iron Men: the Halvorsen story (2004), and Heroic, Forceful and Fearless: Australia’s tugboat heritage (2011). Her history of Sydney’s Berrys Bay will be published in 2016. She wishes to thank the staff of WoodenBoat and the Brooklin Boat Yard for their assistance during her visit.
For further information, see: woodenboat.com mysticseaport.org brooklinboatyard.com/foggy youtube.com/user/WoodenBoatvideos
With 25 nominations, the field for the 2015 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize was the equal biggest yet, with several well-known authors and two previous winners of the prize among a strong crop of contenders. The breadth and high quality of the latest round of entries attest to the enduring popularity of maritime publishing.
THE AWARD – sponsored jointly by the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) and the Australian Association for Maritime History (AAMH) – reflects the wish of both organisations to promote a broad view of maritime history, demonstrating how the sea and maritime influences have been central to shaping Australia, its people and its culture. We thank our panel of judges, Peter Ridgway (President of the AAMH), Jeffrey Mellefont (Honorary Research Associate of the ANMM and former editor of Signals) and Michael Pearson (Emeritus Professor of History, University of New South Wales) for the considerable amount of time and thought that they voluntarily put into the judging process.
The 2015 nominations covered a wide range of topics, including the First Fleet, convict tales, explorers, shipwrecks, shipbuilders, art and Sydney’s Australia Day Regatta. This round of judging coincided with the centenary of the start of World War I, and, unsurprisingly, several entries dealt with this subject.
The winner of the 2015 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize of $4,000, which is awarded for a book published in 2013 or 2014 by an Australian author on any aspect of maritime history relating to or affecting Australia, is David Stevens for In All Respects Ready –Australia’s Navy In World War One (Oxford University Press, 2014). This comprehensive and authoritative account
details the involvement of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in the First World War. In 1914, when war broke out, the RAN was less than one year old, but fully trained and ready, and the most professional and effective force Australia had to offer the British Empire. The book traces Australia’s role in the conflict and how the war helped to forge the country’s naval and national identity.
‘As a reader who is not a specialist in RAN history,’ noted one judge, ‘I found David Stevens’ work quite accessible, detailed, thorough and well enough illustrated to add both to my enjoyment and comprehension. At the same time its solid academic foundation was impressive … For a nonexpert, its extensive coverage of the many theatres of the war provides insight into the extent of the RAN’s operations as well as the way the war played out in colonial holdings around the world, far from those more familiar theatres of Europe and the Middle East. David Stevens’ previous contributions to naval history are admirable but this one, I think, is his finest work and the most deserving of a wider audience.’
Another judge called it ‘A comprehensive account of RAN operations in WWI that should stand the test of time as a reference … The book helps to rebalance the betterknown picture of our army’s contribution to WWI [and] provides analysis with which we can compare the state of the RAN at later times’.
The first runner-up was Michael Pembroke for Arthur Phillip – Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy (Hardie Grant, 2014), a biography of the first governor of the colony of New South Wales and the man credited with being the founding father of modern Australia. One judge praised the accessibility and broad appeal of this work, saying ‘The subject matter, if we compare it with those chosen by the other finalists, is the most unexpected and original. Yet while it comes almost out of leftfield, after seeing and reading it, I’m left wondering why I haven’t previously seen a popular, accessible work (that I know of) devoted so enlighteningly to this figure of such immense importance to Australia’s history. The narrative is compelling, carefully compiled and convincingly unfolded, in an eminently readable style.’
Another judge called it ‘A lively biography of someone most Australians have heard of but have under-appreciated until now … Phillip’s extraordinary life deserved to be written about’.
The second runner-up was Edward Duyker for Dumont d’Urville: Explorer and Polymath (Otago University Press, 2014). This work traces the life and career of the man who is sometimes called France’s Captain Cook and who effectively helped to precipitate pre-emptive British settlement on several parts of the Australian coast. One judge commented, ‘As we have come to expect from Edward Duyker,
this is a thoroughly and meticulously prepared history of one of the giants of French voyaging in the era of “scientific discovery” defined by Cook’. Another judge noted, ‘They rarely come much more comprehensive than this in a single volume. This monumental work about the life and times of one of the last great naval explorers introduces new information about Australia and our region and is well referenced and definitely worth re-reading … The book provides a non-British perspective to exploration and attitudes to Australia and our region as well as insight into revolutionary France.’
The other finalists were Iain McCalman for The Reef – A Passionate History (Penguin, 2014) and Peter Plowman for Voyage To Gallipoli (Rosenberg, 2013). The ANMM and AAMH wish to thank all those who nominated, and to congratulate the winners.
The award will be presented at the Australian National Maritime Museum on 31 March in conjunction with the annual Phil Renouf Memorial Lecture, at which Dr David Stevens will speak on the topic ‘After Emden: HMAS Sydney ’s War 1915–18’. This event is open to the public; please see page 51 for booking details.
Janine Flew
The major prize is named in honour of renowned maritime historian the late Professor Frank Broeze (1945–2001) of the University of Western Australia. A founding member of the AAMH and inaugural editor of its scholarly journal The Great Circle, he also introduced Australia’s first university course on maritime history at the University of Western Australia. Professor Broeze was the author of many works on Australian maritime history, including the landmark Island Nation (1997), which helped to redefine this field.
2015 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize ($4,000)
Winner: David Stevens for In All Respects Ready – Australia’s Navy In World War One (Oxford University Press, 2014)
First runner-up: Michael Pembroke for Arthur Phillip – Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy (Hardie Grant, 2014) Second runner-up: Edward Duyker for Dumont d’Urville: Explorer and Polymath (Otago University Press, 2014)
Nominations for the next round of prizes will open in late 2016 and will close on 30 April 2017. For more information please see our website.
The Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize is usually awarded in conjunction with the Australian Community Maritime History Prize. We regret that due to a disappointing lack of entries in the Community Prize category this round, this prize has not be awarded in 2015.
We strongly encourage maritime heritage organisations, historical societies and other eligible community groups to apply for the next round of prizes.
PORTRAITS OF SyDNEy’S WORKING HARBOUR
A chapter closed on more than two centuries of maritime history when Sydney Harbour ceased to be an industrial port. From 2005 to 2008, photographer Ross Bray documented the daily routines of the city’s tugboats as an era came to an end.
In the comings and goings of big ships, it was the tugs pushing them around that most people loved to watch
FROM THE ARRIVAL OF EUROPEANS in 1788 until recently, Sydney Harbour was largely a place of industry – of wharves, cranes, warehouses and working boats. By the late 19th century, the tugboat was a ubiquitous part of harbour life. Big ships steamed in and out of the harbour bringing goods from around the world to disgorge their contents on the docks of Sydney. Australian produce steamed out. Sydney Harbour was import and export central – the economic lifeline to a globalising, increasingly connected world. It was always a visual reminder that there was a big wide world out there over the horizon.
Pushing and pulling those ships in and out of their berths were the tugboats, powerful little vessels with big hearts and heaps of attitude – the much-loved workhorses of the harbour.
This pulsating picture of maritime industry on Sydney Harbour carried on its daily routines until 2005, when it was decided to shift heavy industry from Sydney and use the city’s wharves and foreshores for other purposes. As with harbours and ports around the world, the real estate value of what Governor Arthur Phillip, back in 1788, called ‘the finest harbour in the world’ was too great to waste on maritime industries.
When it was announced that most of the big ships – and with them many of the tugboats – were going to leave Sydney Harbour, a poll found that 78 per cent of Sydney residents opposed the move. Australia wide, that figure was an incredible 98 per cent.
But still, it happened. So, as a photographer, I thought I could be useful to capture some of this history before it changed forever. I decided to record, through photographs, some of the work of the tugboats in particular. After all, it was the end of an era.
In the comings and goings of big ships, it was the tugs pushing them around that most people loved to watch. So did I. So I proposed a photo-journalistic project to a tugboat company, who had no problems with the idea.
The tugboat skippers and crews, however, took a little more persuading. After all, they had often seen photographers line up a tugboat with the Harbour Bridge or the Opera House in the background, take a few shots, go home and that was it.
But I wanted a bit more, and it wasn’t until I had shot a few rolls of film and shown the tugboat crews the results that things changed rapidly. The crews couldn’t be more helpful once they understood that it was all about the work they did and how they did it. Discussion flowed over their radios from tug to tug: ‘Where do you want us? How close in?’ They shepherded me out of the way when the work was tight or dangerous, which it often was. They dropped me off or picked me up from ferry wharves as needed, much to the surprise of people waiting for ferries as a huge tug pulled in and then pulled away leaving a foaming trail.
Once I asked for a close shot of another tugboat tight in against the side of a ship travelling down the harbour. The skipper promptly tucked us in so close under the ship’s bow that the ship sounded its horn as a warning while its crew leaned over the bow to make sure we weren’t run down. But the skipper kept pace with the ship and just ahead of its bow. Tugboat skippers know their stuff.
Tugboats work in all weather, at all times. They move the big RoRos (Roll On-Roll Off) cargo ships, they welcome the big passenger liners, they move historic ships to their moorings and grab some of the most powerful warships in the world by the scruff of the neck and push them into place.
When I started photographing the tugboats, people would often stop me and ask what I was doing. When I explained the project, they said how much they loved the working harbour, and these little working boats.
Tugs still ply Sydney Harbour, moving cruise liners, navy ships and fuel tankers, but I think the loss of Sydney as an industrial port and of some of its wonderful tugboats makes this beautiful city and its stunning harbour just that little more insular and certainly a little blander.
Ross Bray is an Australian photographer originally from Sydney, now resident in northern New South Wales. He worked for 30 years as a photojournalist and TV reporter/producer. Ross prefers to work in the classic format of film photography, rather than digital.
01 (pages 20–21) Korimul shows USS Kittyhawk who has the real power, 2012. Kittyhawk was in Sydney as part of its world farewell tour.
02 Korimul easing RoRo Atlas Highway into its berth.
03 Dawn shot of Wombi at its berth at the tugboat depot on Mort Bay.
04 Deckhand on Wooli, Garry Best, secures the bowline from Emerald Queen to guide it down the harbour and into dock.
05 Warrawee at Garden Island, being refitted to become Marrakai to work out of Darwin.
Ross Bray’s photographs of tugboats working Sydney Harbour are part of a long Sydney love affair with these iconic vessels. From the mid to late 19th century, tugboats were a feature of the landscape of maritime industry that dominated the waterways of Port Jackson. They were a favourite subject of artists – especially photographers – and were popular with model-makers and as children’s toys.
The Australian National Maritime Museum holds a significant collection of all sorts of material relating to tugboats – from records, plans and reports to paintings, models and photographs. Among the photographs is a large and significant collection of images taken around the turn of the 20th century by Samuel Hood and photographers from his studio, who sold photographs of visiting ships. But Hood in particular was also careful to document scenes of the harbour, in particular the working vessels and their crews. The Hood Collection of over 9,000 glass plate and nitrate negatives and photographs from the 1890s to 1950s is an outstanding historical resource of the working life of Sydney Harbour.
Dr Stephen Gapps
01 The tugboat Sydney Cove was launched in England in 1955 and arrived in Sydney in 1956. Ordered by Ron Fenwick for his family company J Fenwick, it operated on the harbour until 1972. This clockwork model of the tug was built by Arthur Joel Cole around 1960. During the 20th century tugboats were a favourite of model makers, expressing an appreciation of these vessels. ANMM Collection Gift from Mrs J D Edwards
02 P&O’s cruise ship Strathnaver being guided by a Waratah Towage tug into Circular Quay, 1932–1950.
03 The steam-driven fire tug Pluvius on Sydney Harbour, c 1910.
04 Heroine was built in 1909 in Glasgow by J Fenwick and Co. Due to the nature of their work, tugs were often given names reflecting bravery, strength and endurance, among them the Sydney Harbour tugs Heroic and Forceful Heroine’s stablemate Hero was arguably the iconic tugboat of Sydney Harbour, well known for its incredible rescue of the American barque Abby Palmer in 1905 off the cliffs of South Head in horrendous seas.
05 In the 1920s Sydney Harbour was still graced by declining numbers of the famous windjammer vessels. Here, the German four-masted barque Pommern is being towed through the Glebe Island swing bridge by the tug boat Wellington
All photographs Samuel J Hood Studio ANMM Collection unless otherwise stated
Melbourne in the 1850s was a boom town, drawing thousands of people from all around the world lured by the gold rush. Myffanwy Bryant profiles an energetic go-getter who left his mark on the Victorian capital in just one of many chapters in a long and eventful life.
IN MAY 1853 a young, noticeably welldressed American stepped off the clipper ship Bavaria in Port Phillip, Melbourne. George Francis Train was 24 years old, recently married and ready to embrace the untapped possibilities this far-flung city had to offer. These were the heady days of the Victorian gold rush, when the ‘El Dorado’ of the south had myriad opportunities. Even if you weren’t there for the diggings, this boom town had prospects for all trades. And that was exactly what Train had counted on.
George Train, despite his tender years, had already lived a remarkable life.
According to Train legend, George’s father had put his four-year-old son on a boat to escape the yellow fever epidemic raging through New Orleans, which had claimed the lives of George’s mother and three sisters. Young George was alone, wearing a coat and a note around his neck reading:
This is my little son, George Francis Train. Four years old. Consigned on board the ship Henry to John Clarke Jr., Dock Square Boston; to be sent to his grandmother Pickering at Waltham, ten miles from Boston. Take good care of the little fellow as he is the only one left of eleven of us in the house, including the servants. I will come on as soon as I can arrange my business.1
George Train was shipped as ‘part of the cargo’. His father never did come for him, but young George, ‘in good health and magnificently alive’, was already showing
the extraordinary fortitude and optimism that would characterise his whole life.
George Train also showed great promise in leadership and business dealings at a very young age. As a precocious 16-year-old he sought a job with his cousin Colonel Enoch Train in the colonel’s White Diamond Line shipping house. No driving love for shipping ran in George Train’s blood; rather, a burning ambition and inquisitiveness prompted the young man to turn up uninvited at his cousin’s Boston offices, refusing to be turned away.
Train’s first impressions of Melbourne were not favourable, and prompted a litany of complaints
Colonel Enoch Train was already renowned on the shipping run between Boston and the English port of Liverpool, and is widely credited for giving the legendary shipbuilder Donald McKay his start in the Boston clipper building trade. Their partnership resulted in many ships, including the famous Flying Cloud – the ship that, in 1853, set the world record for the fastest sailing trip between New York and San Francisco. The record remained unbeaten for 135 years, until 1989. The colonel was encouraged
by young George’s acumen and sent him to prove himself further in the busy Liverpool offices of the company. On his return to Boston, George Train and a trusted advisor, Captain Caldwell, were sent to Melbourne to set up a subsidiary there, to be known as Caldwell, Train and Co.
