Signals 134

Autumn 2021

Haenyeo divers

Sea women of Korea

Fire on Water’s Edge

The Black Summer bushfires

Welcoming Duyfken

New home for historic replica

Number 134 March to May sea.museum $9.95

Bearings From the Director

HAPPY NEW YEAR and welcome to 2021!

As we continue to deal with COVID-19, the museum remains constantly vigilant to keep staff, volunteers and patrons safe.

We strive to bring exciting and new experiences to life both in the museum and online. We started this year on a high note as a major hub for the 2021 Sydney Festival, with A Mile in My Shoes, Defying Empire, Miraw Minaral and Badu by ERTH all part of the festival program.

For 44 years, the Sydney Festival has been an integral part of Sydney in summer. It prides itself on its contemporary programming and being at the forefront of arts practice in Australia. The museum continues to develop and offer a range of activities that can sit alongside the very best of Australian and international shows for the 2022 festival.

We are also investigating a range of ideas with other festivals. Being a part of festivals is very important, as it showcases our work to audiences that we might not usually attract.

Sadly our plans for a new initiative, The Sunday Stir, had to be put on hold over summer due to COVID. The new date is 21 March and community and cultural celebrations such as this will become regular fixtures.

Also on 21 March is one of the favourite events on the museum’s calendar – the unveiling of the latest panels on the Welcome Wall, the museum’s national monument to migration.

The wonderful Duyfken is now open to visitors and I hope everyone can come and experience this extraordinary replica – it is an important piece in the early European history of this continent and provides compelling historical context to Endeavour. Twilight sails will soon begin and will be a great new addition to the museum’s activity.

Kevin Sumption PSM ready to walk a mile in the shoes of George Alfieris, January 2021.

ANMM image

In February, we decided to offer free entry to the public.

‘Free February’ proved extremely popular and it was heart-warming to see record-breaking crowds back at the museum. It highlights the public’s desire to get out to reconnect and participate in cultural activities.

In 2021 we plan to unveil a major new exhibition, Shaped by the Sea, which will provide a deep-time view of our continent and how our seas have affected it.

This will also mark our involvement with the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which commences this year and will enable the museum to further champion the exceptional work being undertaken by Australian scientists to protect our oceans and rivers.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the museum, and we are developing a range of programs to highlight this important milestone – so watch this space as we look back over the past 30 years and forward to the next.

I wish you all a safe and more positive 2021.

Kevin Sumption psm Director and CEO

Contents Autumn 2021 Number 134 March to May sea.museum $9.95

Acknowledgment of Country The Australian National Maritime Museum acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the bamal (earth) and badu (waters) on which we work.

We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the land and waters throughout Australia and pay our respects to them and their cultures, and to elders past and present.

The words bamal and badu are spoken in the Sydney region’s Eora language.

Supplied courtesy of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council.

Cultural warning

2 Fire on Water’s Edge

An exhibition shares stories from the Black Summer of 2019–20

8 Welcome, Duyfken!

‘Little Dove’ joins the museum’s fleet

14 Haenyeo divers of Jeju Island

The lives and culture of Korea’s remarkable female free divers

20 Celebrating 30 years of support

Benefaction enriches the museum’s collection

24 Help bring stories of the world to life

Support for the Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation

26 Clock makers across the centuries

Norman Banham and his replica Harrison marine chronometers

32 $8,000 maritime history prizes

Calling for nominations for our biennial awards

People of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent should be aware that Signals may contain names, images, video, voices, objects and works of people who are deceased.

Signals may also contain links to sites that may use content of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased.

34 A gift of national importance

The museum advises there may be historical language and images that are considered inappropriate today and confronting to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

48 Vigilance and service

The published journal of colonial Surgeon General John White

38 The legacy of blackbirding

Slavery and Australian South Sea Islanders

42 A 1929 Ruby Princess prequel The Aorangi quarantine incident

Celebrating 40 years of female surf lifesavers

50 Whatever happened to Blythe Star?

Mismanagement leads to tragedy in the Southern Ocean

56 Museum events

Your calendar of online talks and family activities

58 Exhibitions

Remarkable: Stories of Australians and their boats and more

62 Tales from the Welcome Wall

A Greek–Australian fights to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles

68 Readings Cover Korean haenyeo Kang Sunok (Hamo, Jeju Island, Korea, 2014) by Hyungsun Kim. This life-sized portrait is from the exhibition Haenyeo: The sea women of Jeju Island. See article on page 14.

Guiding Lights; When the Ship Hits the Fan

72 Currents

Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean VC; Art inspired by war

Royal Australian Navy Aircrewman Leading Seaman Ben Nixon of 808 Squadron assesses the Tianjara fire in the Moreton and Jerrawangala national parks out of an MRH-90 Taipan Military Support Helicopter.

Photographer CPOIS Kelvin Hockey, image courtesy RAN. Image series S20193355 2

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Fire on Water’s Edge Remembering the Black Summer of 2019–2020

The museum’s newest exhibition is Fire on Water’s Edge.

Through the words and images of navy personnel and surf life savers, it documents the bushfires that devastated huge tracts of coastal Victoria and New South Wales over the summer of 2019–2020. The exhibition also examines the immediate response to the events through the artists of the Bushfire Brandalism collective, their works making a strong plea for climate action in the wake of destruction. By David O’Sullivan.

Australian National Maritime Museum

3

Sydney N EW SO UTH WA LES Nowra Canberra ACT

Tianjara Clyde Mountain Currowan

Batemans Bay Moruya Narooma

Cobargo Omeo VI CTO R I A

Bermagui Bega Eden Mallacoota

01

14:00 hours: As we punched through the cloud wall we went from daytime to pitch black conditions in about 20 seconds.

Lieutenant Commander Jack Wadey, pilot, Fleet Air Arm 808 Squadron Honestly, it was like Armageddon.

Chris Briggs, Bermagui Surf Life Saving Club It was like a jet engine, the only way you could really describe it.

Chris Parker, Mallacoota resident and Country Fire Authority volunteer 31 DECEMBER 2019: A CATASTROPHIC FIRE DAY for coastal communities in Victoria and southern New South Wales. It was a cataclysmic peak to what had already been a gruelling month. The Currowan fire ignited on 26 November, and a month later merged with the Tianjara fire front to create a single mega-fire stretching some 120 kilometres from Batemans Bay to Nowra. The Clyde Mountain and Comberton fires were still burning, leaving three-quarters of the Shoalhaven region ablaze.

4

Jack and the crew of the MRH-90 helicopter were initially tasked for the small inland town of Cobargo, where residents needed medevac support: ‘The entire area was black and nearly all the properties, houses and outstations were destroyed,’ Jack recalls.

After Cobargo, the crew of the MRH-90 tracked for the Marabrine Fire Trail, where three injured personnel needed assistance. An RFS wireman aboard the helicopter was winched to the location. Visibility was rapidly deteriorating in the area and Jack saw a wall of smoke approaching from the west. This was a harbinger of an unusual and extremely dangerous storm system called a pyro cumulonimbus – a storm created by an intense bushfire coupled with dry clouds and lightning.

Lieutenant Commander Jack Wadey arrived at Fleet Air Arm (FAA) base HMAS Albatross in Nowra at 6 am on New Year’s Eve. He knew that it would be a difficult day.

He did not expect it to be the most challenging flying day of his life.

As aircrew we practise departing a known area, such as an airfield, and getting ourselves by Instrument Flight Rules to Lowest Safe Altitude [LSALT]. What we don’t practise is getting from an unknown area to LSALT in mountainous unfamiliar terrain using FLIR [night vision] and a moving map in 40 knots [75 km/h] of wind in the middle of a fire storm.

Operation Bushfire Assist was the mission name for Australian Defence’s involvement in the bushfire relief effort. It involved, for the first time in history, FAA personnel receiving mission orders from the Rural Fire Service (RFS). These ‘taskings’ primarily involved welfare checks on burnt-out towns and evacuating injured residents in threatened areas.

Despite the approaching storm, the MRH-90 helicopter successfully recovered the RFS wireman after he and the people on the ground had determined that it was safe for them to stay. For the next nine hours, Jack and his crew tirelessly responded to calls for support, at one point refuelling their helicopter while under ember attack.

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01 Fire-affected areas discussed in this article. Many more sites across Australia were also devastated. Image Jo Kaupe 02 Lieutenant Commander Colin McLeod and Lieutenant Michael Regan fly through a smoke haze created by the Victorian bushfires in the vicinity of Omeo and Mt Hotham aboard a Royal Australian Navy MRH-90 Maritime Support Helicopter from 808 Squadron.

Photographer CPOA Brett Kennedy, image courtesy RAN. Image series S20200049

By the end of February 2020, the fires had burnt more than 12 million hectares of land across the Australian continent, killing 34 people and over a billion animals

02

Australian National Maritime Museum

5

01

Further down the coast, Chris Briggs was engaged in his own unexpected bushfire relief effort. Just a few days before, Chris and his Pambula Surf Life Saving team were competing in the inaugural George Bass Surf Marathon at Batemans Bay. Conditions were smoky, and there were concerns about air quality. They completed two stages of the race, Batemans to Moruya and Moruya to Tuross Head, before it had to be cancelled.

Chris woke at his camping spot at Bermagui on the morning of 31 December to a blood-red sky.

Local residents and holidaymakers were fleeing to the beach and local clubhouse to shelter from the encroaching fire front. Chris jumped into action to help the thousands of people stranded on the beach.