Train’s first impressions of the port of Melbourne were not favourable. On the first day his litany of complaints was lengthy: No railroad, no lighting wires, no gas lamps, no marine communication by telegraph to the heads, no water works, no Yankee inventions of any kind, no saw mills, not even a wharf that deserves the name, or sufficient accommodation for the immense quantity of merchandise that is tumbling in upon us from all parts of the world! The unprecedented immigration has swelled the limits of the city to almost bursting, but no energetic men step forward for its relief.2
The man to take charge was, of course, Train. He was irrepressible and at times showed a manic enthusiasm for which he would become known. Before long Train had solutions and ideas for every perceivable fault and problem he found. Swinging his cane and adjusting his protective veil, Train proclaimed that if Melbourne could only embrace the ‘sprinkling of Yankeeism’3 he was offering, then there was no end to what this colony could achieve. He believed strongly that Melbourne would become ‘the great commercial emporium of this part of the world’.4
Over the next three years Train was true to his word, and indeed had a lasting impact on the town he grew to love. Less than a month after their arrival, both he and Captain Caldwell were elected to the Melbourne Ship to Canal and Dock Company and the Chamber of Commerce, both powerful organisations at the time. Train and Caldwell set about immediately proposing changes and improvements to the general commercial landscape, firstly by establishing a merchant exchange. This exchange quickly grew to represent 50 merchant houses and helped in organising prices, shipping fleets and goods.
Train and Caldwell also strongly advocated for a new rail link from the port to the city (some five kilometres) and then built a Train & Co warehouse at each end. As their success grew, so did their influence and Train’s taste for publicity – a combination that saw the shipping and mercantile arena become more public, with the press encouraged to cover commercial interests and proceedings more closely.
Later accounts of Train’s time in Melbourne relate that he had a guiding hand in establishing the Cobb & Co coach company, the first bowling alley, an effective fire brigade for Melbourne and the supply of quality American goods, or ‘Yankee notions’, that were so in demand. These included shovels, hoes, buggies and canned goods. It was important to Train that he overcome what he saw as British bias against innovation. He said, ‘I took delight in overcoming their bias and forcing them to accept our ideas’.5
Although Caldwell returned to Boston, Train stayed on in Australia and continued to ride the ‘golden tide’ of the Victorian gold rush. Through G F Train & Co, as the shipping company was now known, he continued to make money and seems to have dazzled the locals with his sartorial style, wit and never-ending enthusiasm for life in general.
Throughout his stay in Melbourne, Train wrote extensively of his experiences and his endless opinions on happenings in Australia. He sent many of these back to the New York Herald newspaper in America, where they were published to a wide and interested audience.
Train’s visions of an Australian republic were particularly read with interest and, although he continually professed a desire to stay out of local politics, it was a topic on which he held strong views. He once lent the Legislative Council in Melbourne copies of the Constitution of the United States that he just happened to have with him.
Train discussed the future of Australia with the ‘lion’ William Wentworth – a prominent politician, journalist, poet and explorer – at a dinner held by Governor Fitzroy in Sydney. Train believed that greater prosperity would only come once Australia became ‘a nation of ourselves’, ‘cut adrift from the Old Country [Britain] which hangs over us like an incubus’.6
In the Victorian gold town of Ballarat in 1854, a group of gold miners revolted against the colonial authority of the United Kingdom, an event that became known as the Eureka Rebellion. The 25-year-old Train felt some sympathy towards the miners, although he saw the futility of their cause. While events played out on the gold fields, Train seemed removed, although he recounted the action in great detail in his letters home. But, as would be the case throughout his life, Train could never be totally immune to a case of injustice, and soon found himself involved.
In his later recalling of events, which must be taken with some reservation, it was Train who helped James McGill, one of the agitators of the rebellion, to escape. McGill had fled from Ballarat disguised as a woman and turned up at Train’s offices in Melbourne, demanding a supply of guns from Train’s warehouse to aid the miners’ cause.
Train seems to have dazzled the locals with his sartorial style, wit and never-ending enthusiasm for life in general
According to Train, McGill, in the passion of the rebellion, offered Train the presidency of the rebels’ hoped-for Republic of Victoria. Train modestly refused, claiming he had no interest in revolutions or politics. He did, however, assist McGill in disguising himself again and arranging for his safe escape from Australia.
When Train left Melbourne aboard the Dashing Wave in 1855, his departure was acknowledged with great ceremony and extensive press coverage in Melbourne. In fact, his loss was felt keenly. The Argus newspaper recognised that the: … energy, spirit, and restless activity of this gentleman have had an effect, not fully appreciated we believe and we think it would be difficult to trace the full effect of his
example in vitalising our whole commercial system. In promptitude, punctuality, and despatch which have lately been introduced into matters connected with shipping in particular, and which, if persevered in, will soon lift the port into a high place in the estimation of nautical men.7
Even 60 years later his legacy was still acknowledged. In 1917 Reverend Stuart Ross, who had been a young clerk when Train was in Melbourne, recalled that Train had been the beacon of the American element
… that seemed to penetrate the community with a new spirit, a spirit of enterprise akin to audacity that broke away from the old order … it was under those complex racial influences that our distinctive Australian nationality began to take colour and tone.8
On his way back to America Train took a long route, travelling through China, Japan, India, Egypt and Europe. His great desire was to see the ports of Canton and Shanghai. In Canton he went through ‘all the shops buying a thousand little notions which will soon reduce your loose cash,’ 9 including a customised, monogrammed 61-piece dinner set, which is now part of the ANMM collection.
On his arrival back in America – another event covered at length in the press –Train’s focus shifted. Having once engrossed himself in shipping, he now embraced the future of the railway across the vast American interior. Throughout the 1860s Train would involve himself in the building of the Union Pacific Railroad.
Train’s business acumen and creative thinking, already honed by the years in Melbourne, saw him create two companies: Credit Mobilier, which soon received the contract to oversee the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, and Credit Foncier, which acted as a financier and a real estate company purchasing and selling land along the proposed railway route.
Train was present at the historic groundbreaking of the Union Pacific Railroad at Omaha, Nebraska, in 1863. He represented the directors of Union Pacific, who knew that Train would always be the man the people and press turned out to see.
Train’s passion and enthusiasm for the opening up of the American west were the greatest promotion for the scheme and were instrumental in bringing on board investors and politicians.
Train also backed the scheme himself. He purchased great tracts of land through Credit Foncier in Omaha and constructed
Train’s greatest gift was no doubt as a public speaker
01 Train in later life. Courtesy University of Kentucky Library
02 Elements of the 61-piece Canton famille-rose dinner service made for George Francis Train. Each piece is painted with a different scene of Chinese court figures at leisure in a garden pavilion setting. On the rim is a green and gilt rectangle monogrammed ‘T’ in gold. ANMM Collection V00030771 Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds
cottages and hotels to support the huge influx of immigrants he predicted.
Train was absolutely earnest in his belief in the future of Omaha as a major metropolis. But the wealth he accumulated from his land deals and association with the Union Pacific caused some people to see him as another land-grabbing speculator.
For many years Train promoted the railway and the town of Omaha, but by 1869 he was no longer heavily involved and had turned his attentions to other challenges. This transitional side to Train’s nature, a quality some found infuriating and unstable, probably served him well in this instance. In 1873 the press revealed the corruptness of Credit Mobilier, Union Pacific and members of Congress, which would become one of the greatest financial scandals in America’s history.
By 1869 Train was one of the most famous men in America. He had generated enormous wealth through his business dealings. In 1870 his insatiable appetite for travel, speed and fame saw him race around the world in 80 days, and he considered himself the inspiration for Jules Verne’s famous novel, published in 1873. At the end of his life Train would claim that speed and transport, in any form, were the great loves of his life.
But Train’s greatest gift was no doubt as a public speaker. He was voracious and engaging, and spoke on an enormous range of topics. Even his greatest detractors acknowledged his ‘electrical rapport with the people and a genius for oratory.’10 His speeches were published in newspapers throughout America and sold in the streets, hotels and railway stations. He spoke across the globe and although the number of his critics grew, his appeal to the masses never wavered.
Although Train had always professed not to be politically ambitious, his sheer patriotism and passion for publicity and social justice finally led him to take the political plunge. He ran for the presidency of the United States in 1869 and 1872 against Ulysses S Grant. Train was supremely confident in his suitability for the job and his unyielding power over his audiences. During these years he canvassed extensively as an independent. He spoke at thousands of events; by charging for admittance, he earned an estimated $1 million in today’s money.
Train entertained regularly at his mansion, Train Villa, in Newport, Rhode Island. He recalled later: ‘What I wanted I got.
We lived there in manorial style, entertaining so lavishly and freely that the Villa became a free guest house for all of Newport.’11 It is easy to imagine the Canton dinner set now held by the ANMM being polished up for these occasions as Train regaled guests and potential voters with increasingly outlandish accounts of his achievements.
In addition to his own personal ambitions, Train had been an early supporter of the women’s suffrage movement in America. The cause fed into his lifelong passion for social justice; he believed that if ‘women can rule monarchies they should vote in republics.’12 In 1867 he was asked by the movement’s early advocates, Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, to speak at suffrage rallies across the country. They told Train, ‘The people want you. The women want you’.13 He achieved much-needed support and publicity for the cause and funded the start-up of their newspaper. One attendee at a rally noted in 1867 that:
In appearance, manners, and conversation he was a perfect, though somewhat unique specimen of a courtly, elegant gentleman. He was full of enthusiasm and confident he would be next the President. He drew immense and enthusiastic audiences everywhere, and was a special favorite with the laboring classes on account of the reforms he promised to bring about when he should be President.14
But Train, always considered brilliant but eccentric, was becoming increasingly erratic and bizarre in his public behaviour and opinions. His pursuit of the presidency, his imprisonment in London for supporting the Fenians (Irish nationalists) and his uncharacteristic racist attitudes towards African American suffrage were agitating his detractors. More than one leading suffragette begged Train’s supporters to distance themselves from him:
That crack brained harlequin and semilunatic, George Francis Train! He is destitute of principle as he is of sense and is fast gravitating toward the lunatic asylum. He may be of use drawing an audience; but so would a kangaroo, a gorilla, or a hippopotamus.15
Indeed, in 1872 Train was put on trial to resolve the question of his sanity by an American court. He was then in prison in New York for defending the feminist Victoria Woodhall against obscenity charges. Train had published Bible quotes in her defence but as a consequence had been incarcerated and put on trial himself.
By this time Train had been imprisoned 15 times – in London, Dublin and France – for defending causes he passionately believed in, mainly those he saw as political injustices. His final stint, losing him any remaining credibility in many minds, was his last one in The Tombs, New York.
After months of legal wrangling and publicity, Train was declared sane by a jury and released. He subsequently completed another record-breaking journey around the world and made promotional appearances at the Chicago World’s Fair, but then began to fade from public view.
Once one of the most famous men in America, George Francis Train passed the last 30 years of his life in self-imposed exile in a room at the Mills Hotel in New York. Having spent his life talking to thousands of people, trying to enlighten the world one speech at a time, Train now apparently refused to speak to adults (only to children and animals), became a strict vegetarian and refused to shake hands.
Train had long since voluntarily given up the great Train Villa in Newport and the trappings of luxury, and he did not miss them at all. He took great pride in the fact that he now lived on $3 a week. He died in 1904 of smallpox, and might not have been surprised to learn that the next day the newspapers reported:
Scientists, with the consent of Mr Train’s relatives have removed the brain for the purpose of analysis. The organ was found to be remarkably heavy and showed no signs of withering as is usual in persons of his age. It ranks, according to medical record, twenty-seventh in the list of brain weights of 106 world-famous men.16
George Francis Train was a truly exceptional man born into an age in which he could make the greatest impact. Even his most vocal detractors could acknowledge his genius, earnestness and passion, however misplaced they later became. Train was a man who really did represent the American ideal of a popular hero. He was the ultimate self-made man with the charm, good looks and charisma to support the public’s fascination with him. From his orphaned beginnings to his record-setting travels, wealth and fame, there is no doubt that Train embodied the spirit of this age of endless possibilities.
By 1872 Train had been imprisoned 15 times, for defending causes he passionately believed in
References
Unattributed quotes in this article are from Train, G F, My Life in Many States and Foreign Lands (New York: D Appleton, 1902).
1 Train, My Life in Many States …, p 7.
2 Potts, D and A (eds), A Yankee Merchant in Goldrush Australia: the letters of George Francis Train, 1853–1855 (London and Melbourne: Heinemann, 1970), p 25.
3 Potts, p 24.
4 Potts, p 15.
5 Train, My Life in Many States …, p 164.
6 Letter from 31 July 1854, quotes in Potts, D and A, (eds), A Yankee Merchant in Goldrush Australia …, pp 87–91.
7 The Argus (Melbourne), Tuesday 6 November 1855, p 5.
8 Ross, Rev C S , ‘Two American types that left their stamp on Victorian history’, address to the Victorian Historical Society, 27 August 1917.
9 Train, G F, An American Merchant in Europe, Asia and Australia: A series of letters by George Francis Train (New York: G P Putnam, 1857), p 101.
10 Sydney Freemans Journal, 7 August 1869, p 13.
11 Train, My Life in Many States …, p 316.
12 Holland, P, ‘George Francis Train and the Woman Suffrage Movement 1867–70’, Books at Iowa 46, April 1987, p 1.
13 Holland, p 1.
14 Holland, p 9.
15 Holland, p 9.
16 Los Angeles Herald, vol 31, no 115, 22 January 1904.
01 A card promoting George Train’s presidential campaign.
02 George Train at the Mills Hotel in New York, recording his memoirs, c 1904. Image from Wikimedia
01 The convicts that each participant is responsible for in the game are based on real people and their backgrounds, taken from 10,000 convict records. Image by Roar Film
02 One of the historical documents on which the game is based – a conditional pardon issued to Mary Weeks, who arrived in Hobart in 1830 on board Mellish ANMM Collection
The museum’s Learning team develops and presents a wide range of education programs tailored to diverse aspects of the Australian school curriculum. The latest, The Voyage – an online game about convict transportation from Britain to Hobart – uses real convict records to create an effective and engaging learning tool, writes Senior Education Officer Jeff Fletcher
THE YEAR IS 1830. You are the surgeon superintendent aboard a convict vessel transporting its human cargo from Britain to the farthest reaches of the known world – Van Diemen’s Land. You are charged with delivering several hundred convicts to the colony in good health and in the shortest time possible, with minimum loss of life. This is the way to make money and further your reputation and position.
That is the premise of The Voyage, an online game based on real convict voyages. Players must make decisions, solve problems and deal with conflicts on a perilous journey across the globe. Games in education have been around for a long time, from board games to electronic games and now digital games online. Benefits include improving skills in group dynamics, literacy and numeracy, decision-making, critical thinking, strategy, empathy and engagement with curriculum content. Today, virtual gaming offers a plethora of learning opportunities through online playing, sharing, collaborating, challenging, investigating and resourcing. Much has been written on the effectiveness of games-based learning and research continues, but as educators, how do we maximise the value of games for students through holistic learning strategies
that support both investigative and serendipitous learning? In an article on gaming in education, researcher Richard Halverson asks school leaders to look at the ‘compelling nature of gameplay’ and how intrinsic learning structures are built into the design of successful games as inspiration to embrace a different way of learning.1
Playing games in ‘learning time’ is not ‘leisure time’ and is certainly nothing to be feared, but, like incorporating any learning tool – digital or not – into a structured pedagogy, we must make discerning choices.
When I was first introduced to the concept of The Voyage game, my immediate thoughts turned to how accurate it would need to be to appeal to teachers as a legitimate educational device and how it would stand up to the punishing scrutiny of students as to the graphics and competitive pathways of the game structure. This game needed to be good! It needed to engage a specific audience for a particular purpose and effectively serve two masters – the students who would play it and the teachers who would implement it. What gave me confidence was the quality of our partners – an amazingly knowledgeable and engaging historian, Dr Hamish MaxwellStewart from the University of Tasmania,
and the diverse and high-quality visual storytelling capabilities of Roar Film, Screen Australia and Screen Tasmania. We chose to base the game around Hobart as this was an incredibly important and infamous penal colony, and because, as a national museum, we endeavour to tell stories from every corner of our country. Referencing around 10,000 actual convict records and real voyage scenarios boded well for creating a game that both teachers and students would embrace, and brings an intrinsic authenticity to the project.
That is not to say it can’t be enjoyable! A series of break-out games use humour and anachronisms to advantage, such as ‘shooting’ as many rats as you can to prevent the spread of disease and infestation of food. In fact the whole game uses humour as a pathway to engagement – a most difficult thing to do, particularly across a spread of age groups. The Voyage straddles the history curriculum for Years 5 and 9 of the Australian Curriculum (Stages 3 and 5 in New South Wales) – so ages between 10 and 16. There are also relevant links to English, Visual Arts, Science, Design & Technology, Maths and Geography, and during our trials with schools the different age groups were thoroughly engaged.
anmm.gov.au/voyagegame
We chose to base the game around Hobart as this was an incredibly important and infamous penal colony
01 Detail of a 1:64 scale model of the convict hulk York, made by E P Heriz-Smith, England, 1987. The port side is cut away to reveal 120 figures of convicts, guards and soldiers illustrating day-to-day activities and aspects of life on board ship. ANMM Collection
02 Screen depicting convicts’ quarters, and offering various choices that players can make. Image by Roar Film
The game is built on the premise of students role-playing the ship’s surgeon superintendent. The captain ran the ship, but the surgeon superintendent had responsibility for the human cargo. Players oversee many different aspects of the voyage, from treating illness, managing food supply, monitoring the mood of the convicts, deciding on ports of call and keeping the voyage to time. Gauges indicate the current level for each category and a wise player keeps a watchful eye on these at all times. Throughout the voyage players encounter pop-up scenarios that real surgeons would have dealt with, and the outcome depends on their choices. One 10-year-old player said, ‘With a book you’ve got your imagination as your limit but this allows you to make decisions’. Thinking about how and why you make those decisions is an important element in the game. At my first try I inadvertently stored the rum in the same area as the convicts and was prompted that my decision was less than astute. Then all my convicts starved to death before the halfway point! The key here
is that we learn from our mistakes and next time I would have to analyse what went wrong and employ different strategies.
During our trials I asked Year 9 students what they thought of The Voyage not only as a game, but as a methodology for studying history at school. The responses indicated that they appreciated the game as an alternative way of approaching familiar content and thinking about how it synthesised what they knew they had to ‘study’. Interesting. So, to the list of game benefits earlier in this article, I would add metacognition (thinking about process).
As museum educators, we need to look at a whole gamut of ways we can involve students with what they are studying in a meaningful way, using our collection to support and augment that. To this end we were very conscious of making this game a key and useable asset for teachers to incorporate into a well-sequenced unit of work. This includes considerations such as playing capacity within school lesson time, capabilities for playing on multiple
devices and potential for use at school, inter-school, at the museum or at home. We are also building a set of free curriculum-based companion resources for teachers and students that will feature classroom activities, research projects, further reading, quizzes, guides on how to research, interviews with key game developers, and primary sources from the museum’s and other collections, such as surgeons’ logs, medical kits and real convict records. We will also offer on-site and virtual excursion programs including a tall-ship experience, access to primary sources such as museum objects, and a storyteller who will transport the students back to convict times.
Who said ‘history is bunk’?
The Voyage game is available free on the museum’s website: anmm.gov.au/voyagegame
1 Richard Halverson, ‘What can K-12 school leaders Learn from Video Games and Gaming?’, originally published in Innovate 1 (6) innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=81 (accessed 24 April 2008).
Museums have always seen themselves as educational institutions, and have utilised digital technologies for around 45 years. Visitors have long expressed their understanding of museums as places to learn within a social context coupled with the range of objects that museums hold. Now, in the 21st century, museum audiences are better connected, more informed, more engaged, older, more culturally diverse, more interested in ideas, and architects of their own learning. They are mobile, accessing information wherever they are and at whatever time of their choosing, and they are active participants, rather than passive receivers of content and information. This means that traditional models of teaching and telling are no longer sufficient – the internet, and more specifically social media and mobile devices, are opening up a whole new way of engaging visitors, who are taking up these tools in droves.
However, what does learning look like in a modern museum? The Horizons Project, established in 2002 by the New Media Consortium, looks at emerging technologies and what these mean for teaching, learning and education. An analysis of the museum-specific reports since 2010 show that key trends include the importance of analytics and measurement, highlighting how the role of educators is changing dramatically, with cross-collaboration becoming
standard practice for museums. The report also outlines technologies that will be important developments in the short and long term, with augmented reality, games and mobile and locationbased technologies identified as areas museums need to consider.
To meet the needs and interests of modern learners, the museum’s Learning team have initiated a range of projects using technology in new and innovative ways. Our educational game, The Voyage, developed in collaboration with a range of partners, has been played to date by more than 125,000 people, with student and teacher feedback being extremely positive. The museum is actively producing educational materials for publication via the Apple iTunesU store and is about to start writing an iBook for the swimwear and textiles programs. An active social media presence via our Twitter account (@ANMMedu) has meant communicating with a whole new range of tech-savvy teachers who have been visiting the museum with their students and participating in a series of professional development workshops and evaluation studies. Finally, we have been working with the CSIRO to give more Australian students access to the iconic HMB Endeavour using virtual tours. The ship has been fitted with live-streaming panoramic cameras for students to look around as if they were really there,
while a museum educator uses a tablet to guide the students around the ship and communicate with them during the lesson. We have found that the interactivity of the digital excursion makes it a much more engaging experience for students from all across Australia, as well as lots of fun!
We have many more exciting projects in development, so watch our website.
Dr Lynda Kelly, Head of Learning
The New Media Consortium Horizons reports can be found on their website: redarchive.nmc. org/horizon-project/horizon-reports/horizonreport-museum-edition
Follow @ANMMedu on Twitter: twitter.com/ ANMMedu
More on the CSIRO HMB Endeavour project can be found here: csiro.au/en/News/Newsreleases/2015/Technology-brings-iconic-shipto-classroom-shores
03 The museum’s Cabinet of Curiosities touch trolley is a regular feature in both term time and holidays, and enables children to touch and examine the sorts of objects found in our collections. ANMM photographer
04 Youth workshops during school holidays teach skills such as film making and video making, and extend enjoyable learning beyond term time.
01 Working aloft on day 3. Photograph courtesy Bill Ellemor
02 Corinna O’Toole addresses guests at a reception on board. Photograph Andrew Markwell/ANMM
The Australian National Maritime Museum’s flagship, HMB Endeavour, is currently sailing down Australia’s south-east coast from Sydney to Port Lincoln and back. As well as introducing its voyage crew to the adventure of tall-ship sailing, the ship acts as a floating ‘ambassador’ for the museum, attracting enthusiastic crowds in port.
THE VICTORIAN PORT CITY of Geelong turned on a warm welcome for the recent arrival of Endeavour at the end of the first leg of its journey along Australia’s south-east coast.
The Commodore of the Royal Geelong Yacht Club organised a colourful flotilla of members’ boats to welcome Endeavour as it entered Corio Bay on the evening of Thursday 4 February. Earlier in the day, two members of the Queenscliffe Maritime Museum activated the heritage fog horn at the Port Lonsdale Light Station. As Endeavour entered the Rip at Port Phillip Heads under pilot, the blasts from the
fog horn created great excitement among visiting schoolchildren and spectators.
On the Friday, at a reception on board, Wadawurrung woman Corrina O’Toole gave a welcome to country to dozens of guests gathered on Endeavour ’s deck.
Geelong was the first port of call in Endeavour ’s most recent voyage, after leaving Sydney just after Australia Day. Its next legs will be to Adelaide and Port Lincoln in South Australia, before returning via Portland in Victoria to Sydney in April.
The ship’s master, Captain John Dikkenberg, reported that the first leg of the voyage had been completed safely, but was not without some challenging weather. Despite that, the voyage crew who signed on for the Geelong leg thoroughly enjoyed the experience. For a number of them, this was their fifth voyage on Endeavour Several local yachties were sufficiently impressed with Endeavour ’s visit that they signed on for the next and subsequent legs of the voyage.
The ship is an almost perfect replica of the vessel Lieutenant James Cook commanded when he mapped the east coast of Australia, except for the modern additions of engines, refrigeration, modern navigation equipment and radio. It drew enthusiastic interest from the local and regional community, including many visitors from Melbourne.
Hundreds of schoolchildren had the ship to themselves on the Monday before it left for Adelaide, learning about tall ship sailing in the 18th century.
Places are still available on the later legs of this trip. Visit endeavourvoyages. com.au for more information, or email hmbendeavour@anmm.gov.au or phone 02 9298 3627 to enquire or book.
You can follow Endeavour on the museum’s blog: anmm.wordpress.com.
Andrew Markwell Manager, Australian Maritime FoundationThe Australian National Maritime Foundation supports the museum and its collection and has been featuring Endeavour’s voyaging and education program in its fundraising over the past twelve months. The foundation is the museum’s fundraising organ, and has deductible gift recipient status, enabling it to issue tax receipts for donations and gifts in kind. Broadly, the foundation’s purpose is to support the acquisition, conservation and enhancement of the National Maritime Collection. The foundation has recently initiated development of an active and sustainable fundraising program with a view to gaining significant long-term support for the collection. For more information about donating or leaving a bequest to the foundation, please contact Andrew Markwell on 02 9298 3777 or email amarkwell@anmm.gov.au
Connections to the beaches along the New South Wales/Queensland border abound in a touring exhibition that opens in Noosa in March. It reveals the theatre of the beach, a space so important to the far north coast community, writes Senior Curator Daina Fletcher.
THE BEACH’S DOMINANCE in Australia’s national lexicon as a physical and cultural landscape arcs from the languor of places like Byron Bay and its surrounding beaches to the razzle dazzle of Surfers Paradise. It is largely through the work of Australia’s 20th-century artists, writers and especially photographers that these images have become so pervasive.
Waves & Water, a photographic exhibition from the museum’s collections, explores constructs of the beach and the body through the work of eight Australian photographers, many synonymous with the Australian beach and Australian photography – Max Dupain, Ray Leighton, Jeff Carter, Roger Scott, Anne Zahalka, Ian Lever, Narelle Autio and Trent Parke.
Each photographer frames the beach through their personal lens, and together their works reveal differing perspectives. So, too, the exhibition explores the way the photographic lens has been a tool in the beach’s construction, from late-19th-century postcard images showing an increasingly active pleasure ground to images from the present day.
Pre-eminent in this imagery is the emblematic figure of Max Dupain’s Sunbaker which, with Anne Zahalka’s reworking of it, bookends the exhibition. Together both images reveal a transformative, illusory beach culture, here shown in various guises, made up of moments captured by photojournalists like Jeff Carter and Roger Scott, and sweeping coastal landscapes by latter-day pictorialists like Ian Lever.
Max Dupain (1911–1992) was a prodigious talent whose commercial art practice produced a massive body of work of abstraction, portraiture, architecture and Australian life. His beach images from the 1930s have come to define the rise of a sundrenched Australian beach culture. His life was entwined with that of his childhood friend and creative collaborator Olive Cotton, who was briefly his wife, as well as George Dupain, Max’s father, and Max Cotton, Olive’s uncle, who became George’s business partner in his Dupain Institute of Physical Education and Medical Gymnastics.
George Dupain and Max Cotton embraced classical ideals of the muscular healthy body, eugenics and the value of physical education in moulding an active citizenry. As Isobel Crombie has pointed out in her book Body Culture: Max Dupain, photography and Australian culture 1919–1939 (2004), these ideas undoubtedly influenced the young Dupain, especially in his powerful images of the surf lifesaver and beach body. Dupain’s interest in perspective, line and form was well served by the contrasts of the beach landscape – the strength of the light, sun, shadow, surf, sand and horizon. So the muscularity of the surf lifesaver, the athleticism of the swimmer and the geometry of bodies on the sand were remade in Dupain’s modernist aesthetic. He captured perfectly the indelible transformation of the beach to an active site of tanned, athletic, ideal physiques.
Anne Zahalka (born 1957) composes startling tableaux as playful inquiries into ideas about cultural identity and representation, while also challenging photographic conventions such as the pursuit of the decisive moment. In an early series from 1989, Bondi: Playground of the Pacific, Zahalka’s ground-breaking work of carefully composed theatrical tableaux referenced well-known paintings such as Charles Meere’s Australian Beach Pattern, and Max Dupain and Olive Cotton’s iconic beach photographs.
01 The Sunbather #2, 1989. Anne Zahalka’s digital type C print references Max Dupain’s famous image from 50 years earlier. ANMM Collection 00030672. Reproduced courtesy Anne Zahalka
02 Max Dupain, Sunbaker, 1937. Silver gelatin photograph, printed 1987. ANMM Collection 00001256
Zahalka reinterpreted these images to question stereotypes and unveil their illusory nature, historically and today. Zahalka’s beach is populated by her own sunbather – a pale-skinned redhead – as well as Japanese surfers, southern European beachgoers and, in recent work, hijab-clad swimmers.
The exhibition shows work by other wellknown photographers of the inter-war era, including Ray Leighton (1917–2002), who with Dupain became one of Sydney’s most prolific professional photographers. Steeped in Manly’s surfing community, Leighton produced memorable images of friends surfing and hanging out. His beach was alive. It was a time when long boards ruled and surfers congregated at clubs on the beach to store their cumbersome boards that were impossible to transport. Leighton made long boards, and his badged board can be seen in one of the images. Many of these photographs were published in magazines and newspapers at the time.
Roger Scott (born 1944) was a photojournalist, and always looking for that decisive moment. A keen bodysurfer, he immersed himself in the waves, capturing a radically different perspective from those before him. The spontaneity and exuberance of swimmers in the rolling surf became his subject.
Scott began experimenting with an underwater camera from 1969, a Nikonos 35 millimetre. Lolling about with it strung around his neck, he was able to take his fellow swimmers by surprise, waiting in the water where personal space disappears, shooting rolls of film, looking for that moment capturing the odd and the typical.
Scott had a high failure rate; he was often knocked down by the surf, while droplets of water obscured his lens. The images remain fresh, though – swimmers pop up, rise with the swell, do handstands or roar along the disappearing crest of a wave. While today’s smartphone generation might find Scott’s images unremarkable, at the time they were startling for their spontaneity and unconventional perspectives and framing.
The rawness and unpredictability of the beach are lures for the photojournalist. In 1999 Narelle Autio (born 1969) and her partner Trent Parke (born 1971), both photojournalists at the Sydney Morning Herald, embarked on a body of work about their youthful fantasies gambolling in the ocean. Together they probed the different energies of their childhood beaches –Autio’s flat-calm Gulf St Vincent around Adelaide and Parke’s powerful Pacific Ocean at Newcastle.
The Seventh Wave series is the result of this study. Delving deeper than Roger Scott physically and also perhaps emotionally, these big, bold, otherworldly images show bodies from underneath –a fish’s perspective. What lurks beneath is raw, compelling, sometimes sensuous, dangerous, serene and above all suspenseful.