I had an empty ute so I ended up doing runs over to the supermarket and picking up pallets of water and toilet paper. The rest of our club started cooking food, the guys cooked thousands of sausage sandwiches for the day.

Some people went off to find fuel for generators.

As the day wore on, the situation deteriorated: At one point we all had our surf club radios spreading the word around. There was nowhere else to go without going to the water. We had all our IRBs [inflatable rubber boats] down at the wharf and our crews ready to go.

6

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Over the Victorian border, in the Gippsland town of Mallacoota, Chris Parker woke to a similar sky. A fire had begun at the Wingan River, south-west of Mallacoota, the day before, and Chris was brought into a local Country Fire Authority (CFA) meeting, where he was part of the small contingent of firefighting resources.

The local sergeant from Canberra, Stuart Johnson, made it extremely clear to us all that we were on our own. We got two fire engines and a slip-on [portable firefighting unit], and [he said] that we needed to go home and prepare whatever we needed to for ourselves and then make our way back to the station when the fire was due to impact us.

Support did arrive for Mallacoota. Later that day, CFA strike teams arrived, and then in less than two days the Royal Australian Navy’s amphibious landing vessel HMAS Choules was moored off the beach. These efforts went to great lengths in aiding the community – HMAS Choules evacuated 1,100 people on its first visit and provided critical support to local CFA and emergency relief organisations. But in these unprecedented conditions, there was only so much even they could do.

Chris Parker says, ‘Both my sisters lost their houses in the fires, along with roughly another 100 or 120 other local residents.’

01 Crowds gather in front of the Surf Life Saving Club in Bermagui. Image Andrew Worssam, courtesy Bermagui Surf Life Saving Club 02 Poster by David Pope from the ‘South Coast is Calling’ series. ANMM Collection.

Image Andrew Frolows

Fire on Water’s Edge explores the interconnected narratives of people who experienced the historic bushfires of 2019–20

02

By the end of February 2020, the fires had burnt more than 12 million hectares of land across the Australian continent, killing 34 people and over a billion animals.

Three thousand homes were destroyed, more than 500 of them in the Eurobodalla shire alone, on the New South Wales south coast.

Central to Fire on Water’s Edge is the process of recovery. Jody White from Eden Killer Whale Museum notes that while the South Coast landscape is beginning to regrow, recovery is far from complete: ‘There’s no escaping it. You can’t just go somewhere and not be reminded of that time.’

In Fire on Water’s Edge we explore the interconnected narratives of people like Jack Wadey, Chris Briggs and Chris Parker, who experienced the historic bushfires of 2019–20. The exhibition then looks at the public response to the fires through the words and works of contemporary artists from the Bushfire Brandalism Collective, whose posters make a strong plea for action at a time of climate crisis. An understanding of Indigenous knowledge systems is key to battling this crisis, as seen in the exhibit through the words of senior Yuin Elder Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison.

Fire on Water’s Edge runs from late March. Promoted charities for the exhibition are Red Cross Disaster Relief and Recovery, Mallacoota Fundraising Group and Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast, offering visitors the opportunity to give back to affected communities.

David O’Sullivan is the museum’s new Curator of Historic Vessels. Over the last year he has been engaged in the Bushfire Collection Project, capturing the stories of people who experienced the 2019–20 bushfires, a project driven by his interest in oral histories.

Creative forms of aid relief, such as David Pope’s ‘South Coast is Calling’ posters, hope to kick-start economic recovery by drawing visitors back to communities affected by bushfires. Combining the styles of early20th-century tourist posters and Japanese woodblock prints, these works remind us that, while damaged, the communities of the south coast are still beautiful – and more in need of visitors than ever before.

Australian National Maritime Museum

7

01 Flying the flag of the Dutch East India Company, Duyfken approaches the Maritime Museum, 22 December 2020.

02 Duykfen and crew just after arriving at the Maritime Museum on 22 December 2020. Captain John Dikkenberg, author of this article, is on the right, in dark blue.

Images Janine Flew/ANMM 8

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01

02

Welcome, Duyfken!

‘Little Dove’ arrives at its new home port

In late December 2020, the museum welcomed its newest vessel, the Duykfen replica.

John Dikkenberg, its master on its Newcastle to Sydney leg, relates the experience of sailing a ship with 400-year-old technology.

HOW DO YOU SAIL a ship you have never seen?

That was the question on my mind when I arrived in Newcastle on the evening of Friday 18 December 2020, unsure of what I would find. In my years as captain of a variety of ships, I had commanded diesel–electric submarines, a steam-powered frigate and, by a convoluted path, the 19th-century barque James Craig and the replica of the 18th-century bark Endeavour. On this rainy evening I was joining an even more exotic vessel, the replica of the 16th–17th century Dutch sailing ship Duyfken.

The original Duyfken arrived off the west coast of what is now known as the Cape York Peninsula, in far north Queensland, in 1606. It is generally recognised as the first European ship to have reached Australia.

The idea of building a replica led to the laying of the new ship’s keel in January 1997 and its launch two years later. The ship was operated by the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation and travelled widely – including to the Netherlands – and was eventually homeported in Perth, Western Australia. For a variety of reasons, the ship was recently offered to the Australian National Maritime Museum. Although Duyfken is an operating vessel, COVID restrictions and the expected weather in the Great Australian Bight led to its being shipped from Perth to Newcastle on the deck of a heavy lift ship. Duyfken, minus masts, rigging and sails, was lowered into Newcastle Harbour on the morning of 14 December 2020. Many of the crew, led by the Chief Mate, Mike Dallen, were there to welcome Duyfken and move it to a nearby wharf.

Australian National Maritime Museum

9

Duyfken is probably the oldest ship, technically, operating anywhere 01

With Christmas bearing down on the project, and only a small weather window in the following week, the crew had been working tirelessly to get the masts stepped and the ship rigged. When I joined, they had been working 12-hour days. With only two more days alongside, completion seemed impossible, but somehow it came together and at 6 pm on the Sunday, I was satisfied that the ship was safe to sail the 80 or so nautical miles to Sydney.

Although the crew and officers were all experienced square-rig sailors, many of them from Endeavour and James Craig, only a small number had previously sailed this particular ship. For everyone else, including myself, it was a steep learning curve. Although the principles involved in all these ships are broadly the same, the rigs and handling characteristics are not, and a cast back of 400 years was very obvious. As examples, the rake of the masts and sail arrangements are vastly different to more modern ships and Duyfken has no wheel, being helmed instead by the use of a whip staff.

On the positive side, however, while James Craig can be slow to tack, and Endeavour less so, Duyfken is quite agile. The little Dutch ship takes less manpower and can also point higher into the breeze.

The cast back of 400 years is also very obvious in the accommodations. The crew sleep in hammocks or on the brick ballast while officers have a small shelter on the deck roughly equivalent to a dog kennel. The galley is about the size of a telephone booth and the facilities to keep frozen stores are very limited. While such matters are of little concern in a yacht, keeping a crew of 14 warm, dry and fed on Duyfken can be challenging.

10

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

On Monday 21 December, the bow was sprung off the wharf and the ship got under way, accompanied by the Newcastle paddle steamer William the Fourth.

There’s a fraternity among historic vessels and to the sound of steam whistles and verbal encouragement, Duyfken cleared the breakwaters and headed south.

The voyage window, bookmarked between two strong southerly weather patterns, initially failed to provide any wind and instead drenched the crew in a constant downpour of rain. The promised nor’easterly breeze did, however, kick in and by early afternoon, the crew had settled in and the ship was rolling south with the bone in its teeth.

Without the opportunity to undertake an extensive period of training, the sail plan going south was relatively conservative, with courses, topsails and the sprit sail being set and handed in at various times. Despite that, you could sense that the ship was keen to stretch its legs and enjoy its first ocean passage in quite a while.

The voyage plan had called for Duyfken to remain within sight of the coast, but heavy rain continued to obscure the shore, so the navigation lights, set when the ship sailed from Newcastle, remained lit for the entire passage. With nightfall, sail was reduced, dinner was produced by an outstanding cook and the watches briefed on the expected navigation plan and arrival.

01 Duyfken (minus masts, rigging and sails) being lifted onto a yacht transport vessel for its voyage from Fremantle, Western Australia, to Newcastle, New South Wales – a trip of 2,260 nautical miles (4,200 kilometres).

Image Peter Bowman 02 Duyfken departing Newcastle, photographed from aboard the 1831 replica steamship William the Fourth. Image Kevin Parsons

This small square rigger responds brilliantly to its environment and transports passengers back to the era of their distant ancestors 02

Australian National Maritime Museum

11

The crew sleep in hammocks or on the brick ballast while officers have a small shelter on the deck roughly equivalent to a dog kennel

01 Duyfken is steered using a whip staff (an extension of the tiller) rather than a wheel.

The helmsman has limited or no vision and relies on commands from the poop deck above.

Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM 02 Duyfken’s cramped interior, where crew sleep in hammocks or on the ballast bricks.

Image Danielle Voss/ANMM 12

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01

02

It had been intended to wear ship during the morning watch and sail in through Sydney Heads but in the event, the wind unexpectedly backed to the west.

Now 10 miles directly downwind of our destination, and with a commitment to arrive on time, we had little alternative but to hand in sail and start one of the few concessions to the 20th century, the engines.

Handing in the forecourse in the dark and on a growing sea probably demonstrated that we had a little more training to do.

Passing through the Heads I had time to reflect on what this ship brought to the tall ship community around the world and in Australia in particular.

It is probably the oldest ship, technically, operating anywhere. Where James Craig represents almost the end of the sailing ship era and Endeavour represents the middle age, Duyfken replicates the early stages of European sailing ship history. All three ships are tactile representatives of their periods.

We are developing a virtual tour of Duyfken which will be available to students everywhere.

You can support this important program by donating now – please see the insert in this issue.

Thank you.

Tucked into its new berth, Duyfken is now part of the museum fleet where it will sail as an operating vessel and be displayed to illustrate Australian maritime history. For those choosing to sail in it on the harbour or offshore, they will find a small square rigger that responds brilliantly to its environment and transports them back to the era of their distant ancestors. In some small way, it will change their appreciation of history.

For those just interested in seeing it alongside, they will find in Pyrmont Bay three great sailing vessels which, together, represent 400 years of maritime history.

John Dikkenberg recently retired from his role at the museum as Master of the replica bark Endeavour.

Australian National Maritime Museum

13

The women who stare at us so hauntingly and powerfully in the portraits are mostly aged in their 60s, 70s and 80s

14

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Huyn Sukjik, Samdal, Jeju, 2017.

Photographer Hyungsun Kim

Haenyeo divers of Jeju Island The sea women of Korea

A photographic exhibition now showing at the museum celebrates a community of female divers known as haenyeo, or sea women, who sustainably harvest the seas around Jeju Island in the Republic of Korea. By Daina Fletcher.

HAENYEO: THE SEA WOMEN OF JEJU ISLAND features large-scale photographic portraits by Korean artist Hyungsun Kim that explore the human face of a centuries-old, sustainable sea harvest.

The women who stare at us so hauntingly and powerfully in these images are mostly aged in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Incredibly, they have been free diving around Jeju Island all year round, in waters icy, warm, treacherous or calm, for 50 years or more.

The haenyeo live in seaside villages around the volcanic island of Jeju off the southern Korean peninsula.

While their fame lies in their sea harvest, they also farm the volcanic soils to feed their families and communities and to trade and sell. It is a practice that has been passed from mother to daughter for generations.

So who are these haenyeo women? And what is so compelling about their story?

The earliest written reference to haenyeo harvesting abalone is in a work from 1629 by Lee Gun titled Jeju topography, but the practice is understood to be much older.1 By the 19th century, 22 per cent of Jeju’s female population were haenyeo.2

The haenyeo are communities of women who dive for hours at a time to harvest food from the sea floor.

It is skilled, physical and dangerous work. The women dive to depths of 20 metres for up to two minutes, up to seven hours a day, 90 days a year, without the aid of an air tank or snorkel. They harvest prized abalone, conch, sea urchin, sea cucumber or octopus. During the seaweed harvest, they haul 60–70 kilogram bags of wet seaweed out of the water and along the rocks.

The women work in fishing co-operatives in waters they call sea farms. There are about 100 co-operatives in Jeju and the smaller island of Udo nearby. Each sets the boundaries of the sea fields and regulates the size and sustainability of the catch. The women harvest species only when populations can support it over the course of the seasonal calendar. Abalone and conch are caught from October to June, sea urchins from May to July and sea slugs during winter.

Australian National Maritime Museum

15

The earliest written reference to haenyeo harvesting abalone is in a work from 1629, but the practice is understood to be much older

01 Haenyeo in the 1960s in traditional diving outfits and carrying knives at their waists.

Photographer Seo Jae Chul.

Courtesy Haenyeo Museum, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province 02 Her Kyungsuk, Hamo, Jeju, 2014.

Photographer Hyungsun Kim

The seaweed harvest for different species during the year is collective, while the sea creatures can be sold individually. The women never dive alone, and clean the fishing grounds regularly to remove badangpul, a sea grass considered a weed. They donate funds from the sale of seaweeds to the community for school and other services.

The women are noted for the sumbisori, the distinctive whistling sound – ‘ho-oi ho-oi’ – they make when they catch their breath at the surface, a combination of inhaling and exhaling. Tethered to their tewak, or buoy, they rest on the surface, store their harvest in its mangsari (suspended net bag) and dive again.

It is often a long working day.

The diving work is called muljil. It is skilled, physical and dangerous. Since 2009, 40 divers have died as a result of their work. Traditionally girls begin training aged eight, dive at 15 and are considered experienced by about 35. They progress through three levels: hagun, junggun and sanggun, when they are eligible to offer guidance to others. The elders, dae-sanggun, are leaders within the community and place a particular emphasis on safety and harmony.

The women’s gear is minimal. Traditionally haenyeo dived in cotton outfits tied at the sides to allow for ease of dressing. Adopting rubber wetsuits in the 1970s greatly changed their working lives. On the one hand, the insulation made them warmer; on the other, it meant extended diving hours each day, and more time in the freezing winter waters.3

Haenyeo must know the sea, the sea floor, the tides, currents and winds of their sea farm, and the life cycles of the sea life in it, in addition to diving and breathing techniques.

16

01

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Today haenyeo wear the simplest of wetsuits, cloth vests, a scarf or other form of head protection, goggles or a mask, fins and lead weights. To prevent overfishing they forbid the use of modern technology, carrying only hooks for abalone and knives for working the rocks.

The women dive to depths of 20 metres for up to two minutes, up to seven hours a day, 90 days a year

02 Australian National Maritime Museum

17

Haenyeo must know the sea, the seafloor, the tides, currents and winds of their sea farm, and the life cycles of the sea life in it

01 Ilchulbong [headland in background] and haenyeo, photographer Yang Paeng-chul. Winner of the Silver Prize, the 4th Jeju International Photo Contest 2012. Courtesy the photographer and Jeju Special Self-Governing Province 02 Sung Sunja, Daejeong, Jeju, 2015.

Photographer Hyungsun Kim 01

18

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Hyungsun Kim photographed these women at Jeju on several visits between 2012 and 2014. His powerful life-size portraits show these divers as more than a symbol of an ancient practice; their extraordinary lives in the sea are writ in every line and surface as each woman confronts the photographer’s lens after coming in from a dive, in a makeshift studio assembled on the shore using a sheet as a backdrop. There is no sea, there are no rocks – there is simply an extraordinary woman staring back at us after hours in the water.

02

The life of the haenyeo is governed by cultural tradition all year round. The spring season is launched after a ritual known as Yeongdeunggut from 1 February, when the community welcomes the wind deity Yeongdeung with prayers for safety and abundance.

Miniature boats are launched into the waters as votive models. In summer, the spawning season, fishing for abalone and conch is banned and the divers instead catch sea urchin. When the ban is lifted, the conch harvest begins again.

While these communities of haenyeo are both celebrated and enduring, the numbers in their collectives are dwindling as the women age. Jeju is a tourist island and many women choose other livelihoods or move to cities, while pollution and industrial-scale fishing are degrading their seas and reducing their catch.

In the 1960s, 23,000 haenyeo dived and the women had economic value in a patriarchal society. Rather than a woman’s family paying a dowry when she wed, as in the rest of Korea, men had to pay to marry haenyeo.

Today there are about 4,000 women who still practise underwater fishing, out of a population of 600,000 on Jeju Island. Remarkably, the average age of haenyeo in 2017 was about 75 – 88 per cent were over 60 and 57 per cent were aged 70 or older.4

The artist observes:5 They are shown exactly as they are, tired and breathless.

But, at the same time, they embody incredible mental and physical stamina, as the work itself is so dangerous; every day they cross the fine line between life and death.

I wanted to capture this extreme duality of the women: their utmost strength combined with human fragility.

Haenyeo: the sea women of Jeju Island opens at the museum on 8 March.

Touring exhibition produced by the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Korean Cultural Centre Australia with assistance from the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province. It has been supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea to commemorate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Australia and the Republic of Korea in 2021.

1 K Markelova, ‘The haenyeo: living legends of Jeju Island’, en.unesco. org/courier/april-june-2017/haenyeo-living-legends-jeju-island, The UNESCO Courier April–June 2017 2 H K Chwa, C H Ko, C H Kwon et al, ‘Jeju haenyeo and Japanese ama’.

Seoul: Minsokwon. 2005. Cited in Joo-Young Lee, Joonhee Park, Siyeon Kim, ‘Cold adaptation, aging, and Korean women divers haenyeo’, Journal of Physiological Anthropology, 8 August 2017.

3 Joo-Young Lee, Joonhee Park, Siyeon Kim, ‘Cold adaptation, aging, and Korean women divers haenyeo’, ibid, 8 August 2017.

4 Jeju Province. Annual report on the current state of oceans and fisheries in Jeju. Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, 2016 jeju. go.kr/, cited in Lee, Park and Kim, ibid.

5 designersparty.com/entry/Haenyeo-Hyungsun-Kim, accessed 8 February 2021.

Daina Fletcher is the museum’s Head of Acquisitions Development.

Australian National Maritime Museum

19

01

Celebrating 30 years of support The vital role our benefactors play

Many significant items in the museum’s collection have been donated by our supporters or purchased using funds given by them. Matt Lee outlines some of the ways in which people can give to the museum.

01 Sisters Wendy and Charlotte Fairweather with the 1884 portrait of SY Aurora, 2016.

ANMM Collection 00050156 Gift from Captain Fairweather’s great-grandchildren in memory of their father James S Fairweather 1926–2015 02 Heroes of Colonial Encounters – Bennelong (2017), from a collection of 15 portraits by Canberra-based Indigenous artist Helen S Tiernan, was acquired by the museum from funds donated to the Foundation by museum Members. ANMM Collection 00055145 All images Andrew Frolows/ANMM unless otherwise stated

20

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Many of the museum’s most important objects have either been donated by our Members or acquired via funds given to enable their purchase

THE MUSEUM WILL CELEBRATE ITS 30TH BIRTHDAY later this year. We are planning ways to commemorate this achievement and reflect on how the museum has grown over the past three decades. One thing is certain – the museum would not be what is it today, or have achieved what it has, without our Members and volunteers, many of whom have been with us from the very beginning.