Of similar scale but contrasting interest is the work of pictorialist Ian Lever (born 1946). His images take us away from the active swimmer to the mystical allure of the water and the coastline, to an emotional immersion. Lever is a keen surfer who began exhibiting in 1987 after a career managing black and white photographic laboratories in Sydney and overseas. Long hours in the darkroom imbued him with a strong
Ian Lever’s Pools images are romantic interpretations of ocean baths highlighting the effect of light on water and the hues of the day
01 Ian Lever, Yellow Cap Bronte, 1994. Ilfochrome photograph. ANMM Collection 00032107. Reproduced courtesy Ian Lever
02 Anne Zahalka’s C-Type photographic print
The Bathers (1989) echoes Charles Meere’s iconic painting Australian Beach Pattern (1940), which is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Zahalka intentionally reveals the sides of the photograph’s backdrop and her studio set-up. ANMM Collection 00019000. Reproduced courtesy Anne Zahalka
01 Narelle Autio, Untitled, 1999–2000. Silver gelatin photograph. ANMM Collection 00033567. Reproduced courtesy Narelle Autio and Trent Parke
02 Postcard of beachgoers lolling and paddling at Sutton’s Beach, Redcliffe, Queensland, with a row of changing huts lining the beach, c 1910. ANMM Collection 00009339
03 Postcard of surf bathers at Cottesloe Beach, Western Australia, 1900–1915. ANMM Collection 00002911
04 Roger Scott, Manly, 1975. Silver gelatin photograph, printed 1994. ANMM Collection 00027107. Reproduced courtesy Roger Scott
05 Ray Leighton, Surf Sirens, Manly Beach, 1946. Silver gelatin photograph, printed 1998. ANMM Collection 00032015
The spontaneity and exuberance of swimmers in the rolling surf became Roger Scott’s subject
appreciation of light and its nuances in composition, form and mood, and prompted his move to colour photography. Nature is his collaborator. Lever’s Pools images are romantic interpretations of ocean baths highlighting the effect of light on water and the hues of the day. As well as being contemplative, these images show expansive panoramic landscapes, painterly in intent.
Jeff Carter (1928–2010) went on the road at the end of World War II as an itinerant farmer and labourer, always with his camera and typewriter at his side, determined to be an independent photographer and writer.
From the 1950s Carter began selling his photographic essays to magazines like Pix, People and Walkabout. He used an East
German Ikonta camera with square shaped film, and then a 35-millimetre Nikon. From the 1960s Carter’s telephoto lens enabled him to discreetly frame moments in the everyday lives of his subjects –ordinary people.
The rise of surfing subcultures and street life at holiday sites including the Gold Coast are among Carter’s many studies, in a commercial practice reminiscent of those postcards produced en masse at the turn of the 20th century as take-away mementoes for tourists and travellers.
While southern Queensland’s glittering Gold Coast came to exemplify the active beach, further north on its Sunshine Coast, Noosa Heads also changed in response
to new ideas about the beach and the active and tanned body. It morphed from a quiet site for sparse holiday parties reached by boat upriver to a widely-promoted surf bathing site for ‘surfing, fishing and grand panoramas’. The nearby Cooroy Royal Life Saving Club was relocated to a tent on Noosa’s Main Beach in 1927. By 1929, when new bridges made the area accessible by car, Noosa Heads had a new clubhouse and new name reflecting rising interest in ocean waves and surf culture – the Noosa Heads Life Saving and Surfing Club.
The Waves & Water exhibition is at Noosa Regional Gallery from 10 March to 01 May.
The museum’s major summer attraction Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition opened in December and has been drawing large and enthusiastic crowds. Creative producer Em Blamey traces its transformation from children’s book to interactive exhibition.
Fun facts in blood splats appear in odd places throughout the exhibition
AS THEY WANDER AROUND Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition, visitors probably won’t realise the challenges we faced in bringing to life the popular children’s book Horrible Histories® Handbook – Pirates. It’s one of the paradoxes of exhibition development that the better you do your job, the less people can tell what a job it was! So here’s a peek behind the scenes at some of the perils of Pirates
The first challenge was posed by the nature of the source material – a book, packed full of words; far too many words for people to read in an exhibition. So a key part of my role as creative producer was to devise ways to convert the information from the text into experiences. I used two main techniques: where possible the book’s topics were translated into interactive exhibits of various types, then any information remaining in text form was presented in appealing ways.
For example, the topic of loot became a touchscreen game where visitors race to salvage all the good stuff from a sinking ship. Another game presents details on pirate flags and allows visitors to create their own and then see their design flying at the masthead. Not all the interactives are as hi-tech, but all serve to engage visitors more actively than simply reading labels.
The labels that are used are designed to be as engrossing as possible.
Information on real pirates is narrated by the pirates themselves, in the first person. And fun facts in blood splats appear in odd places throughout the exhibition for visitors to discover as they explore. Some of the text could be taken directly, or slightly tweaked, from the book.
But any new text, for example on Asian and Australian pirates who don’t appear in the handbook, had to be written to match author Terry Deary’s style. It took a while for me to find his voice, but before long my bad jokes were good enough.
The Horrible Histories books and TV series have a huge following, so we wanted to create an exhibition that fans would immediately recognise as being part of the Horrible Histories family, not just a pirate exhibition with some new branding. We included a few clips of the TV series, but took our inspiration for the exhibition’s look and feel straight from the book, to make it seem as if you’d stepped right into its pages. We created 3D structures, but dressed them with life-sized 2D illustrations – so the shopfronts are 3D but their décor is all drawings, as are all the details on the ships, from their figureheads to their gunports.
This ‘bringing the book to life’ aesthetic seemed like a great idea, but achieving it proved another major challenge. Many of the things needed to create our world didn’t appear in the book, so we had to commission numerous new illustrations of everything from anchors to wine bottles, all to suit Martin Brown’s illustrative style. Where there were illustrations in the book that we wanted to use, such as the pirate characters, some had to be completely re-drawn, as they had been created to be a few centimetres tall on a page, not over a metre high in an exhibition. Also, the Horrible Histories style has evolved since the book was first published in 2006, so we had to merge old with new.
01 The pirate quayside and vessels are a three-dimensional version of some of illustrator Martin Brown’s drawings. The 3D structures are dressed with lifesized 2D illustrations to give visitors the impression that the book has come to life around them. Photograph Zoe McMahon/ ANMM
02 A parrot in search of a new pirate introduces the exhibition and guides visitors through it. Image copyright ANMM/Scholastic
01 One of a range of jaunty quayside shopfronts that house interactive displays and games about pirate life. Photograph Zoe McMahon/ ANMM
02 Interactive exhibits include cannons which visitors use to fire soft foam balls. Photograph Nicole Dahlberg
03 To showcase artefacts from the museum’s collection, the exhibition includes a display about the infamous (and very horrible) Batavia shipwreck, mutiny and massacre in 1629. Photograph Zoe McMahon/ANMM
This required considerable collaboration and negotiation with the publishers, Scholastic, who had to approve everything, but were based in the UK; the time difference was not very conducive to phone meetings as we’d be wanting to go home while they were still waking up.
Information on real pirates is narrated by the pirates themselves, in the first person
A final hurdle was the main message of the book itself – that pirates were really horrible and you wouldn’t want to be one. This might be true, but kids love pretending to be pirates, so we didn’t just want to tell them they were wrong. Instead we had the idea of a parrot character who is on the hunt for a new pirate. He introduces all the interactive exhibits by challenging visitors to see if they have what it takes to be his next pirate. However, by the end of the exhibition, after seeing how horrible pirates are, he has changed his mind and doesn’t want to be a pirate’s parrot any more. (We leave it up to the visitors to decide if they still want to be pirates!)
So, we got there in the end, though it wasn’t easy. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised – pirates don’t make for plain sailing!
Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition is on until 27 April.
Horrible Histories® is a registered trademark of Scholastic Inc and is used under authorisation. All rights reserved. Based on the bestselling books written by Terry Deary and illustrated by Martin Brown.
Horrible Histories® Handbook – Pirates is for sale in The Store for $16.95 / $15.25 Members.
producer
A MONTH OF MESMERISING ENCOUNTERS BELOW THE WAVES...
Mondays in March from 7.30pm
Summer in Sydney is always spectacular, with long warm days and balmy evenings waiting for cool changes. Sydney Harbour comes alive with cruise ships, fireworks and plenty of tourists adding colour and vibrancy to our amazing city.
01 Early birds were rewarded with the chance to greet five P&O vessels entering Sydney Harbour at dawn on an exclusive members cruise.
Photograph cameracreations.com.au
02 Special guest speaker Peter FitzSimons at the Members 24th Anniversary Lunch.
Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM
03 Our popular summer holiday theatre show, Calico Jack and the Pirate Cat
Photograph Annalice Creighton
04 Members of all ages enjoyed the opening of Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition
Photograph Zoe McMahon/ANMM
05 Horrible Histories illustrator Martin Brown was a special guest at the opening of the Pirates exhibition. Zoe McMahon/ANMM
06 The Boxing Day cruise provided a perfect vantage point to see all the action of the Sydney to Hobart race start.
Photograph cameracreations.com.au
07 James Craig, Endeavour, Southern Swan and Soren Larsen battle it out in the Australia Day Tall Ships race, with Endeavour emerging the victor. Photograph Louis Ehrler
I HAVEN’T HAD A CHANCE to meet you all yet, but I am looking forward to this in the near future. I am Oliver Isaacs, the new Manager, Members. Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Deanna Varga for the great work she has done to keep the Members’ department running despite her very busy schedule, also Renae Sarantis and Naomi Searle for their very important contribution during this time. I would also like to especially thank the members and museum staff for making me feel very welcome.
Museum members have experienced some amazing cruises, exhibitions and shows during the past quarter. During my short time here we have enjoyed the opening of Action Stations, a major project which has proved to be a huge success. Members also had the opportunity to be a part of the historic arrival of five P&O vessels entering Sydney Harbour at dawn. Pacific Aria, Pacific Eden, Pacific Dawn, Pacific Jewel and Pacific Pearl were greeted by some eager members who were then able to enjoy breakfast on board Olympic Storm before disembarking back at the museum.
The 24th Members Anniversary Lunch with special guest speaker Peter FitzSimons –journalist, historian and former Wallaby – received amazing feedback. His talk was very entertaining, knowledgeable and at times colourfully controversial, canvassing contemporary issues. He added a fresh perspective on historical events with his engaging commentary, and also signed copies of his new book, Fromelles & Pozières: In the Trenches of Hell
More recently, museum members have had special access to Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition. My favourite member event to date has been the Boxing Day Cruise. For many years I have watched the start of the Sydney to Hobart from the shores of Taronga Zoo, my previous workplace, so to see the yachts and the start of the race from the water was a wonderful experience.
Our two on-the-water events for Australia Day, the HMB Endeavour cruise and the family cruise, were both well received and members had an enjoyable time.
Coming up we have a great blend of traditional Member events and some exclusive Member experiences with the Classic and Wooden Boat Festival in April. Members will have the opportunity to get involved with our exhibitions Rough Medicine and, in early June, Ships, Clocks and Stars, and for our new members we will be conducting a welcome tour of the museum to help them get the most out of their memberships.
Besides 2016 being a leap year and the Year of the Monkey, it is the 25th anniversary of the museum’s operation at Darling Harbour. We are already planning the Members Anniversary Lunch.
I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming events and celebrating the 25th anniversary of your museum with you, and I wish you all the very best for 2016.
Oliver Isaacs Manager, MembersExclusive event
Welcome to new members
10–11 am Tuesday 15 March and Sunday 20 March (families)
A guided tour to acquaint new members with our galleries, attractions and facilities
Annual event
Phil Renouf Memorial Lecture
6–8 pm Thursday 31 March
With special guest speaker, Australian naval historian and author Dr David Stevens april
Family program
Family fun Sundays
11 am–4 pm Sundays 3 April, 22 May, 19 June
Special themed family fun days with lively performances, character tours, face painting and more
On the water
Autumn leaves cruise
1–3 pm Saturday 9 April
Enjoy afternoon tea on Lane Cove River while admiring the autumn foliage
Kids and family events Autumn school holidays
10–24 April
Exhibitions, hands-on workshops, themed creative activities, film screenings and performances
Maritime fair Classic and Wooden Boat Festival
Friday 15–Sunday 17 April
Darling Harbour comes alive with classic craft, maritime skills and trades, entertainment and more
Exclusive event
Vampire wardroom dinner
7.30–10.30 pm Thursday 21 April
A three-course meal accompanied by naval pomp and protocol
Booking form on reverse of mailing address sheet. Please note that booking is essential unless otherwise stated. Book online at anmm.gov.au/events or phone (02) 9298 3644 (unless otherwise indicated) or email members@anmm.gov.au before sending form with payment. All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change.
Annual event
Battle of the Coral Sea Commemorative Lunch
11.30 am–3 pm Saturday 7 May
Celebrate a historic collaboration between US and Australian naval forces
Behind the scenes
Action Stations
5.30–6.30 pm Thursday 12 May
A guided tour of the museum’s newest attraction, which showcases life in the navy
On the water
Vivid Sydney Cruise
6–8 pm Friday 27 May
Admire the light sculptures of this annual festival from our exclusively chartered vessel
Exhibition after hours Ships, Clocks and Stars: The quest for longitude
6.30–8.30 pm Wednesday 1 June
A new exhibition tells how this great maritime challenge was eventually solved
18 June – Whale Watching Cruise
26 November – Members 25th Anniversary Lunch
26 December – Boxing Day Cruise
26 January – Australia Day on Endeavour and family harbour cruise
01 New members can learn what the museum has to offer on a guided orientation tour.
Photograph Zoe McMahon/ANMM
02 Autumnal tones are the backdrop for a Members’ cruise on the Lane Cove River.
Photograph Shutterstock
Exclusive event
Welcome to new members
10–11 am Tuesday 15 March and Sunday 20 March (families)
This tour is specially designed to welcome new members (those with a membership of six months or less) to the museum. A representative of the Members team will guide you through the museum, pointing out areas of interest including the galleries, kiosk and the café Yots. At the end of the tour enjoy a coffee in the Members Lounge and the opportunity to ask all your burning questions.
Members FREE, bookings essential
Family program
Family fun Sundays
11 am–4 pm Sundays 3 April, 22 May, 19 June
Join us for special themed family fun Sundays with lively performances, character tours, face painting and more. Find the full program online at anmm.gov.au/familyfun or subscribe to our family e-newsletter to keep up to date on all the details.
Members FREE. Included in any paid admissions. To attend family fun Sundays only: Child $8.50, adults general museum fees apply
03 David Stevens with Chief of Navy, VADM Tim Barrett, at the book launch in November 2014. Photograph courtesy David Stevens
On the water
Autumn leaves cruise
1–3 pm Saturday 9 April
Journey up the Lane Cove River and see the changing leaves, heralding the start of autumn. Our Sydney Heritage Fleet guides will talk us through the history of the area, pointing out areas of note and the beautiful foliage. Enjoy afternoon tea amid the fluttering orange and red on this exclusively chartered vessel.
Members $70, member family $265, guests $80, guest family $280, child $50. Includes refreshments
Annual event
Phil Renouf Memorial Lecture
6–8 pm Thursday 31 March
Join Dr David Stevens as he presents the 2016 lecture, ‘After Emden: HMAS Sydney’s War 1915–18’. An anti-submarine warfare specialist, Australian naval historian and author, Dr Stevens is also the winner of the 2015 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize, which will be presented to him at this event. He will be available for book signings on the night. This lecture is always popular, so book now to avoid disappointment! Books can be purchased from The Store.