I would like to thank you all for your support of the museum, whether it has been over 30 years or 30 days.

I also wish to share examples of some of the many ways our Members and friends have aided the museum over the years – some have supported significant acquisitions for the National Maritime Collection, many have donated family heirlooms and others have tirelessly given their time as volunteers.

In 2011, the museum acquired a beautiful 1884 ship painting, with financial assistance from sisters Wendy and Charlotte Fairweather and their families, in memory of their father James S Fairweather.

The work, commissioned by its captain, their greatgreat-grandfather James Fairweather, features SY Aurora, on which both Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton voyaged to Antarctica. The painting was a great addition to the museum’s rich collection of Australia’s Antarctic exploration objects.

02

Another treasure of our collection, generously donated by long-term Members Helen Isbister and her late husband Peter, is a beautiful wooden ‘captain’s chair’ made from timber salvaged from the Dunbar, which was wrecked off Sydney Heads in 1857. The Dunbar plays a significant part in Australia’s maritime history and this piece of furniture, which had been in their family for generations, symbolises the impact the wreck had on Sydney’s community.

As well as managing the relationships with our museum Members, I also help to look after two other levels of museum supporter groups – our Chairman’s Circle and Benefactors.

The Chairman’s Circle is a special group of donors who provide vital support to the museum to help it preserve and promote Australia’s rich maritime heritage.

In return, these donors become more involved in the life of the museum, are able to access our collections and meet our dedicated team of curators, and receive invitations to exclusive VIP events and cruises on our historic vessels.

People can join the Chairman’s Circle for three years by contributing $3,000 (or annual instalments of $1,000 a year over three years.)

Australian National Maritime Museum

21

01 Australian submarine HMAS AE1 was lost with all hands off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 1914. This 1914–15 Star, posthumously awarded to AE1’s Signalman George Dance, was purchased in 2014 through a bequest. ANMM Collection 00054005 with assistance through the ANMM Foundation with support from Basil Jenkins 02 Dr Keith Jones at the tiller of his Bluebird yacht, Deryn Glas, on Sydney Harbour in the 1960s.

In 2017, Dr Jones left the museum a financial bequest to document, collect and communicate the history of Australian Bluebird yachts. Courtesy Helen Jones and Gavin Jones 03 The captain’s chair constructed of timber salvaged from the Dunbar wreck. ANMM Collection 00046922 Gift from Helen and Peter Isbister

01

02

22

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Please see the flyer in this issue for ways in which you can support the museum through donations to various projects.

The museum is always deeply grateful for the generosity of all its supporters

03

Our Benefactors are passionate supporters who have included the museum in their estate planning.

This support has enabled the museum to make significant acquisitions over the years, such as those pictured. Leaving a gift to the museum in your will is a considered way to benefit the community, showing forethought, planning and commitment.

People from all walks of life leave gifts both large and small to museums and galleries, recognising the role such institutions play in our lives. It can be a way to make the type of gift that we are unable to make during our lifetime. A bequest (or gift) to the museum can take many forms, including cash, real estate, life insurance policies or trusts. It can also include cultural property such as books, maps or maritime-related works of art.

A bequest can be used for various purposes, including developing and managing the collection, conservation, research, education or acquiring new objects. Whatever area of the museum your bequest supports, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have created a legacy for those who live after you.

As each individual’s financial and family circumstances are unique, please discuss all options with your solicitor or financial adviser to determine the best option for your situation.

For those considering a gift or remembering the museum in their legacy, we can ensure that your legal representatives receive the correct wording to include in documentation. If you make a bequest to the museum in your will, do let us know about it. All information will be treated in the strictest confidence and we will respect your wishes if you choose to remain anonymous.

Those who include the museum in their estate and do not request anonymity are acknowledged as major benefactors to the museum and are recognised on our Supporters Board next to the museum foyer.

Benefactors are also invited to special events, including harbour cruises on the museum’s fleet, access to parts of the museum and its vessels that are not open to the general public, lunch with the museum Director or special guests, exclusive curator-led tours of exhibitions and the opportunity to engage with like-minded supporters.

The museum is always deeply grateful for the generosity of all its supporters, particularly those who donate funds, documents or artefacts or who remember the museum in their estate.

To find out more about how you can support the museum, donate, join the Chairman’s Circle or leave a bequest, please email me at giving@sea.museum.

We look forward to including our Members and supporters in all that we do over the next 30 years, and we hope to you see you at the museum soon.

Matt Lee, Manager VIP Relations Australian National Maritime Museum

23

Help bring stories of the world to life We value your continued support 01

COVID-19 has changed all our lives and livelihoods. For the museum, this has led to a $10 million loss in self-generated revenue. So now, more than ever, we rely on your generous support to preserve and conserve important items in the National Maritime Collection and to tell their stories.

TWO VITAL PROJECTS needing urgent support are coincidentally linked by the name Willem Janszoon and both explore the stories of the Dutch in our maritime history.

The first is the conservation of the Blaeu Celestial Globe – the oldest European object in the museum’s collection.

Thanks to generous gifts from three donors, the globe entered the collection in 1990. Created in 1602 by one of the most important 17th-century cartographers, Willem Janszoon Blaeu, the globe is one of only six surviving examples.

Our conservation team has carried out visual and photographic analysis to work out how the plaster and pâpier-maché globe was made – and what has happened to it over the last 400 years. Now the painstaking conservation begins, and for this we need your support.

24

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

The second project supports the creation of education programs for another recently donated item to the museum – the Duyfken replica. More than 164 years before James Cook’s arrival, the original Duyfken, captained by Dutchman Willem Janszoon of the Dutch East Trading Company (VOC), arrived in Cape York.

This was the first recorded European visit to the continent. Observations from a similar, earlier voyage were used by Blaeu in creating his celestial globes.

Students from all over Australia and throughout the world will be able to view Duyfken when a virtual reality tour is created as part of a range of digital resources to support teachers. The guided experience will be led by an expert storyteller and explore the deep impacts of these early contacts between our First Peoples and the Dutch traders and sailors aboard the vessel.

01 The Blaeu Celestial Globe of 1602 being carefully conserved by the museum’s paper conservator Lucilla Ronai. ANMM image 02 Chairman’s Circle patron Peter Poland reviewing the original visitors’ book from SY Ena during a cruise on Sydney Harbour.

ANMM image

02

Become a Chairman’s Circle patron Do you want to: See inside the vaults and behind the scenes?

To find out more about the Blaeu Globe, go to sea.museum/2019/07/04/what-in-the-world Your support will make the world of difference.

All donors will be invited to see the conservation work in action or attend a special Duyfken tour.

Make your tax-deductible donation now.

• Complete the insert included in this issue and return in the reply-paid envelope provided.

• Directly deposit your gift into our account Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation BSB 062 000 Account number 16169309 • Or call Marisa Chilcott, Foundation Manager, on 02 9298 3619.

Thank you.

Learn more about the stories of the people who shaped our nation?

Hear from our curators and conservators?

Sail aboard historic vessels and learn about their history?

Mix with like-minded donors passionate about all things maritime?

Get to know the museum more intimately. By donating $3,000 to support the Foundation’s work or pledging $1,000 each year for three years, you become a patron of the Chairman’s Circle. You will be invited to become more involved with the museum, meet conservators, tour exhibitions with expert curators and sail on our historic vessels such as Duyfken.

For more information: Call 02 9298 3619 Email marisa.chilcott@sea.museum Or go to sea.museum/chairmans-circle

The perfect Mothers’ Day gift for the mum who has it all, and a must for all lovers of the sea.

Australian National Maritime Museum

25

‘I remember being mesmerised.

The clock fascinated me and I watched it working for a long time’

26

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Replica of John Harrison’s marine chronometer H1, made and lent

by Norman Banham, on display in the museum’s exhibition Under Southern Skies. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

Clock makers across the centuries John Harrison and Norman Banham

A visit to the museum in 2004 changed Norman Banham’s life and will one day reward the nation with a set of intricate mechanical masterpieces in brass and timber – his replicas of John Harrison’s famed marine chronometers of the 18th century, which solved the vexing problem of longitude. By Daina Fletcher.

IN 2004, RETIRED SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT MAKER Norman Banham visited the museum to view the exhibition About Time. The amateur clock enthusiast was transfixed by a feature object in that exhibition – a magnificent marine chronometer known as H1, developed by Englishman John Harrison in the 18th century in his epic quest to solve the longstanding problem of longitude, or determining the east–west position of ships at sea relative to the north–south meridians of latitude.

Back then, the intricate replica made by Leonard Salzer in 1970 and held in the collections of Royal Museums Greenwich was on a special visit to Sydney.1 The majesty of Harrison’s clock enthralled Mr Banham and sparked in him an odyssey to make these clocks anew: I remember being mesmerised. The clock fascinated me and I watched it working for a long time. In the clock, art, knowledge and science combined to create something that changed the world.

In a remarkable feat of problem-solving, Mr Banham channelled John Harrison’s energy and tenacity over a 20-year period to fashion four working replicas of his series of clocks known as H1, H2, H3 and H4. The sea watch H4, the fourth of Harrison’s five chronometers, eventually won him rewards and recognition from the Board of Longitude.

Famously, the problem of longitude had transfixed empires for hundreds of years. Ship masters were easily able to determine latitude by sighting the sun at its highest point. Longitude, however, relied on comparative measurements from arbitrary lines, and calculations between the time on board a ship at sea and the time at a home port, or another place of known longitude.

Australian National Maritime Museum

27

Keeping accurate time at sea had proved elusive given the actions of the rolling seas and fluctuations in temperature, moisture and weather over long distances across latitudes.

Thousands of people drowned when ships foundered on unexpected landforms or died from diseases such as scurvy after ship masters spent excessive time finding their way to port. Valuable cargoes, too, were lost.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the maritime nations of Spain, the Netherlands, France and Britain offered financial rewards to solve the problem while their best and brightest philosophised over potential solutions. A much-publicised, drawn-out ideological battle developed between esteemed astronomers and mathematicians who looked to the stars for a solution in observations of planets and the Earth’s moon, and those who looked to mechanical timekeeping, or a sea clock.

The chief protagonist of mechanical timekeeping was the legendary former carpenter John Harrison, who began his quest in the 1720s, after the British Longitude Act was announced in 1714. It consumed 50 years in a mammoth battle against two successive Astronomers Royal, James Bradley and Nevil Maskelyne. Harrison’s supporters petitioned King George III and Harrison was eventually vindicated and awarded £10,000 in 1765 and a further £8,750 in 1773,2 after his fourth design was proved ‘practicable’, or able to be produced by others.

Each of Harrison’s four clocks was an improvement on the previous as he resolved problems of the day.

H1, his first clock of 1735, took him more than a decade to develop. This design was endorsed by the Royal Society and met the conditions of the Longitude Act at sea trials, but Harrison himself suggested improvements and continued work with seeding funding from the Longitude commissioners. This led to more than 20 years of refinement then a further two decades of debate with the Board of Longitude.

Harrison’s developmental models became smaller, although still heavy and box like, until 1759, when he unveiled a timepiece redesigned into an eminently more practical housing based on an enlarged pocket watch, made by clockmaker John Jefferys. To prove its practicality, it was produced by chronometer maker Larcum Kendall and successfully trialled by James Cook on his second voyage in 1772–75, being tested against chronometers made by John Arnold and the lunar distance method. Harrison’s fifth watch, H5, involved a new design to correct the time by moving the hands without opening the back of the clock.

Two hundred and fifty years later, the ingenious machinery in Harrison’s clocks captivated Norman Banham, who set himself the challenge to make the clocks anew with a replica set of chronometers that demonstrated Harrison’s experimentations.

28

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Norman Banham spent his working career and much of his early family life at the Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra

Whereas in the 16th to 18th centuries astronomy and mechanics were at odds, in 21st-century Canberra they were fused in the skills and life story of Norman Banham. Mr Banham, who recently turned 90, spent his working career and much of his early family life at the Mount Stromlo Observatory where his father Horace, a qualified scientific instrument maker, ran the workshop.

Mr Banham remembers as a young boy watching his father silvering the mirrors of one of the telescopes with silver nitrate every 12 months to maintain its reflective qualities. When he turned 16 in 1947, he left school to begin his apprenticeship in the workshop.

Mr Banham became leading hand 29 years later.

His work involved machining components and instruments from drawings from the design office and fitting, adjusting and rebalancing them on and around the large telescopes. Over the course of his 40-year career, the instruments and the work became more sophisticated with the introduction of new electronic technologies.

Mr Banham retired in 1988 and became involved in the Horological Society, where his interests and expertise coalesced. He became hooked on the aesthetics and motion of the Harrison clocks – their intricacy, ingenuity and the interconnectedness of components.

Mr Banham’s biggest challenge was locating accurate plans. This took him some time and involved assistance from visiting astronomers after approaches to Greenwich proved fruitless. Eventually he was introduced to British clockmaker Don Unwin. Unwin had made a replica of H3 for the Wimpole Museum, Cambridge, and generously helped Mr Banham procure a copy of Harrison’s plans of H3 lodged at Cambridge University.

Norman Banham’s replica of Harrison’s sea watch H4.

With completely different workings to Harrison’s previous chronometers, H4 featured a large balance wheel which beat more rapidly to combat the motion of the seas.

Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

Norman Banham became hooked on the aesthetics and motion of the Harrison clocks – their intricacy, ingenuity and the interconnectedness of components

Australian National Maritime Museum

29

In years to come the replicas H1, H2, H3 and H4 will enter the National Maritime Collection as a magnificent tribute to Norman Banham and to John Harrison

01 30

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01 Norman Banham in his home workshop, 2021. He is working on his replica of H3.

Image Amanda Crnkovic 02 John Harrison (1693– 1776)

by Thomas King, c 1767.

He is depicted holding his sea watch H4. Image © Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library – All rights reserved

Astoundingly, it was only after he completed H3 several years later and moved on to H4 that Mr Banham realised that he had started with the most complex clock. It was the only one for which he had any detail. Mr Banham had, and still has, no computer. In an epic feat of deduction, concentration and patience he scaled components from plans and one photograph of the clock that included a 12-inch (30 centimetre) ruler, and set to work with incredible finesse and tenacity, resolving all his questions of size, scale, weight and balance calibration – making and testing each component, case by case, year by year.

Materials were less of a problem. Mr Banham was able to source brass, steel and timbers – lignum vitae and oak – locally in Canberra, even if he did have to cut up the backing board from his parents’ sideboard to procure the English oak.

Today Mr Banham continues working on Harrison’s clocks, musing over and solving problems. He is working on the long-case clock that consumed Harrison until his death in 1776. He is also working on H2. When Mr Banham crafted the replica H2 he again turned to his ruler, pencil and paper to scale from published photographs and produced a magnificent working replica. After this, the Curator of Horology at Royal Museums Greenwich, Jonathan Betts, published the detailed plans and photographs of all Harrison clocks.

It was a little late for Mr Banham because he had finished his four clocks, but he realised that he had made a minute error in the size of the gear wheel, so he patiently took the entire clock apart and replaced the gear wheel. This minute change led to many, many hours recalibrating and checking all other components.

02

Two of Norman Banham’s extraordinary replica clocks – H1 and the sea watch H4 – are currently on loan to the museum for display in the museum’s Under Southern Skies gallery. Mr Banham has made a most generous gesture in the bequest of his replica Harrison clocks.

In years to come the replicas H1, H2, H3 and H4 will enter the National Maritime Collection as a magnificent tribute to Norman Banham and John Harrison.

They will serve to link astronomy and timekeeping, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and Mount Stromlo Observatory outside Australia’s national capital, and the achievements of a clockmaker and scientific instrument maker across the centuries.

As Norman Banham said recently: The clocks are truly fascinating maritime objects which helped solve the longitude problem.

I would love Australian audiences to see the clocks through my inquisitive eyes to understand the history behind each one [and] reflect on the design and how they worked ... It has been a real inspiration to see the finished product, given the history behind it and the achievement of Harrison.

Footnotes 1 In the 2016 exhibition Ships, clocks and stars, the original H4, plus all four replicas – each made by a different clockmaker – visited Australia from a private collection in the UK. 2 These two sums are equivalent to well over $5.5 million in today’s money.

Further reading Dava Sobel, Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time (Fourth Estate, UK, 1995).

Australian National Maritime Museum

31

$8,000 maritime history prizes Nominations are now open

Writers and publishers of maritime history are invited to nominate works for maritime history awards totalling $8,000, sponsored jointly by the Australian Association for Maritime History and the Australian National Maritime Museum. Nominations for the 2021 round close on 30 April 2021.

EVERY TWO YEARS, the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian Association for Maritime History sponsor two prizes: the Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize and the Australian Community Maritime History Prize. Both prizes reflect the wish of the sponsoring organisations to promote a broad view of maritime history that demonstrates how the sea and maritime influences have been more central in shaping Australia, its people and its culture than has commonly been believed.

The major prize is named in honour of the late Professor Frank Broeze (1945–2001) of the University of Western Australia, who has been called the pre-eminent maritime historian of his generation.

This will be the 11th joint prize for a maritime history book awarded by the two organisations, and the fifth community maritime history prize.

The 2021 Australian Community Maritime History Prize of $2,000

To be awarded to a regional or local museum or historical society for a publication (book, booklet, educational resource kit, DVD or other print or digital media, including websites, databases and oral histories) relating to an aspect of maritime history of that region or community, and published between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The winner will also receive a year’s subscription to the Australian Association for Maritime History and a year’s subscription to the Australian National Maritime Museum’s quarterly magazine Signals.

Publications by state-run organisations, physical exhibitions and periodicals such as journals are not eligible.

How to nominate

The 2021 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize of $6,000

To be awarded for a non-fiction book treating any aspect of maritime history relating to or affecting Australia, written or co-authored by an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and published between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The book should be published in Australia, although titles written by Australian authors but published overseas may be considered at the discretion of the judges.

The prize is open to Australian authors or co-authors of a book-length monograph or compilation of their own works. Fictional works, edited collections of essays by multiple contributors, second editions and translations of another writer’s work are not eligible.

32

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

To nominate for the Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize, complete the form at sea.museum/ history-prizes and provide THREE photocopies of the following: • dust jacket or cover • blurb • title page • imprint page • contents page • the page showing the ISBN • one or two representative chapters of the publication, including examples of illustrative materials.

A copy of the book may also be included, but may not substitute for these photocopied materials.