Members $30, guests $40. Includes refreshments
Under 5s activities
Mini Mariners Program
Every Tuesday during term time and one Saturday each month
Explore the galleries, sing and dance in interactive tours with costumed guides. Enjoy creative free play, craft, games, dress-ups and story time in our themed activity area. For ages 2–5 and carers.
Session 1: 10–10.45 am; session 2: 11–11.45 am
March – Pirates Ahoy
April – Aquanaut Adventurers
May – Under the Sea
Child $8.50. Members FREE. First adult $3.50, extra adults $7 (includes galleries). Booked playgroups welcome. Online bookings essential at anmm.gov.au/ whats-on
Kids’ activities
Kids on Deck
11 am–3 pm (hourly sessions) every Sunday during school term
Play, discover and create in Kids on Deck – a fun-filled activity and art-making space for primary school-aged children and their families.
Term 1 – Patch-eyed Pirates
Members FREE. Included in any paid admissions. To attend Kids on Deck only: Child $8.50, adults general museum fees apply
Youth workshop
Pernicious Pirates Claymation
10 am–3.30 pm Thursday 14 or Wednesday 20 April
Discover how to produce your own stopmotion and clay animations inspired by Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition in this fun-filled one-day workshop. Create your own animation to take home and have your work featured on the museum’s YouTube channel.
Members $45, guests $55. Bookings essential: 9298 3655 or book online at anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays
Kids and family events
Autumn school holidays
10–24 April
Have a swashbuckling adventure at the Maritime Museum these school holidays with exhibitions, vessels, hands-on workshops, themed creative activities, performances and more. It’s fun for the whole family!
Daily activities include art-making, games and dress-ups in Kids on Deck, exploring touchable objects and artefacts at the Cabinet of Curiosities, participating in lively and interactive science show performances, relaxing with a family film screening and more.
See anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays for full program
01 Claymation creations. ANMM photographer
02 Kids can unleash their inner pirate at Kids on Deck. Photo Annalice Creighton/ANMM
03 The launch of Horrible Histories® Pirates –the Exhibition goes off with a bang. Photo Zoe McMahon/ANMM
Cabinet of Curiosities – Wicked Weapons
11 am–12 noon and 2–3 pm daily 10–24 April
Touch and discover curious and terrible weapons, outfits and navigational tools related to the ‘golden age’ of piracy in this hands-on discovery device inside the galleries.
Members FREE. Included in museum entry
Family film screening
2.30 pm daily 10–24 April
See anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays for a full list of what’s on.
Members FREE. Included in museum entry
Maritime fair
Classic and Wooden Boat Festival
Friday 15–Sunday 17 April
A revitalised Classic & Wooden Boat Festival comes to Darling Harbour, with dozens of beautiful craft to admire and a chance to talk to their owners about these enviable vessels. You can also watch demonstrations of maritime skills and trades, wander our maritime marketplace to look for vintage and other wares, enjoy live entertainment throughout the day and evening, or just relax with a drink at our waterside bar/restaurant and imbibe the atmosphere. There’ll also be plenty of specials and exclusive offers for members – see page 10 for more information. Entry to the festival is FREE
Daily 10–24 April (except 15–17 April)
Play, create and discover in Kids on Deck – a fun-filled activity space with art-making, games, and dress-ups for primary school-aged children and their carers. These holidays, delve into the history of pirates in an adventure with science! Create your own terrific tall ship, make a flintlock shot painting or colour-diffusing parrot, experiment with making a kaleidotelescope or other piratical accessory. Enjoy dress-ups and interactive games. Included in any paid admission.
Members FREE. To attend Kids on Deck only: child $8.50. First adult $3.50, extra adults $7 (includes galleries)
Performances – Sci-Pi: Pirates in an adventure with science
11.30 am, 12.30 pm, 2 pm daily (except 15–17 and 23 April)
Join in a lively and interactive presentation that investigates the science of pirate life – the physics of pistol shot, ships’ lines and wind power, the buoyancy of a pirate galleon or the gruesome biology of sailors’ diseases. It’s an adventure into the scurvy world of sci-pi!
Members FREE. Included in any paid admission. No bookings required
04 The table set for the 2015 Vampire Wardroom Dinner. ANMM photographer
05 Naval ceremony at the Battle of the Coral Sea Commemorative Lunch, 2015.
ANMM photographer
06 Vivid Sydney cruise, 2015. ANMM photographer
Exclusive event
Vampire wardroom dinner
7.30–10.30 pm Thursday 21 April
The wardroom of HMAS Vampire will once again open exclusively for museum members. Join us for a gourmet threecourse meal with mess dinner traditions such as the passing of the port and the loyal toast. This is your opportunity to experience the Royal Australian Navy from an insider’s perspective.
Members $175, guests $190. Includes three-course gourmet meal with wine
Annual event
Battle of the Coral Sea Commemorative Lunch
11.30 am–3 pm Saturday 7 May
This annual event celebrates the historic collaboration between US and Australian naval forces against Japanese expansion in the Pacific in 1942. Museum members together with members of the Naval Officers Club are invited to commemorate this important battle with a canapés and a two-course gourmet meal and traditional remembrance ceremony.
Members $95, guests $105. Includes canapés and a two-course gourmet meal with wine
On the water
Vivid Sydney Cruise
6–8 pm Friday 27 May
Join fellow members on an exclusively chartered vessel to see Sydney transformed into a wonderland of ‘light art’ sculptures as part of the Vivid Sydney celebrations. A relaxing atmosphere and delicious catering combine to make this the easiest and most stress-free way to see this annual festival of light, sound and ideas.
Members $90, guests $100, kids $50, member family $300, guest family $320 (family is 3 kids, 2 adults). Includes refreshments
Family torchlight tour
Scurvy pirate recruits
6–7.30 pm Friday 22 April
Take a character-guided theatrical treasure hunt through the museum’s galleries by torchlight. Explore gruesome stories and terrible true histories as you journey from Rough Medicine to Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition and enjoy games, souvenir crafts and themed refreshments. Ages 4 to 12.
Member child $18, member adult $10. Guest child $22, guest adult $18. Book online at anmm.gov.au/ schoolholidays
Behind the scenes
Action Stations
5.30–6.30 pm Thursday 12 May
This insiders’ tour takes us to the museum’s newest attraction, Action Stations. Housed in the new Waterside Pavilion, this exhibition showcases the history and the human story of HMA Ships Onslow, Vampire and Advance. Our tour guide will walk you through the project’s timeline and discuss its future.
Members free, guests $10. No catering
Exhibition after hours Ships, Clocks and Stars: The quest for longitude
6.30–8.30 pm Wednesday 1 June
This international exhibition, developed by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, tells the extraordinary story of the race to determine longitude at sea and how one of the greatest technical challenges of the 18th and 19th centuries was eventually solved. The evening starts with the museum’s Vivid Sydney roof projection, then enjoy light refreshments followed by a tour of the exhibition. Bookings essential via weasydney.com. au, phone (02) 9264-2781. Meet at the museum 6.15 pm for 6.30 pm. Members and concessions $60, general $70 (to be confirmed)
SICKNESS COULD RENDER A SEA voyage anything from uncomfortable to horrific. The cure could be even worse.
Rough Medicine: Life & Death in the Age of Sail explores the fascinating history of how illness and disease shaped early sea voyages. The first exhibition to explore the theme of medicine at sea (in Australia or elsewhere), it charts life on board from the 17th century until the advent of steamships in the mid to late 19th century. It investigates health on the first British voyages of exploration, convict ships and the early migrant vessels to Australia’s colonies. It also looks at the changing role of the naval surgeon from ‘barber surgeons’, with the same status as ships’ carpenters, to the surgeon superintendents who voyaged with migrants to Australia from the early 19th century. These men were qualified and well paid, with the authority to override brutal captains.
Smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, typhoid, pneumonia, malaria, seasickness and venereal disease were common companions
on board ship, and bones were frequently broken. Disease spread rapidly in cramped quarters, drinking water was often polluted, food perished and new climates brought new ailments, with few passengers escaping a visit to the ship’s surgeon.
An eye-watering array of surgical instruments is displayed in this exhibition: a bone syringe, used to give urethral injections of mercury-based solutions to sailors suffering from gonorrhoea; an amputee saw, so brutal that only one in three people survived such surgery; and a trephine, a corkscrew-like tool to help lift a compressed skull fracture or to drain a build-up of blood on the brain.
Leeches feature, too – it was recommended that every ship carry a jar of at least 50 of the little bloodsuckers. Another way to bleed a patient was with a scarificator, whose razor-sharp spring-loaded blades cut the skin. To increase the blood flow created by this devilish device, a glass cup would be applied and a vacuum created within the cup by exhausting the air, either by a flame
or a pump. And these are just some of the tools of the trade of the ship’s surgeon as explained in the exhibition.
Rough Medicine: Life & Death in the Age of Sail also provides an intimate window into the minutiae of life on a sailing ship for both crew and passengers. The diaries, journals and letters of these migrants and the reports of surgeon superintendents show that health was an overwhelming focus for most on board as they took to the high seas. Come and take your own journey to find out if you would have survived the surgeon’s knife.
Rough Medicine: Life & Death in the Age of Sail is on at the museum until 5 May. Entry is included in our FREE Galleries ticket.
Rough Medicine: Life & Death in the Age of Sail was designed and toured by the South Australian Maritime Museum.
01 Find out whether you have what it takes to be a pirate. Image © ANMM
02 Scene from the 1946 film Indonesia Calling by Joris Ivens. Courtesy National Film and Sound Archive
03 Viper moray Enchelynassa canina Image courtesy Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
Until 27 April
Get hands-on with pirate history at our all-new exhibition based on the bestselling Horrible Histories series. Take command of a pirate ship, design and project your own pirate flag, try out different weapons from cutlasses to cannons, and find your fate on the wheel of misfortune. Learn about the ships they sailed on, the punishments they suffered and the rules they lived by. The unique approach to storytelling of author Terry Deary and illustrator Martin Brown comes to life in this blockbuster family exhibition.
Produced in association with Scholastic
Until 28 March
One hundred years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed aboard Endurance to Antarctica aiming to be the first to cross its vast interior. A support party followed, led by Aeneas Mackintosh on Aurora Both ships were crushed in the ice and lost to their crews, who endured incredible hardship. How did they cope in this treacherous place?
Their exploits are contrasted with those of modern-day adventurer Tim Jarvis, who re-enacted parts of Shackleton’s epic trip. The exhibition features Australian Frank Hurley’s stunning images, multimedia and interactive elements, and rare and unusual artefacts, specimens and equipment.
Until 21 March
At the end of World War II in August 1945, Indonesians declared their independence from Dutch colonial rule. The declaration began a four-year political and military struggle. During this period, Australian support for Indonesia was prominent.
From late 1945, Dutch ships in Australian ports preparing to return to Indonesia with military arms and personnel were paralysed by a series of black-bans by maritime trade unions. Support for Indonesian independence then grew beyond the labour movement and Australia led the way in international political recognition of Indonesia.
Now open!
The striking building that has recently opened on the museum’s south wharf houses our newest attraction, Action Stations, which traces the story of the Royal Australian Navy and the museum’s ex-navy ships, the destroyer HMAS Vampire and submarine HMAS Onslow
Featuring a dramatic immersive cinematic experience, a new discovery and exploration space and audio-visual encounters that recall sailors’ memories on board the vessels, Action Stations gives visitors new insight into the inner workings of navy life at sea.
For more information visit anmm.gov.au/ actionstations
Until 22 May
Striking X-rays of fish dazzle in this fascinating travelling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
Forty prints of specimens from the 20,000 contained in the museum’s National Fish Collection are arranged in evolutionary sequence, so you can go with the flow of fish evolution. Many of the species X-rayed are found in Australian waters.
X-ray Vision: Fish Inside Out is organised by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).
Until 22 May
This companion exhibition to X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out in our USA Gallery displays a small selection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fish images and maritime art using the X-ray technique pioneered in Arnhem Land thousands of years ago.
01 US Army Captain Sheridan Fahnestock in New Guinea. Ladislaw Reday Photographic Collection, Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
02 Children bound for Fairbridge Farm School, Molong, NSW, 1938. Reproduced courtesy Molong Historical Society
Until 22 May
This story of Australians sailing under the US flag during World War II is one of daring and courage. The US Army Small Ships Section comprised some 3,000 requisitioned Australian vessels of every imaginable size and type, which plied the dangerous waters between northern Queensland and New Guinea to establish a supply lifeline to Allied forces fighting the Japanese.
This little-known story is told using objects and documents lent by the men of the Small Ships and their descendants.
ANMM travelling exhibitions
On Their Own: Britain’s child migrants
UK tour
V & A Museum of Childhood, Bethnal Green, London UK
Until 12 June
From the 1860s until the 1970s, more than 100,000 British children were sent to Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth countries through child migration schemes. The lives of these children changed dramatically and fortunes varied. Some forged new futures; others suffered lonely, brutal childhoods. All experienced dislocation and separation from family and homeland.
From 24 March
For thousands of years Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have navigated across the lands and seas of Australia using paths called songlines or dreaming tracks. A songline is based around the creator beings’ formation of the lands and waters, and explains the landmarks, rock formations, watering holes, rivers, trees and seas.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people navigate by singing or dancing the path of the creator beings, passing down this knowledge from generation to generation. This exhibition, for NAIDOC Week, brings together artworks that express this traditional knowledge.
03 The Sunbather #2, Anne Zahalka, 1989. ANMM Collection Reproduced courtesy Anne Zahalka
04 Detail of a diorama of the RAN Bridging Train at Gallipoli, made by Geoff Barnes. Photo Andrew Frolows/ANMM
Noosa Regional Gallery, QLD, 10 March–1 May
Iconic photographs from the Australian National Maritime Museum’s collection capture Australian beach culture from the 1930s to 2000: sunbathers, swimmers, surfers, surf lifesavers and ocean pools, by Max Dupain, Jeff Carter, Ray Leighton, Ian Lever, Roger Scott, Anne Zahalka and Narelle Autio.
Western Australian Maritime Museum, Fremantle, WA 12 March–29 May
The histories and stories of the Royal Australian Navy and its sailors, less widely known than those of the soldiers at Gallipoli and the Western Front, are told through first-hand accounts from diaries and journals, objects, film and interactives from the National Maritime Collection, the National Film and Sound Archives and the Australian War Memorial.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
A small exhibition at the museum looks at the Battle of Crete, fought during World War II in the Mediterranean. Overlaying her own images with period photographs, artist Cheryl Ward has turned back the clock 75 years, returning Anzacs to the Acropolis and German paratroopers to the skies of Crete.
IN THE MIDDLE OF 2015 I was contacted by Nick Andriotakis, Secretary of the Joint Committee for the Commemoration of the Battle of Crete and The Greek Campaign. He had seen my work for Lemnos1915, created in partnership with Bernard de Broglio, and requested I create a similar series for Crete.
I will be the first to say I know very little about World War II – the Great War has been my point of focus for the last six years – but the internet soon got me up to speed on the major points of the Crete campaign. So, armed with photographs from the Australian War Memorial, Imperial War Museum and Commonwealth War Graves Commission – iconic images of paratroopers and burning ships – I set about wandering Crete from the comfort of my office chair. Google Street View will let you do that.
After hours ‘virtually’ driving the streets of Chania and beyond, I was able to mark on a map the probable locations of the
wartime photographers. Then I made a whirlwind trip to Greece in September last year.