01 The 2019 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize was won

by Alan Frost for Mutiny, Mayhem, Mythology: Bounty’s Enigmatic Journey (Sydney University Press).

02 The 2019 Community Maritime History Prize was won by the Naval Historical Society of Australia for its website navyhistory.org.au.

Copies of any published reviews may also be included.

To nominate for the Australian Community Maritime History Prize, complete the form at sea.museum/history-prizes and send to the address below, along with: • For print publications or DVDs – include a physical copy.

• For digital publications such as websites, databases, online exhibitions or apps – include 250–300 words explaining the vision and objectives of the digital media, plus data indicating its success. For websites and databases, also provide the URL or download details.

• For an app or other digital media – submit on a USB. Copies of any published reviews may also be included.

Multiple nominations may be made, but each must be for one category only.

Nominations for both prizes close on 30 April 2021.

They should be posted to:

Janine Flew Publications coordinator Australian National Maritime Museum Wharf 7, 58 Pirrama Road Pyrmont NSW 2009

01

02

Judging process

Following an initial assessment of nominations, shortlisted authors or publishers will be invited to submit a further two copies of their publication. These will be judged by a committee of three prominent judges from the maritime history community.

The judges’ decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.

The prize will be announced and awarded at a time and venue to be advised.

Australian National Maritime Museum

33

Pennantian Parrot (now known as a crimson rosella), Plate 13 in Surgeon General John White’s A journal of a voyage to New South Wales. This and many other plates in the book were reproduced from original paintings by Sarah Stone (c 1760–1844), a prolific and talented artist. She worked from specimens, rather than live animals, but still captured the playfulness characteristic of many Australian birds. ANMM Collection 00055487

When published in 1790, White’s A journal of a voyage to New South Wales was the first publication to outline such detail of the flora and fauna of the colony

A gift of national importance Colonial Surgeon-General John White’s journal

In November 1788 John White, Principal Surgeon of the First Fleet, despatched his handwritten journal, containing details of life in the first months of the new colony, to his friend and editor Thomas Wilson in London. An early edition of the published version has now been generously donated to the National Maritime Collection, writes Daina Fletcher.

IN OCTOBER 1786, JOHN WHITE was appointed Principal Surgeon on the First Fleet to Botany Bay aboard the convict transport Charlotte, which sailed from Portsmouth, England, on 13 May 1787. In early 1788, he was appointed the first Surgeon-General of the colony of New South Wales. His involvement in the colonial enterprise lasted six years, and the journal that he kept provides important observations and insights into the colony’s early months, the well-being of the colonists and their interactions with Indigenous landowners.

At this time the colony was in crisis, struggling with disease, limited supplies and crop failure. White’s greatest challenge remained the prevention of scurvy, which had plagued the voyage from England, and the search for fresh food sources commanded much of his attention.

The extreme circumstances of the colony are worth exploring through White’s eyes. He chronicles the voyage of the Supply to Norfolk Island in March 1788, which rewarded the colony with excellent turtle, eighteen of which were brought here, and proved a seasonable supply to the convicts afflicted with the scurvy, many of whom were in a deplorable situation.

He records his discoveries of indigenous plants, such as ‘a plant growing on the sea shore, greatly resembling sage … and a kind of wild spinage [sic]’, as well as ‘a small berry like a white currant’ which proved a good antiscorbutic.1 And on 8 July 1788 he remarked: Here, where no other animal nourishment is to be procured, the Kangaroo is considered as a dainty; but in any other country I am sure that such food would be thrown to the dogs…

White pursued a keen interest in natural history.

His consignment to Thomas Wilson in November 1788 included specimens that excited his imagination and which he thought would do the same in England.

Wilson noted:2 the non-descript Animals of New South Wales occupied a great deal of Mr White’s attention, and he preserved several specimens of them in spirits, which arrived in England in a very perfect state…

Australian National Maritime Museum

35

The journal that Surgeon White kept provides important observations and insights into the colony’s early months

01 Implements of New South Wales, Plate 63 in Surgeon General John White’s A journal of a voyage to New South Wales.

ANMM Collection 00055487

01

02

02 Wha Tapoua Roo (now known as a brushtail possum), Plate 56 in White’s Journal.

ANMM Collection 00055487

It took more than six months to prepare the text and its 65 engravings for publication. When published in 1790, John White’s A journal of a voyage to New South Wales / with sixty-five plates of non descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions was the third account from the colonial enterprise circulating at the time, and included in its substantial natural history appendices two plates of Aboriginal fishing and hunting artefacts. It was the first publication to outline such detail about the flora and fauna of the colony.

A number of deluxe copies were engraved in colour, others in black and white. More than 700 were printed, two of which were bought by Sir James Peachey, British politician and courtier, and his son, John Peachey.

One of these was acquired by the Stewart family of Scotland after the contents of the Peachey family’s library were sold in 1872. The exact date of its arrival in Australia is unknown, but it is thought to have come to Melbourne in the 1890s with Cecil James Stewart, whose family had connections to Australia from the 1840s. The journal has been donated to the National Maritime Collection by C J Stewart’s grandson Peter Chaldjian under the Commonwealth Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. Mr Chaldjian says: Since this journal was passed down to me through my maternal family and though it has given my family great joy, in the back of my mind it has long been a goal of mine to find a home for this beautiful and highly interesting book. It is, thus, a great joy for me to know that the journal has found a wonderful home at the Australian National Maritime Museum and to know that it will be treated with care and attention and that future generations will derive great pleasure and knowledge from such a beautiful work.

While the existence of Surgeon-General John White’s handwritten journal is not on the public record, this fine early published edition of his impressions joins The Charlotte Medal in the National Maritime Collection as a significant artefact associated with the First Fleet and the earliest months of colonial Australia.

1 The journal can be read at gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301531.txt 2 John White, A journal of a voyage to New South Wales / with sixty-five plates of non descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions, Thomas Wilson, London, 1790, page 269.

Further reading Susannah Helman, ‘Sarah Stone’s birds’, 4 February 2020 nla.gov.au/ stories/blog/treasures/2020/02/04/sarah-stones-birds

The Charlotte Medal Surgeon White commissioned the first work of European art in the colony from Thomas Barrett, a convicted thief and mutineer transported on the ship Charlotte.

Barrett fashioned and engraved a medal commemorating the arrival of the fleet in Botany Bay, purportedly from a flattened surgeon’s metal kidney dish.

After becoming the colony’s first artist, Barrett achieved another, and much more dubious, first: he was the first European in the colony to be executed.

On 27 February 1788 Surgeon White rather dispassionately records that Barrett was ‘launched into eternity from “the fatal tree” for stealing ‘beef and pease’ from government stores.

The Cultural Gifts Program is an Australian Government Program that provides tax incentives to encourage gifts of culturally significant items to national collecting institutions. To find out more, go to arts.gov.au/ funding-and-support/ cultural-gifts-program or email the Head of Acquisitions Development: daina.fletcher@sea.museum

Australian National Maritime Museum

37

Today as a distinct race of people, there are some 70,000 surviving Australian South Sea Islander descendants

Flag-raising at the Australian National Maritime Museum by national ASSI dignitaries: custom women from Vanuatu, ASSIPJ board, New South Wales Council for Pacific Communities and the Tweed Heads community, 21 November 2020. Image Lola Forester

The legacy of blackbirding Slavery and Australian South Sea Islanders

In the mid-19th century, as Britain and the USA were abolishing slavery, thousands of South Sea Islanders were kidnapped from their homelands and forced to work in agricultural, pastoral, maritime, bêche-de-mer, fishing, cotton and railway industries in Australia. For over a decade, (Waskam) Emelda Davis has traced the bitter legacy of this practice, which is derived from the Atlantic slave trade known as ‘blackbirding’.

BLACKBIRDING WAS A ONCE-COMMON TRADE in which people from Pacific islands were tricked, kidnapped or coerced into slavery. Some small islands had their entire male populations stolen, which devastated island culture and economy by breaking up generations of kinship and civil society. Along with Australian First Nations people, South Sea Islanders were forced to work across pastoral, maritime and fishing industries, and played a key role in establishing Australia’s sugarcane industry.

38

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Human trafficking

From 1840 to 1950, the Pacific labour trade moved 1.5 million Indigenous and Asian people around the Pacific.

Blackbirding began illegally in New South Wales in 1847, when entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd kidnapped the first 119 Melanesian men to slave on his whaling industries alongside Maori and First Nations peoples.

They were taken from New Caledonia (Lifou Island) and Tanauta (formerly Tanna Island), Vanuatu.

A disaster resulted when they escaped from Eden, in southern New South Wales, and walked back to Sydney, where they were found roaming around Kings Cross naked seeking passage back to their homelands.

It is reported that one ‘man Tanna’ was found dead on the shores; he had been denied passage on a recruiting ship called Portenia returning to Vanuatu and drowned as he began to swim back to his island home.

Between 1863 and 1908, more than 60,000 men, and some women and children, were taken to Queensland from the 80 islands of Vanuatu and the Solomons, including Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Tuvalu, New Caledonia and Fiji (Rotuma).

As early as the 1860s, the South Sea Islander influx trafficked slaves throughout pearling and bêche-de-mer (sea slug) industries. Acts of assimilation and colonisation were imposed through the work of South Sea Islander Christians as part of the London Missionary Society, which penetrated Torres Strait Island communities.

Zulai 1 (July 1), or ‘Coming of the light’, is today a national event that acknowledges Torres Strait Island peoples’ continued culture and recognises the coming of Christianity to the islands. The London Missionary Society also infiltrated parts of Queensland, establishing the Kanaka missions. The most significant Australian South Sea Islander ‘colony’ was on Mua (St Pauls) Island and was established by the Anglican Church in the 1900s.

South Sea Islanders were deployed to the Torres Strait Islands from New South Wales ports as early as the 1860s with the treacherous ‘blackbirding’ trade. This involved the inhumane removal and mistreatment of mainly men, but some women and children, from their island homes, who were then shipped en masse to Australia. As hardworking, strong and resilient people, they were recruited as an itinerant labour force to establish the nation’s sugar plantation industries. Later they were vital in the growth of Australian economies as we know them today,

and were further exploited to build transport infrastructure such as railways and roads. Still today, descendants of blackbirded people work across these industries. In doing so they travel in a continued circular migration throughout Australia, but mainly Queensland and New South Wales coastal regions and main townships.

Australian South Sea Islanders

Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) has been a receiving port since the 1790s for Pacific Island labour. Our people were wharf labourers, seafarers and deckhands, contracted under the guise of ‘indentured labourers’. There is also evidence of a continued commute from Queensland to Sydney seeking shelter from deportation under the ‘White Australia’ policy. Deportation orders were issued to government agencies such as police and welfare who detained, signed and deported some 7,000 people en masse at the stroke of a pen.

Today as a distinct race of people, there are some 70,000 surviving Australian South Sea Islander descendants.

Australian South Sea Islander was the name decided upon in the 1970s by our elders and leaders for our community demographic. It refers to ‘a distinct cultural group’ and was legislated as such by the Commonwealth in 1994.

Australian National Maritime Museum

39

The treacherous ‘blackbirding’ trade involved the inhumane removal and mistreatment of mainly men, but some women and children, from their island homes

01

02

40

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01 South Sea Islander women and children working on a sugar cane plantation at Hambledon, Queensland, about 1891.

John Oxley Library 172501 02 South Sea Islanders hoeing a cane field in the Herbert River regions, Queensland, 1902.

Many thousands of such enslaved people died from common diseases during the first months after arrival. An astounding 15,000 of these, mainly young men, died well before their prime.

State Library of Queensland

Australian South Sea Islanders have an evident kinship with First Nations people due to being placed under Aboriginal protection Acts of Parliament of the 1930s and absorbed on missions, reserves and work-stations slaving across industries that required intense labour.

Years of displacement and abandonment by government policy programs and services make it challenging for our communities to assert identity and reconnect with heritage. There is much research to be conducted across our nation and in particular New South Wales: investigations into employment records for the Burns Philp archives, looking at ships and voyages; research into the Noel Butlin Archives Centre for employment of our people across factory industries and at Robert Towns Sydney Brewery; and shipping logs that identify the numbers of people received in Sydney.

In 2020, the group Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI) Port Jackson celebrated its 10th year as a not-for-profit with continued assistance from the City of Sydney Council. Homage is due to our organisation’s founding elders, who are well known for their politics and activism across our communities: Ms Shireen Malamoo, Ms Nellie Enares, Ms Carriette Togo, Mr Graham Mooney, Dr Bonita Mabo, Mrs Avis Dugarra and Mr Victor Corowa.

All had undivided faith and passion to impress on our government the need for recognition and inclusion across meaningful programs and services.

South Sea Islanders were forced to work across pastoral, maritime and fishing industries, and played a key role in establishing Australia’s sugarcane industry

For the past 27 years, Australian South Sea Islander Recognition Day has officially been listed as part of our nation’s cultural calendar for 25 August. Through the advocacy of ASSI-Port Jackson, this day now includes national flag-raisings to inspire ministers, local councils, community organisations and leaders to consider our call for social justice needs and the inclusion of our people across their portfolios.

A COVID-delayed ‘soft launch’ of Sugar Fest Oceanic Culture History & Music was held on 21 November 2020.

Sugar Fest is the result of over a decade of building community partnerships that celebrate Australian society’s willingness to learn of its historical beginnings and acknowledge the need to work together to build a more cohesive and robust society of inclusive multiculturalism. The event has the ongoing support of City of Sydney Council and community partners.

Supported in principal by the Australian National Maritime Museum, the festival will take place over the next three years at Pirrama Parklands, Sydney – once the site of the Sugar Wharf formerly managed by Colonial Sugar Refinery.

For more information please see assipj.com.au

(Waskam) Emelda Davis is a second-generation Australian South Sea Islander who has worked for federal, state, community and grassroots organisations in Australia. As chairwoman of the Australian South Sea Islanders, Port Jackson (ASSIPJ) since 2009, her leadership role has revived the focus on the call for recognition for the descendants of Australia’s blackbirding trade.

Australian National Maritime Museum

41

01

A 1929 Ruby Princess prequel The Aorangi quarantine incident

The COVID-19 crisis reminded Australians of both the effectiveness and the frailties of quarantine. Sometimes the system slips up, as Dr Peter Hobbins reveals in a historical precedent to the Ruby Princess episode of 2020.

PICTURE THIS. A huge ship sails into Sydney Harbour with potential cases of a highly infectious disease aboard.

Despite official precautions, the passengers are not quarantined and patients incubating the illness disembark.

Many journey on to their home states, mingling with the local community until tell-tale symptoms emerge.

Amid frantic attempts to trace the travellers across the country, Australia’s quarantine credentials are challenged and the public demands an explanation.

The story certainly sounds familiar to anyone who followed the Ruby Princess fiasco of March 2020.

A Special Commission of Inquiry concluded that health officials responsible for managing the cruise ship’s arrival ‘were diligent, and properly organised’, but ‘despite the best efforts of all, some serious mistakes were made’.1

42

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01 The Young Australia League delegates return to Perth, 4 July 1929. State Library of Western Australia 10028B_1320,1462 02 Hot Beans the burro.

Image City of Vancouver Archives

02

Frijoles Calientes

The same assertions were certainly true for a strikingly similar incident in 1929. Embroiling the Union Steam Ship Company’s RMMS Aorangi, it involved medical misdiagnosis, slipshod paperwork, conflicting jurisdictions and a clash of powerful personalities.

Although no lives were lost, one unwitting celebrity was condemned to lifelong quarantine far from home.

Luckily, this victim was an Arizona-born donkey named ‘Hot Beans’, and he didn’t seem to mind spending the remainder of his life in Perth Zoo. Education by travel

Central to the Aorangi incident was the Young Australia League (YAL). Founded in Perth in 1905 to foster Australian Rules football, its mission soon changed to encourage sports, music and travel as a means of developing ‘an all-round type of Australian citizen’.

Embracing the motto ‘education by travel’, the YAL instigated many interstate and international trips.2 By 1928 a North American tour was planned.

Encompassing 43 cities over a six-month period, it would be an unforgettable experience for young men from across Australia. But the privilege did not come cheap – at £195 per head, it cost more than half the annual wage of a manager. Gathering at the Sydney Showgrounds just before Christmas 1928, the party comprised 13 YAL officers, 142 Australian boys and four New Zealand lads. Dressed in military-style uniforms and marching behind ceremonial flags, they paraded through Sydney before boarding the Union Royal Mail Line’s RMS Makura on 27 December.3

On 18 January 1929 the YAL boys looked skyward to the sound of aeroplanes. The aircraft dropped a floral key to the city of San Francisco. It was an auspicious omen: across America and Canada, host families opened their homes to the young men, tours were arranged at local businesses and attractions, and dignitaries greeted the group via an exhausting series of official receptions.

The YAL was also given a motley array of souvenirs, including a swathe of flags and three mounted moose heads.

The liveliest memento, however, was bestowed in the desert town of Tucson, Arizona. Arriving on 8 February, the party was treated to ‘enchiladas, tamales, and all manner of Mexican delicacies, the like of which have probably never been seen in Australia’. Local boys Jim and Harry Eager then appeared in cowboy outfits, accompanied by their pet donkey foal, which they presented to the antipodean visitors. ‘The burro now takes its place in all official parades’, noted the tour bulletin, ‘following the band as if trained for the purpose’.4 Christened ‘Frijoles Calientes’ or ‘Hot Beans’, the burro soon became a travelling celebrity. He garnered national exposure in Washington DC, where the YAL joined the inauguration ceremony for Republican President Herbert Hoover. Since his party’s mascot was an elephant, while that of the opposing Democrats was a donkey, ‘nearly a million people rocked with merriment at the sight of the first donkey ever seen at a Republican demonstration’.5 Hoover – who had worked on the Western Australian goldfields in the 1890s – personally greeted each YAL boy and gave the group his inauguration wreath. The only such garland ever to leave the United States, it remains a prized keepsake at the YAL’s Perth headquarters today.

Australian National Maritime Museum

43

01 Young Australia League tour advertisement, Sydney Sun, 10 September 1928, page 6.

02 RMMS Aorangi off North Head, Sydney, 1939. Samuel J Hood Studio, ANMM Collection 00020213

01

02

44

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Chickenpox or smallpox?