With only six days on Crete, I had to work fast. Driving to the pins on the map and lining up the old photos proved that I had my eye in and need not have worried. There I was, standing in the same spot (or as close as the modern architecture and roads would allow) as the original photographer, looking up to find the historic image reveal itself before my eyes. There is a unique quality to looking at a historic photo ‘in situ’. What has changed and what has stayed the same? On Crete, what shone through was the island’s survival and renewal. It brought home to me the efforts made by those who served so long ago. The human spirit does prevail, and ‘then and now’ images reflect that – what was lost and what was gained. Especially haunting were the images of the cemeteries of Crete taken during or immediately after the war. To see them now – extended, well-tended and quiet –is sobering, to say the least.
My trip was just a glimpse into the struggle that played out on Crete in World War II. Hopefully these few images help in some way to remember and recognise those who were there.
Crete 1941 – Then & Now opens at the museum in April (date to be announced).
The museum will hold an exclusive Welcome Wall Greek ceremony event on Sunday 15 May 2016, at which panels featuring 300 names of migrants of Greek descent will be unveiled. The event will include special guest speakers and entertainment organised in collaboration with the the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW and the Consulate General of Greece in Sydney. For more information, or to attend the ceremony, phone 02 9298 3765 or see store.anmm.gov.au/museum/welcome-wallgreek-ceremony-gift-offer/
01 Then: AIF soldiers at the Acropolis, Athens. Unknown photographer. Australian War Memorial AWM 006795. Now: Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens, August 2015. Photographer Cheryl Ward. Composite image by Cheryl Ward
02 Then: German parachute troops over Souda Bay during invasion, 20 May 1941. Unknown photographer. Australian War Memorial AWM 128433. Now: Looking north-east across Souda Bay from hill above Souda, September 2015.
Photographer Cheryl Ward. Composite image by Cheryl Ward
03 Then: Maleme, Crete, 6 June 1945. View of the airfield from the presumed site of the Australian positions, looking across a German cemetery. Photographer V J Krauth. Australian War Memorial AWM 130960. Now: Looking north from within the German Military Cemetery, Maleme, Crete, September 2015. Photographer Cheryl Ward. Composite image by Cheryl Ward
MARITIME HERITAGE AROUND AUSTRALIA BUNBURy
Creating a museum from little more than some council minutes and sketchy notes would seem a formidable brief for some, but Lauretta Davies of the Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre in Western Australia has approached the task with gusto. Alex Kopp profiles this new cultural institution and its ‘can-do’ curator.
CONVENIENTLY LOCATED in the middle of town, sandwiched between a major shopping centre, trendy coffee shops and a laid-back waterfront, Bunbury’s Paisley Centre has recently become a growing point of interest for locals and tourists alike. The reason? The building is home to Western Australia’s – if not the country’s – newest city museum and a much-overdue cultural showpiece for a region rich in social, industrial and maritime history.
Open the doors to the building, and you are likely soon to come face to face with Lauretta Davies – a piano-playing interior designer, B&B owner, former journalist and, most recently, the senior curator and project manager for the new Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre.
Davies considers herself a storyteller. However, it required more than mere storytelling to take a set of Council minutes and a sketchy vision, and turn them into the reality that is the centre today: a tangible, extensively restored building with freshly opened doors, an eclectic collection of objects and ephemera, and broad community support.
‘The first requests to Bunbury Council for a museum go back to 1936,’ says Davies. ‘Back then, a strong local character, an artist by the name of Rosetta Kelly, found that she was producing many high-quality botanical watercolours with nowhere of good standard to display them to the public. So she approached the council requesting that a museum and an art gallery be established, and the council at the time moved to investigate the issue.’
‘However, this has never eventuated in having a city museum,’ Davies continues. ‘There was a wonderful house museum (King Cottage), but for a long time Bunbury was the only city in Western Australia that didn’t commemorate its history, celebrate its past or promote its identity. In decades since, many efforts have been made in good faith to sort out a location, an identity, a collection policy and so forth, but these efforts have not come to fruition.’
Or, at least, they hadn’t begun to do so until 2010, when Council finally voted to establish a museum, and appointed Davies as foundation staff, along with Debra Paini, an experienced librarian.
The task ahead was both unique and formidable. At the time of Davies’ appointment, there was no building, no collection, no guidelines or policies.
To some, Davies might have been seen as an unusual choice. She was certainly capable and knowledgeable, with a degree in History, Politics and Sociology, as well as Museum Studies training from Edith Cowan University. She had also completed a Masters in Cultural Heritage, but she didn’t come into the role sporting an extensive museum background.
For centuries, Bunbury had been a meeting place for local Noongar people, and later became a centre for whaling, timber, agricultural and mining industries
At the time of Davies’ appointment, there was no building, no collection, no guidelines or policies
Instead, she started her career as a researcher at the UK Sunday Telegraph, then based in London’s famous Fleet Street, and later spent 10 years working for the ABC in Perth as a broadcaster, reporter and producer. She says this was when she found herself falling in love with the state’s South West region.
That love eventually drove Davies and her family to leave the city and head south to the sleepy town of Nannup. There, she and her husband set up luxury tourist accommodation. They later built The Mythic Mazes, a complex of mazes and gardens which at one stage was a finalist in the Western Australian Tourist Awards. When the job of curator for the proposed Bunbury Museum came up, she jumped at the opportunity, believing that her strong entrepreneurial background and creative, ‘think outside the box’ streak would be well suited for the position. ‘Starting from scratch suited me very well, as it was something I had done before’, she says.
One of Davies’ first tasks was to work with an advisory committee to select a suitable site for the museum. The committee looked at 13 options. In the end, the timely vacation of previous tenants, its excellent location and the fact that some building restoration was already under way made the Paisley Centre the obvious choice.
The Paisley Centre has an interesting story of its own. It started as a one-room school in 1886, built upon a swamp cleared by convicts. By 1916 it had grown to seven classrooms and a large assembly hall. It ran as a school until 1963, by which time the building no longer fitted the purpose. Once the school moved out, the site was variously used as an adult education and visitor centre, theatre, dance studio and restaurant.
Eventually, the building became badly affected by damp and needed major restoration. ‘The subfloor was absolutely rotten, so that had to be removed,’ Davies recounts. ‘However, this gave us an opportunity to put in a new timber floor almost throughout, which is stunning, and almost every visitor comments on it. We also had to replace the deep concrete floors which were the basis of the stage. There were actually diggers working inside this beautiful, state heritage-listed building, removing tons of concrete. It was amazing to see, but quite hair-raising!’
The building has now been stripped back to its early 1916 school footprint. Since it was always planned as a government institution rather than a private home, it has large, open spaces which lend themselves very well to museum use. ‘We have been able to break up the building quite nicely to back of house, storage, quarantine and reception, and have some pretty large exhibition areas as well,’ Davies explains.
Having a museum building, of course, doesn’t make a museum. Amassing, assessing and caring for a growing collection has proven to be a formidable – albeit enjoyable and very rewarding – task. There was no collection policy to start with, so Davies, working with an advisory committee, set to writing one. ‘The policy was fairly predictable,’ she says. ‘It looked at the environment, Indigenous history, early settlement and colonial arrivals, growth of port and rail, secondary industry, convict governance, communications, retailing, manufacturing, and then the domestic scene such as health, sport, families and so on.’
‘There are certain things you would expect to be included in a museum, such as colonial and Indigenous history,’
she continues. ‘But as I got to know the Bunbury community better, I learned that there might be interest in some more unexpected components, such as street-car racing, which used to take place in what is now the central business district.’
Davies and her colleague Debra Paini have been able to uncover some existing collections held by the council, which had not been documented to contemporary standards or digitised before. They also investigated a local studies collection which had previously been developed at the Bunbury Library. ‘It turned out that a lot of paper-based material had been donated earlier, which now comes under the museum’s development. So we actually had access to quite a lot of material which already was there, but it was simply not fully recognised.’
‘The budget to actually purchase items for the collection has been very small,’ says Davies. ‘But we have some pretty major new donations which we acquired over the past three or four years.’
Davies admits that she ‘isn’t supposed to have favourites’ among the collection ... but she does. One of them is a monster of a projector. ‘It’s the last projector from one of the drive-in cinemas in Bunbury, which is now closed. It’s a huge thing, very clunky, and the stories that go with it are extremely entertaining. We have a generation of visitors who don’t know what a drive-in was, all the sorts of highjinks that kids and adults got up to there, so we are going to have some fun with that.’
‘To understand the museum collection as a whole, though, one must first understand Bunbury,’ says Davies, before launching into a potted version of the region’s unique history. For centuries, Bunbury had been a meeting place for local
01 A letter from Bunbury man Cyril Harvey Kelly sent to his mother from Egypt in March 1916. The museum also holds a memorial plaque relating to him.
02 Renovations in progress at the 1886 former school as it’s transformed into the new Bunbury Museum. This image from 2013 shows the interior of the state heritagelisted building after old concrete floors were removed by a bulldozer.
03 Renovations complete, the museum hosts a travelling photographic exhibition from the National Archives of Australia, A Place to Call Home?, while final design preparations are under way.
All images courtesy Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre
Amassing, assessing and caring for a growing collection has proven to be a formidable – albeit enjoyable and very rewarding – task
Noongar people, and later became a centre for whaling, timber, agricultural and mining industries. The local coastline is littered with wrecks of ships caught up in winter storms, or whose skippers got the longitude wrong, and the area abounds with stories of early settlers and migrants who coped with extraordinary difficulties. The city now forms the gateway to the beautiful South West, and is often regarded as the second capital of Western Australia – largely thanks to the presence of its vibrant port.
‘What is interesting, though,’ says Davies, ‘is that although Bunbury is right on the coast, because of the lie of the land and the changes in the way the city works, recent generations seem to have lost touch with the fact that this is, above all else, a maritime city, and the history of the port is an integral part of it all.’ The collection does, therefore, have a significant maritime focus.
As part of her own professional development, Davies applied for and was granted a two-week internship at the Australian National Maritime Museum. It is an experience of which she speaks very highly. ‘The staff at the ANMM helped me enormously – everything from dealing with curatorial and conservation issues, development of programs, promotions, social media, merchandising, working with volunteers, exhibition design, running the library, reference and research systems ... They helped me with every aspect of running a regional museum.’
‘Overall, in a sector which is often filled with very generous people, I found the specialists at the ANMM were particularly generous with sharing their knowledge and they could not do enough to help.’ She was able to apply much of her new knowledge upon return to Bunbury.
Along the way, Davies has learnt to work within the local government context.
‘As a consultant, you can have a good idea in the morning and have it implemented in the afternoon. That doesn’t work when dealing with the competing priorities of local government, and the necessary juggling of finances and resources.
Funding is an issue; we have to work with very tight budgets, which can cause some constraints. For example, we would love to open seven days a week, but that is not looking likely at the moment. If it wasn’t for the high calibre of our wonderful volunteers, things would be even tighter.’
Overall, however, Davies believes that the local government system is very rigorous, and she values the community feedback and consultation which have been inherent in the museum creation process.
Davies says that among the most worthwhile aspects of the project was getting the museum’s first exhibition open to the public, despite the building being not quite ready at the time. This was the World War I exhibition Remembering Them, run in partnership with the Western Australian Museum. ‘We set up in the Bunbury Regional Art Galleries building. We were using borrowed equipment, but the support that came from the community, the donations and loans and the end result, working collaboratively with the WA Museum and Galleries staff, was extremely satisfying.’
The museum opened its doors in November 2015 to display a travelling photographic exhibition A Place to Call Home?, from the National Archives of Australia. The exhibition focused on migration, and was supported at the Bunbury Museum with rich local content aimed at connecting the community with its more recent past. The official opening of the museum is scheduled for later this year.
Davies’ focus now also includes further recruitment and training of volunteers, development of digital resources, and further work on an ‘olden days’ classroom which also includes a family history research hotspot and is host to public presentations, author talks and the like.
‘We’ve had a very steady flow of visitors since the exhibition opening,’ says Davies. ‘Some of them are interested in the building, and then are thrilled to find what’s inside; sometimes, it is the other way around.
And many of the people who are coming in are coming back with an object, or a story, or are returning with more time to look.’
‘It’s great to be part of it all,’ she says. No doubt it is.
Alex Kopp is a former teacher and university lecturer. She currently works as a museum educator at the WA Museum and is writing her first book, about Yagan, an Aboriginal resistance leader from the South West of Western Australia.
The museum’s Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme (MMAPSS) provides grants of up to $10,000 to non-profit organisations such as museums and historical societies that care for Australia’s maritime heritage, to fund a range of projects including those related to restoration, conservation, collection management and exhibition development. MMAPSS is administered by the museum and jointly funded by the Australian Government. For more information, or to apply for a grant, please see our website.
We are seeking new volunteers for a variety of activities and exciting new projects. Volunteers are important members of our museum community.
Show small groups around the museum. Become a volunteer tour guide. Assist us at the museum. Develop a wide range of new skills.
Help preserve Australia’s maritime heritage. Volunteer now!
+61 9298 3777
volsoffice@anmm.gov.au Or apply online at anmm.gov.au/get-involved/volunteer
Man’s pubic ornament (phallocrypt) of carved pearl shell hung from a belt of human hair. The shell has been incised with a geometric design picked out with ochre. Phallocrypts were an important trading item for Indigenous communities throughout the Kimberley region of Western Australia. ANMM Collection 0006918
International interest in Australian Indigenous culture is strong and growing, and the museum’s programs are helping to take Indigenous artworks to the world. Saltwater barks from our collection travelled to the Istanbul Biennial last year, and now a selection of shell artworks are on their way to Monaco to be exhibited at the principality’s Oceanographic Museum, writes Indigenous Programs Manager Donna Carstens.
WITH MORE THAN 25,000 kilometres of shoreline, the littoral zone of the Australian continent and islands is vast and varied. In places it reaches out to the horizon in tidal flats or coral reefs and in others it is formed by steep cliffs and deep waters. Cut by rivers, creeks and estuaries that have shaped the shores as places of sustenance, all this saltwater and freshwater country is rich with an array of shimmering and diversely shaped shells.
For tens of thousands of years, shells have sustained Indigenous Australians –as a food source, as tools for fishing, hunting or cutting, and as cultural objects. They have been at once practical, workable items and prized artefacts of beauty, imbued with cultural and spiritual narratives and significance.
A global obsession with pearls has been archived in literature and ornaments down the ages; they are prized for their beauty, and symbolise spirit (for their glistening ability to flash light) and the exotic (one meaning of the word ‘orient’ refers to their luminous lustre). Such luminescent properties hidden and contained inside crusty dark casings and birthed from the ocean depths are obvious metaphors for transformation and transcendental or heavenly/ancestral power.
Lustrous shells have also been part of Indigenous communities far from the shore,
traded hundreds of kilometres inland and forming part of cultural practices in remote regions across Australia. Used in highly creative and versatile ways, shells continue to be important in cultural and artistic practice in contemporary Indigenous communities.
The shell objects and artefacts in the exhibition Living Waters draw on artists from three regions around Australia. The large and iridescent pearl shell that is found in coastal waters across northern and western Australia forms the basis of artists’ work from the Kimberley in Western Australia as well as the Torres Strait Islands, hundreds of kilometres to the east at the tip of far north Queensland. Far to the south, on the north-east coast of Tasmania, much smaller shells are used in intricate and delicate necklaces and bracelets. Despite the very different shells and vast distances between them, these artworks are united by the importance of shells in the cultural and artistic palettes of the communities.
Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) women string shells into body adornments such as necklaces, bracelets and pendants. This form of shellwork is one of the few cultural practices to have survived the massive disruption to the Indigenous community that occurred in Tasmania over the last two centuries, especially in the devastating colonial wars.
Thus, contemporary Palawa shellwork is an impressive achievement. It is a women’s tradition stretching back many, many generations, and the techniques of choosing and intricately stringing the tiny shells are passed down to daughters, nieces and granddaughters. It is also a tradition that has evolved over time, with contemporary influences and artistic interpretation.
Different shells can only be collected at certain times of the year, dictated by the seasons and the often wild weather and treacherous waters around Tasmania. The shells collected include the maireener, toothy, rice, cockle and crow shells. The wonderfully iridescent maireener is the most prized shell used in necklace making, collected only during the spring tides. It is difficult to obtain as it only grows on living seaweed and seagrass located offshore. The shells have to be collected individually within a short three-hour time frame.
Making a necklace with so many small shells requires patience and skill. Particular types, patterns, sizes and colours are sorted, then the necklace pattern can be designed accordingly. The tiny shells are washed, cleaned and polished to enhance their refractive intensity. Traditionally, minute holes were made using a piece of sharp bone or the pointed eye-tooth of a kangaroo. They were then strung on animal sinew or grass fibre. Necklaces could
take up to three or four days to complete and would leave the artist with sore fingers.
Tasmanian shell necklaces were not only body adornments but also had an important role in ritual and cultural exchange. They were used as gifts, trade items and tokens of honour. In 1802 a member of the French scientific expedition under Nicolas Baudin, botanist Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour, described their appearance, construction and – inadvertently – their role in gift exchange:
Several of them crossed the strait [from Bruny Island] ... On arrival, [the chief] gave me the necklace he was wearing, which was made of shells of glistening mother-of-pearl, strung on a small cord made of bark and grass. [H]e asked in exchange a necklace of glass beads, which I immediately gave him.
Two hundred years later, Palawa women continue this important association of exchange and gift-giving with shell necklaces. As Palawa people’s lives were drastically changed by one of the harshest episodes of colonisation in the history of Australia, the women added new meanings to their shellwork.
Nowadays, pollution, over-collecting and fishing activities mean that the maireener shells – especially the larger ones – are becoming increasingly hard to find.
Palawa shellwork, which was widely collected from the 19th century as curios and souvenirs – once an unknown part of community sustenance and survival – has, since the 1990s, been much sought after by collectors and institutions around the world, assisting Palawa women to maintain this important cultural practice.
In the far north-west of Australia, a much larger shell offered people quite a different object to work with. The pearl shell, with its large flat shape, became a canvas upon which to inscribe designs. The shells were harvested offshore at very low equinox tides. People from the Buccaneer Archipelago used Gaalwa rafts, constructed of mangrove logs fastened together with wooden pegs, to visit offshore reefs to collect shells. Both men and women were involved in different aspects of the harvesting, crafting and wearing of pearl shell.
The Kimberley coast was renowned for its incised and decorated pearl shell – known as riji or jakuli in the Bardi Jawi language. After gathering the shell, it would be opened and cleaned and have one to three attachment holes pierced by a stone flake. Some shells were not engraved, but most were incised on the lustrous inner face of the shell with ochre or charcoal infill.
Pearl shells were used in ceremonies such as initiation, rain-making and love magic and worn as body adornment, with large shells being worn by men as pubic coverings, tied around the waist with a belt of human hair. Smaller shells were also worn around the neck or tucked into headbands by both men and women; these were considered as informal wear, with the larger shells usually associated with more formal events such as ceremonies. The incised lines and engravings on the shells often identified clan groups, places or animals and held significant stories.
The shells were also traditionally associated with trade and exchange, water, magic and sorcery. Their incandescence and connection with rain-making linked them to the Rainbow Serpent, a creator god, and its manifestation as a rainbow. Flashes of light from the shimmering surface of the inner shell connected the shells to lightning and thus the production of rain clouds.
The pearl shell’s connection to water was prominent. It has been described by the Bardi Jawi people as ‘an emblem of life itself’, with the seasonal re-awakening of the land after dry periods ‘embodied in the shell’. In 1990 the Kimberley artist and Walmajarri elder Mumbadadi from Christmas Creek described pearl shell as ‘… for everybody – man and woman. This is rain.
The wonderfully iridescent maireener is the most prized shell used in necklace making, collected only during the spring tides
This everything water’. Thus the importance of pearl shells was great, both along the coast and for thousands of kilometres inland. Shells were traded in various routes across much of the Australian continent.
Since the mid-20th century shellwork has also been used to engage with various histories since colonialism. Today, artists from the Kimberley coast such as Gary and Darrell Sibosado are still creating riji Their etched pearl shell designs have also been transformed into print media such as etchings and other graphic design, becoming an accepted part of Indigenous contemporary art.
The Torres Strait Islands were another rich and important location for pearl shells and also part of the often tragic history of the lucrative pearling industry in Australia. Here, shells – now harvested sustainably – continue to be a key material in the palette of artists who create items central to ceremonial performances, such as masks, headdresses, headbands, necklaces, breast ornaments and armlets. Often worn around the neck as a charm, pearl shell conferred prestige on its owners, and can be found in the dhoeri and dari headdresses (the dari features on the Torres Strait Island flag).
Contemporary artists such as Ricardo Idagi, Obery Sambo and George Nona use varieties of lustrous shells, including pearl shell.
Shellwork has provided a means for Indigenous systems of knowledge to become embedded in contemporary art practices. The examples in the Living Waters exhibition are ecological narratives based on an intimate understanding of country to which Western science is only recently turning, as together we struggle with anthropogenic climate change.
The Oceanographic Museum of Monaco is committed to sharing knowledge about the oceans and raising awareness of, and finding innovative solutions to, the dangers that threaten them.
Initiated in 1910 by the museum’s founder, HSH Prince Albert I, this approach was then carried forward by its successive directors – chief among them Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau – and HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, during his extensive travels around the world.
Living Waters, an exhibition of Indigenous Aboriginal and Oceanic art, will be held over six months and will be a major event of summer 2016 at the Oceanographic Museum. It aims to address its theme from various angles with diverse artistic approaches, different media and the involvement of a large number of artists. The primary link between the Oceanographic Institute and the Aboriginal and Pacific peoples is the Oceanographic Institute’s message
01 Pearl shell decorated with tufts of cassowary feathers by Richard David of Yam Island, Torres Strait, 1993. The feathers are attached to the shell with white fibrous string and yellow thread. ANMM Collection 00018113
02 Necklace made by Murial Maynard in 1998 from rice shells (also called rye shells), toothy shells and maireener shells. ANMM Collection 00030306
03 Indigenous Western Australian pearl shell pendant with a finely incised design. ANMM Collection 00045196
04 Bracelet made by Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) artist Lola Greeno from black crow and blue maireener shells, 2008. ANMM Collection 00045959
about the protection of oceans and biodiversity. All the works in this exhibition have a relationship with the sea, sailing and water. The ANMM’s collection of shell objects and artworks will highlight the use of shells both in a traditional and contemporary context.
References
Akerman, Kim, and John Stanton (1994), Riji and Jakoli: Kimberley Pearlshell in Aboriginal Australia (Monograph Series 4; Darwin: Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences)
Florek, Stan, ‘The Torres Strait Islands Collection at the Australian Museum’, Technical Reports of the Australian Museum, 19: 1–96, 2005
Knights, Mary, ‘This everything water’, DSSA Gallery, Adelaide Festival of Arts, 2008, available online at ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1132&context=creartspapers
‘Necklaces’, Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania, available online at: aboriginalheritage.tas.gov. au/aboriginal-cultural-heritage/material-culture/ necklaces
Shimmer exhibition catalogue, Wollongong Art Gallery, Wollongong, NSW, 2015
01 Mary Anne is a three-point hydroplane built in 1955 to Italian plans for owner Ray Loffler. The builder, Globe Products or Globe Engineering, was a small Adelaide engineering business that built specialised parts for locally made cars, including racing cars. Mary Anne’s 5.1-metre-long wooden frame and aluminium cover construction with a Jaguar engine shared many fabrication methods and much of its engineering with custom car construction.
Photograph David Payne/ANMM
ANMM.GOV.AU/ARHV This online, national heritage project devised and coordinated by the Australian National Maritime Museum reaches across Australia to collate data about the nation’s existing historic vessels, their designers and builders, and their stories.
Small craft have featured strongly in the recent nominations for the ARHV and they often have a significant and intriguing story to tell, or have a pivotal role in someone else’s story, writes Historic Vessels Curator David Payne.
THE INUIT KAYAK FROM GREENLAND is an excellent example. It was built in Greenland by the Indigenous Inuit community, but its inclusion on the ARHV comes from its connection to celebrated South Australian polar explorer John Riddoch Rymill (1905–1968). On his first polar expedition with a UK-based team in Greenland, the craft was made for him personally and he used it among the ice floes. He learnt an immense amount from the Inuit and brought this practical knowledge of how to manage in polar environments into his later extensive work in Antarctica.
Also nominated are a collapsible dinghy from the British, Australian, New Zealand Antarctic Research Expeditions (BANZARE) of 1929–31 and a portable craft from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE)
of 1911–14. These represent Antarctic exploration and the unique qualities needed for support craft heading to the Deep South on a supply or expedition ship: storage both on the ship and at the base, plus transportation on the water. All of these requirements were satisfied by a craft that folded down into a flat, thin package.
The dinghy Toni shares this collapsible concept. It didn’t require a trailer as it could easily be put on a car’s roof racks. It was just as easy to store at home, and was quick to assemble at the water.
Two oyster punts from Merimbula on the New South Wales coast and a flood boat from Maitland in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales add more regional vessels to the ARHV, and represent important regional stories. Oyster farming was an early industry, and has lasted well. In Merimbula Gus Cole built his punt with its sharp stem possibly as early as 1918, and used it up to the 1950s. The more common scow-shaped punt that has also been nominated from the region started out further north in the 1960s before taking to the oyster farms in Merimbula in the 1970s. The contrast between the two shapes shows the diversity of ideas builders had to work with and both shapes gave a good craft.
Support for victims of natural disasters is a strong thread of regional Australian life. The flood boat from Maitland was Flood Boat 11 and the family who manned it had
a long association with the craft. It was housed in a shed near a gully and stream, ready for use when the Hunter River broke its banks and spread across the field to where the boat was waiting to be launched into what had become a lake.
Liz, Silver Streak and Mary Anne all share speed, in a progression from a modest outboard through early planning speedboats then on to an Australian record holder with a V12 Jaguar engine. Liz was amateur-built at Berry in New South Wales in the early 1950s by a German refugee working on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, and he used it on Lake Eucumbene as the artificial lake came into being as part of the scheme. Silver Streak was imported from the USA already proven, and took many championship wins in South Australia from 1925 onwards. In the mid-1950s, Mary Anne was built to a set of the latest plans from Italy. Fitted with its powerful Jaguar engine, it raced in two classes. The climax was an outright Australian championship win for its driver and owner Ray Loffler, beating the legendary Ernie Nunn.
Support
While the task of reviewing and nominating craft is a major part of the ARHV committee’s work, outreach is important too, and in early December the ARHV Council went to Hobart for a two-day seminar. This was supported by the Australian National Maritime Museum to provide significant outreach to the Tasmanian community, and was ably coordinated by staff and volunteers from the Maritime Museum of Tasmania (MMT).
Under the banner of ‘Tasmanian Maritime Heritage’, the seminar enabled the museum to emphasise how it is able to support heritage vessels, largely through the ARHV. The entire ARHV Council took part in all the presentations on day one. This focused on many practical issues, beginning with a roundup from both museums of their activities, then a proposed research position for Tasmania was announced as further museum support. Other extensive presentations and discussion followed. The ARHV’s objectives and outcomes were shown, the issue of significance and the use of vessel management plans were debated, and the big issue of funding engaged lively discussion. At the MMT that evening, certificates were presented for recently nominated Tasmanian vessels, then the day finished with a dinner for delegates.
Day two was thrown open for Tasmania to showcase its wide maritime heritage. Rex Greeno from Launceston put the Tasmanian Aboriginal canoes into the spotlight, literally – he brought two models that were displayed on a table under lights as he went through his research and then described his method of building these award-winning objects. His craft are artworks. The Australian Wooden Boat Festival (AWBF) was represented by its general manager Paul Cullen, who related a story of past festivals and how the AWBF was ‘taking it to the people’ with successive improvements and expansion since it began in 1994. Julian Harrington from the Tasmanian Seafood Industry Council brought back memories of early fishing along the rugged coastline with a presentation that had classic short audio clips from some of the pioneers of 20th-century fishing.
Jon Addison took us through the maritime collection at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, and Colin Denny journeyed back to some of the first regattas on the Derwent, including some amusing quotes from newspapers of the time. Bill Foster has been building boats for decades, including a long period at Muirs’ yard on Battery Point, and he ran through the story of vessel building from its earliest days until now, richly illustrated with marvellous images from MMT and other sources.
After lunch, Mike Nash, a well-known archaeologist with Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife Service, gave a tour of his amazing work with shipwrecks around the coastline over many years. The seminar finished with case studies. Graeme Broxam related his work on various restorations, including his own yacht from 1892, Clara; Margaret Griggs gave the full Julie Burgess restoration story; and John Enders and Ross James joined forces to update us on developments at the Franklin waterfront and on the steam ship Cartela
Overall it was a great success, and the museum is now looking forward to further support and collaboration in Tasmania, including a strong commitment to the next AWBF in 2017.
In Hobart’s Constitution Dock, four of Tasmania’s many heritage vessels (left to right): trading ketch May Queen, SY Preana, passage boat Matilda (partially visible behind Preana), and yacht Westward, an early winner of the Sydney to Hobart race in 1947 and 1948.
Hailing from the arid deserts and spectacular mountain ranges of the US state of Nevada, buckaroo Lee Roy Reborse finally fulfilled his dreams of owning a cattle property when he purchased an undeveloped station in the tropical Top End of Australia. His daughter Clydel shares her family story with Welcome Wall contributor Veronica Kooyman .
BORN IN THE WILDS of the Owhyee desert in northern Nevada, USA, Lee Roy Reborse and his younger brother Clyde came with a good buckaroo pedigree. Their father, ‘Powder River’ Lee George Reborse, originally from Maine, arrived in the town of Elko, Nevada, in 1917 at the age of 20 with just a dollar in his pocket. Nevada has a long tradition of gambling, gold and silver mining and ranching.
An expert horseman, ‘Powder River’ Lee (who got his nickname from a former place of employment) soon picked up work breaking in horses and ranching cattle, gaining a reputation as one of the best bronco riders in the region. In 1918 he married Verna Horn, from the small mining town of Tuscarora, and the births of their two sons soon followed. From 1922 ‘Powder River’ Lee bought a series of rundown ranches for improvement and re-sold them for a substantial profit, before dying suddenly of a heart attack in 1953.
Growing up in rural Nevada, brothers Lee and Clyde were introduced to the buckaroo lifestyle as young boys, learning the necessary skills on horseback beside their father before venturing out on their own as young men to make their way in the world. Lee was just 16 when he left home, and by 1941 he enlisted and served in the US Air Force during World War II. In 1946 he married Mona Evelyn Smith (known as Evelyn), a local girl he met at a dance in the small town of Eureka. Their first child, Lee Jr, was born in 1947. Two daughters followed: Clydel in 1951 and DeLeah in 1958.
The young Reborse family moved frequently as Lee took on various positions as a hand for hire and ranch manager. With land in
Nevada expensive, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to purchase his own property, so he began to look to Australia.
In the two decades following the end of the war, fewer than two per cent of Australia’s migrants came from the United States, but skilled horsemen and cattlemen such as Lee Snr, Clyde and Lee Jr were in demand. It took Lee Snr 10 years to convince his wife that opportunity awaited them in Australia but, with the Australian Embassy eager to assist their relocation, the Reborse family arrived in bustling Sydney aboard a Pan American Airways flight in 1963.
The brothers were always close, so it was only natural that Clyde and his wife Tony also migrated at the same time as Lee Snr, Evelyn and their three children. They were keen to continue working with livestock, but were warned by new contacts in Australia not to go to wild and dangerous Darwin. They first picked up a short caretaker tenancy in Dubbo, north-west of Sydney, which gave Lee Snr, Clyde and Lee Jr an opportunity to head north to Queensland in search of possible cattle stations. Conversations with locals uncovered the story of another American family who had established a station in the Northern Territory. Through letters, the brothers were invited to visit the station and began to consider the region despite the previous warning.
In 1965 the Reborse brothers, born and bred in the driest state in the USA, purchased a 1,160-square kilometre station on the Finniss River in the tropical Top End of Australia. The undeveloped station had no roads, no homestead and no fences or yards, just 2,000 head of ‘scrubber’ cattle
In one of history’s great migrations, more than six million people have crossed the seas to settle in Australia. The museum’s tribute to all of them, The Welcome Wall, encourages people to recall and record their stories of coming to live in Australia
The brothers were warned by new contacts in Australia not to go to wild and dangerous Darwin
The sights and sounds of life on the station are still vivid in Clydel’s memory all these years later
– once domestic animals that had become feral and inbred, and were unmustered and unused to human contact. Lee Snr, Clyde and Lee Jr soon set about establishing a functioning cattle station. They hired 14 Aboriginal stockmen to help muster the rogue cattle, keeping those animals with any decent breeding and selling off the rest for export meat. Clyde picked up some contract mustering work about 40 kilometres away from Darwin on Humpty Doo station. Money from this and the sale of scrubbers helped purchase quality bulls and build roads, fences and housing.
Despite initially feeling devastated at the thought of moving so far away, daughter Clydel recalls with fondness the teen years she spent growing up on the Finniss River Station. Around 60 Aboriginal people lived on the station – the extended families of the employed stockmen – and they soon became friendly with the Reborse family. The sights and sounds of life on the station are still vivid in Clydel’s memory all these years later – of being taken on walkabout as a young girl, the sounds of corroboree in the warm evenings, and the happy laughter and camaraderie of the stockmen and her father and brother in the early morning as they set off for a day’s mustering or as they worked together as a team.
When Lee Snr, Clyde and Lee Jr sold the property in the early 1970s it was a thriving station with 10,000 head of cattle. Lee Snr and Evelyn relocated to Queensland and leased a cattle station until Lee died of liver
01 Some of the Aboriginal stockmen who worked on the Finniss River cattle station, 1964.
02 Deafy, one of the local stockmen, and DeLeah Reborse, 1964.
03 Three generations of the Reborse family. Evelyn is in the centre in the red shirt and Lee Snr stands next to her holding his grandson, Queensland, 1978.
04 Evelyn, Lee Snr, Lee Jr, Clydel and DeLeah Reborse in Las Vegas, Nevada on 24 August 1963, just before leaving for Australia.
cancer in 1981, aged 61. Clyde and his wife Tony remained in the Northern Territory for the next three decades. Tony died in 2001 and Clyde in 2008.
In 1968 Lee Jr married a girl from the neighbouring station – the daughter of the American family who first invited the Reborses to their property in the Northern Territory. Following in the family footsteps, Lee Jr and Marie owned a small station in Queensland before returning to the USA in the 1980s, where the husband and wife team became tandem truck drivers.
Lee Jr died in November 2011, aged just 64. His two children still live in Australia. Clydel married Ray Miller, a Canadian she met while they were both working for an offshore drilling company in Darwin in 1973. The couple spent the next 10 years overseas for work; their first child was born in Scotland, the second in Canada. Clydel always yearned for Australia and in 1982 the family emigrated to Western Australia where they happily remain, though Darwin is an annual holiday destination. Her mother Evelyn, now aged 90, also lives in Perth near Clydel and Ray. DeLeah, the youngest child of Lee Snr and Evelyn, lives on a cattle station in the New England region of northern New South Wales with her husband Mark Morawitz. Their three children also remain in Australia.
Clydel honoured her family’s story by registering the Reborse family members with the Welcome Wall. Their names were unveiled in May 2015.
It costs just $150, or $290 for a couple, to register a name and honour your family’s arrival in this great country. We’d love to add your family’s name to The Welcome Wall, cast in bronze, and place your story on the online database at anmm.gov.au/ww. Please call our staff during business hours with any enquiries on 02 9298 3777.
World War Two at Sea Conflicts on the Oceans – 1939 to 1945
By Jeremy Harwood, published by Exisle Publishing Pty Ltd, Wollombi, NSW, 2015. Hardback, 208 pages, illustrations, bibliography, index. ISBN 978 1 92196676 7. RRP $39.95, Members $36. Available at The Store or online at store.anmm.gov.au
A TIMELINE OF MAJOR NAVAL EVENTS starts this fine book by military author Jeremy Harwood. Beginning with the sinking of the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland on 17 September 1939, Harwood takes us on a journey through the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. He recounts and analyses many of the major sea battles and encounters as seen through the deployments of the British and American navies against the German, Italian and Japanese. The timeline ends with the sinking of Japan’s mighty superbattleship IJN Yamato on 7 April 1945.
Harwood’s writing is thorough and easily read. He briefs us on the condition of the world’s leading navies in the years preceding the outbreak of war in 1939 and gives a fair and succinct analysis of the many political decisions that were made after the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The treaty limited naval construction after World War I in an effort to prevent an arms race. This resulted in British and French fleets that were really too old to win sea battles against the powerful German fleet,
especially the U-boats. Japan and Italy were both signatories to the treaty but renounced it in the 1930s. The United States was also a signatory but President Franklin D Roosevelt foresaw war and Congress authorised the construction of a modern US Navy in the 1930s.
Conflict at sea began the moment war was declared. As well as the epic battles of Taranto, Cape Matapan, Guadalcanal, Midway, Leyte and others, and the arduous convoy work in the Arctic, Mediterranean and North seas, Harwood throws in some other naval events that are somewhat less known to the mainstream writing of naval battles of World War II. He explains the introduction of magnetic mines, midget submarines and the power of air attacks from the carriers. There are also interesting chapters on the disastrous D-Day landing preparations at Slapton Sands in Devon, the island-hopping strategy in the Pacific and the defective torpedoes the US Navy suffered for two years.
Harwood has divided the book into four parts – the rise of the German navy and the naval campaigns in Norway, France
and the Mediterranean; the entry of the United States into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; the ongoing battles, successes and losses in the Atlantic and Mediterranean resulting in the defeat of the German and Italian navies; and the final push in the Pacific to quash the Japanese and their relentless advance. The book can be roughly divided into the European campaigns in the first half and the American in the second half – covering the oceans of the world in this global conflict. Harwood looks at the key events involving the British and American navies and their allies, dealing with operations, battles and attacks, the advance of the Axis powers and their eventual defeat – all from the naval perspective. The chapters are well thought out, short, interesting and to the point.
There are plenty of action photographs and maps to illustrate the stories Harwood tells. The captions are nicely detailed and add to the text in each chapter. Within the chapters are interesting panels with facts about some of the major warships of the period. There are images on nearly every page, so the book isn’t intimidating with
page after page of heavy-going text. It’s an easy reference book that puts the naval engagements into context alongside the land and air campaigns. I found it a good combination of narrative and images.
While many readers may prefer a narrative that delves into all aspects of each battle for each navy, I prefer this snapshot approach, where Harwood has written about key events across the oceans. It means that, while there is a chronology to follow, you can just as easily choose your own chapter to read as it is self-contained. It is disappointing, however, that the stories don’t include more of the Australian experience and sacrifice. For example, there’s no mention of the Battles of the Java Sea or Sunda Strait, or the loss of HMAS Canberra at Savo Island. Those criticisms aside, the book is well written and a good addition for those who enjoy reading the absorbing stories of the world’s navies.
Lindsey Shaw
Lindsey Shaw is an Honorary Research Associate of the museum, where she previously spent 27 years as a curator specialising in naval history.
03
Harwood takes us on a journey through the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans
01 The tanker Dixie Arrow, its back broken by the three torpedoes fired into it by KapitanLeutnant Flaschenberg’s U-71, on fire off the North Carolina coast in 26 March 1942.
02 US infantry take up position on Slapton Sands, a beach in Devon, England, during a series of dress rehearsals for D-Day and the invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
03 One moment of the war is satirised in a cartoon in which Hitler is taken aback as a rock labelled ‘Graf Spee defeat’ is thrown through a window, smashing his coffee cup labelled ‘Bremen Escape’.
The Stannard name became a by-word for innovation in ports all over Australia
VALE ALAN STANNARD 16 JANUARy 1922–16 NOVEMBER 2015
‘I LOVED TO WORK. It wasn’t work the way most people think of work but something I genuinely derived a great deal of pleasure from. I enjoyed it. I loved the thrill of it.’
Work was Alan Stannard’s lifeblood, a source of challenge and satisfaction. He was known for his work ethic and honesty, and as an innovator – a man who did not see a problem but an opportunity. It was this drive that saw the first small tugboats in Australia servicing numerous ports, and the introduction of the first Australian-built supply vessels to oil rigs in Bass Strait.
Alan Graham Stannard was born on 16 January 1922 in the family home in Stannards Place, North Sydney, the first child of waterman and launch proprietor, Albert Stannard, and his wife, Enid.
The fourth generation of what was already a well-known Sydney maritime family, Alan had an idyllic childhood on the shores of Sydney Harbour – swimming and paddling in canoes made from galvanised iron, before graduating to an old timber dinghy, which he and his friends would row upwind and sail downwind, using an old bedsheet as a sail. As his skills improved,
so did his sailboats, and he moved up to racing skiffs with the Greenwich Flying Squadron.
In 1941, Alan joined the Australian Army and was soon incarcerated in Changi prison, enduring more than three years of deprivation and hardship. He returned to Australia in 1945, suffering from malnutrition and temporarily blind.
His health restored, Alan joined his father at work. As Alan recalled, ‘Much of our work in those early days after the war involved running the berthing lines for ships coming and going. We were also looking after ships coming to a buoy and providing passenger and cargo services … every day was a major logistical operation in deciding who would be where and when.’
In 1951, now in control of the business, Alan was finally able to expand – something his father had been reluctant to do.
The Stannard name became a by-word for innovation in ports all over Australia.
In Stannard’s vast boatyard on the eastern side of Sydney’s Berrys Bay, the firm built numerous tugs, lighters, line boats and launches for both themselves and clients.
Alan brought Stannards into the modern world, using a combination of what he termed ‘business nous and waterfront experience’. He would not expect an employee to do a job he hadn’t either done himself or was not prepared to do. While long hours were expected at peak times, wages were over-award, with perks like housing and cars, and time off during quiet times. Alan always joined the crew of his vessels as an equal, treating the men as the friends they were. One long-time employee described Stannards during Alan’s stewardship as ‘the best company in Australia to work for … you were taught to look after a boat and to do your own engine work. You learnt to run lines, tow barges, and deal with the public’.
Alan Stannard died peacefully on 16 November 2015 and is survived by his second wife, Joan, his sons Christopher and Bradley, and eight grandchildren. His first wife, Marie, died in 2009 after a marriage lasting six decades.
Randi Svensen
01 Minister visits the museum On Friday 29 January the museum welcomed Senator the Hon Mitch Fifield, Minister for Communications and the Arts. This was the minister’s second visit to the museum –he opened our new attraction Action Stations on 8 November 2015. The minister discussed various matters is pictured (centre) with the museum’s Chairman, Peter Dexter am, and Director and CEO, Kevin Sumption. His visit included a demonstration of The Voyage, an online educational game based on the convict experience and developed by the museum in partnership with Roar Films (Tasmania), Screensound Australia, Screensound Tasmania and the University of Tasmania (see more information on page 32). Photograph Zoe McMahon/ANMM
Kincumber Shipbuilders Memorial Walk
On 29 November the museum’s Director and CEO, Kevin Sumption, visited the Kincumber Rotary Club to be the special guest at the unveiling of the Shipbuilders Memorial Walk, featuring a striking memorial by local boatbuilder and sculptor John Woulfe. The memorial was built with support from a grant from the Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme (MMAPSS) to ensure that the experiences and contributions of Brisbane Water’s shipbuilding industry are appropriately recognised and shared with the broader community. Dating back to the early 1820s, around 35 shipbuilding companies contributed greatly to the economic and maritime history of New South Wales. They demonstrated impressive skills, building ketches, schooners, ferries, launches, pearling vessels and more. November’s launch was attended by descendants of the early shipbuilders, many in period costume, joined by around 100 members of the local community. Kevin Sumption is pictured with Rosemary Allison of Kincumber Rotary.
Photograph courtesy Peter Teys
03 War at Sea in Western Australia As at the end of 2015, the museum’s travelling exhibition War at Sea – The Navy in WWI has been seen by more than 99,000 people at 41 venues. It continues its national tour, and will be on show at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle from 12 March to 29 May. The image shows uniforms and artefacts from the exhibition on show at the Western Australian Maritime Museum A full list of tour dates and venues can be found on our website.
Photograph courtesy Western Australian Maritime Museum
LONgITuDE
The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest –how to calculate longitude – and the unlikely triumph of an English genius.
24.00 / $21.60 Members
FINDINg LONgITuDE
To accompany our upcoming exhibition Ships, Clocks and Stars, an accessible and beautifully packaged history of longitude at sea and its consequences.
$55.00/ $49.50 Members
A HISTORy OF AuSTRALIAN
SuBMARINES
Just released! Two-volume set with chapters on all RAN submarines.
$150.00 / $135.00 Members
FIRST FLEET SuRgEON
David Hill relates the story of Arthur Bowes Smyth and his two-and-a-half year journey with the First Fleet from England to the new colony in Australia and back.
$48.00 / $43.20 Members
Shop online at anmm.gov.au/thestore
BRASS/COPPER BUGLE
Bring the whole family to attention with this traditional military musical instrument. Measures 29 x 13 cm.
$59.95 / $53.96 Members
SHIP ’S WHEEL COMPASS
Finely engineered compass in an attractive brass ship’s wheel frame. Presented in velveteen-lined mahogany-stained box. Measures 11.43 cm.
$69.95 / $62.96 Members
CUFFLINKS
Silver plated sail-boat cufflinks for the sailor in your life.
$39.95 / $35.96 Members
VINTAGE POCKET WATCH
Vintage-look pocket watch perfect to complete any outfit. It’s time to be stylish. Diameter 4.5 cm.
$20.00 / $18.00 Members
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Signals
ISSN 1033-4688
Editor Janine Flew
Staff photographer Andrew Frolows
Design & production Austen Kaupe
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