The Aorangi incident involved medical misdiagnosis, slipshod paperwork, conflicting jurisdictions and a clash of powerful personalities

Boss and loss

Managing such a complex operation required an exemplary leader, namely the YAL’s founder, John ‘Jack’ Simons. A nationalist, sportsman, publisher and politician, Simons had irrepressible energy and an imposing force of will. Little wonder he was universally known as ‘Boss’.6 Unfortunately, two tragedies marred the YAL’s American trip. Soon after meeting William Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, young Will Strachan of Brisbane suddenly fell ill at Niagara Falls. He died on 19 April from streptococcal pneumonia, aged 17. ‘The young people in our home were very visibly affected upon hearing of this sad occurrence’, commiserated Bert Comins, whose family had recently hosted Will in Boston.7

Welcomed home by 10,000 Sydneysiders, the YAL contingent marched behind 35 souvenir flags to an official reception at Government House. ‘Everywhere you went you were a credit to your country’, proclaimed Dudley de Chair, Governor of New South Wales. ‘Australia is proud of you’.10 But just as the young travellers dispersed, troubling news reached the new Commonwealth Department of Health in Canberra. One YAL boy, Athol Thomas of Perth, had been sent to the Coast Hospital, Sydney’s dedicated infectious diseases hospital. There he was diagnosed with smallpox, a highly infectious disease which, in its severe form, killed up to 30 per cent of patients. The next day William Krimmer from Toowoomba was also found to be suffering from smallpox. Both lads were urgently sent to Sydney’s North Head Quarantine Station.

While abroad, up to 10 YAL boys had been diagnosed with chickenpox, which resembled smallpox but was much milder. Onboard Aorangi, Krimmer also presented with possible chickenpox symptoms, then Thomas fell ill with a similar complaint. Despite being cleared by port doctors in Suva and Auckland, when Aorangi berthed in Sydney the ship’s surgeon, Robert Hatherell, reported both cases as required under maritime law.

A second loss occurred on 31 May, just a day after departing Vancouver aboard Aorangi. Suffering a kidney infection, 17-year-old Frank Gilmour from Melbourne died during a series of seizures. His body was committed to the deep, with Captain Robert Crawford reading the burial service.8

After two quarantine doctors inspected the boys, Krimmer was allowed to go home but Thomas was ordered to the Coast Hospital for observation.

Only when his case was re-diagnosed as smallpox was it realised that all 491 disembarked passengers – plus several hundred crew – had been circulating in Sydney for days. Since smallpox remained infectious for up to 18 days, the prospect of a snowballing outbreak was palpable.

Hot Beans had embarked in Vancouver, although his importation into Australia required clearance by the Stock Department. Joining the YAL party on deck as Aorangi slid into Sydney Harbour on 22 June, the celebrated burro was sent to a temporary quarantine paddock beside Taronga Zoo.9

Aorangi was immediately quarantined and contact tracing urgently commenced. All travellers were urged to report to local quarantine authorities for surveillance.

Vaccination against smallpox was recommended but not compulsory, much to the chagrin of the nation’s autocratic Director-General of Health, John Cumpston.11 Australian National Maritime Museum

45

The drama barely dented the positive publicity garnered by the YAL’s North American tour

One of the many souvenirs of the YAL’s North American tour.

Young Australia League Archives 329-035

Acute embarrassment

While the YAL party was at the core of this drama, ‘Boss’ Simons doggedly challenged the health authorities.

Escorted by police to North Head, he initially refused to share the addresses of the boys or their hosts. ‘Boss’ also insisted on their right to refuse vaccination, citing a recent tragedy in Bundaberg where contaminated diphtheria immunisation had led to the deaths of 12 children.12 Cumpston complained to the YAL that ‘it is regretted that the provisions of the Quarantine Act do not permit of legal action against Major Simons for his attitude’.13 Equally headstrong, ‘Boss’ urged that Health Department staff ‘refrain from threatening respectable citizens with imprisonment on empty presumptions of resistance’.14 Meanwhile, Commonwealth Health Department staff worked frantically to trace the liner’s passengers and crew. Some proved impossible to locate as they had only given the tour company’s details or supplied false addresses. Others who claimed to have sailed aboard Aorangi could not be found on its manifest.15 To their embarrassment, Commonwealth officials had to admit these failings to state health departments, plus authorities in New Zealand, Canada, the USA and the League of Nations Eastern Bureau in Singapore.

It was therefore cheeky, to say the least, when Cumpston proposed that the Commonwealth was responsible only for smallpox cases from Aorangi. The states, he suggested, should foot the bill for infections acquired through contact with the returned travellers.

Hot water and Hot Beans

By early August the crisis had passed. Rob Binney from Perth may have been infected, and two more YAL boys were definitely diagnosed with mild smallpox.

In Sydney, John Wright and his family were quarantined at North Head. Rex Halbert, meanwhile, travelled home to Perth before symptoms appeared. His whole family was rapidly transferred to Woodman’s Point Quarantine Station in Fremantle, where his sister Madge developed a mild case. Happily, all the patients soon recovered.

Despite the hot water that ‘Boss’ found himself in, the drama barely dented the positive publicity garnered by the YAL’s North American tour. Cumpston, however, smarted with humiliation. When smallpox was again identified aboard Aorangi in 1930, he ordered that the full quarantine ritual be applied ‘in all details’.16

And what of Hot Beans? Despite a clean bill of health, the burro was landed into zoo custody in Sydney.

Under the law he could only be transferred to other zoos, creating a perpetual ‘quarantine’.

Despite vigorous campaigning by ‘Boss’, the YAL’s beloved mascot was never released, living out his life at Perth Zoo. For decades afterwards, however, an eternally popular song at YAL concerts was ‘The Donkey Serenade’.

Dr Peter Hobbins is Principal Historian at Artefact Heritage Services in Sydney. This article appears with thanks to the generous staff at the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Archives of Australia and the Young Australia League.

References 1 Bret Walker, Special Commission of Inquiry into the Ruby Princess (Sydney: State of New South Wales, 2020), p 197.

2 ‘The YAL – Tell Me About It’ (Perth: Young Australia League, 1932), pp 1–2.

3 Tour of the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada 1929 (Perth: Young Australia League, 1929), p 3.

4 Ibid, pp 15–16.

5 ‘Mascot’s ill-fortune’, West Australian, 6 February 1930, p 6.

6 Lyall Hunt, ‘Simons, John Joseph (Jack) (1882–1948)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ simons-john-joseph-jack-8430, accessed 1 January 2021.

7 Albert K Comins to Major Simons, 25 April 1929, Young Australia League Archives, folder 586.

8 Aorangi – Official Log Book 10/1/1929 – 22/6/1929 [Box 46], National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), Series SP2/1 Control AORANGI 10/1/1929, p 47.

9 ‘YAL boys back from America’, Herald, 22 June 1929, p 3.

10 ‘YAL Boys. Sydney’s welcome. London gift of £1000’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1929, p 10.

11 J H L Cumpston to Quarantine, Hobart, 25 June 1929, Diseases on Vessels – ‘Aorangi’ Smallpox June 1929, NAA A1928 260/36.

12 Peter Hobbins, ‘“Immunisation is as popular as a death adder”: the Bundaberg tragedy and the politics of medical science in interwar Australia’, Social History of Medicine 24, no 2 (2011): 426–44.

13 J H L Cumpston to Secretary, Young Australia League, 4 July 1929, NAA A1928 260/36.

14 J J Simons to Director-General of Health, 14 September 1929, NAA A1928 260/36.

15 Incoming Passenger List for Aorangi Arriving Sydney 22 June 1929, NAA A907 1929/6/45.

16 Peter Hobbins, Ursula Frederick and Anne Clarke, Stories from the Sandstone: Quarantine Inscriptions from Australia’s Immigrant Past (Crows Nest: Arbon Publishing, 2016), p 235.

Australian National Maritime Museum

47

Vigilance and service Women in surf lifesaving in Australia

01

Surf lifesaving was one of the last organisations in Australia to hold out against the women’s movement.

Last year, Surf Life Saving New South Wales celebrated 40 years since women were allowed to actively participate in patrols and rescues along the state’s coast, writes Anne Doran.

SINCE THE FIRST VOLUNTEER LIFESAVING CLUBS were formed in 1907, women have been vital members in behind-the-scenes roles such as cleaning, cooking and fundraising. Many wishing for more physical involvement in surf culture eventually found ways to create their own competitions, such as swimming and rescue and resuscitation drills. Women from my former club, Helensburgh Stanwell Park, sought permission to form a distinct Ladies Surf Club in 1956, which was granted on the proviso that no reference be made to lifesaving in the title or in their activities.

Women were banned from training for the Bronze Medallion, the passport to actively patrolling beaches.

They were considered to be physically incapable of performing rescues, and the idea of female lifesavers went against the perception of an army of well-drilled, physically fit men keeping the beaches safe. There also was concern that female members would disrupt the status quo and the close bonds of mateship within the clubs.

48

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01 Ruth Cook of Port Kembla SLSC was one of the first women to receive her Bronze Medallion in 1980, allowing her to actively patrol beaches and conduct rescues. All images Surf Life Saving NSW 02 Kristen Ross, Julie Farmer and Ula Dalton (nee Callen), pictured in 1994–95, were the first female IRB (inshore rescue boat) crew at Nobbys SLSC, Newcastle, NSW.

Interestingly, during World War II women around Australia filled the role of lifesavers while men were away fighting. Many were initially non-swimmers and had to learn to swim before training to be lifesavers.

During the week many of these women were involved in important war work, then gave up every Sunday to patrol the beaches during the summer season – only to have to renounce their involvement once the men returned home from war.

Declining membership in the 1960s led to a new program called Nippers for pre-teen boys and later girls.

This succeeded in bringing families to the clubs and many boys went on to become patrolling members – but this was not the case for girls. They could continue into their own competitions as ‘Nipperettes’, go into the traditional roles or leave.

But changing circumstances forced the organisation’s hand. The advent of the women’s movement, pressure from women in auxiliary roles and parents of Nippers, and still-declining memberships meant that it was time for a discussion. In 1974, South Australian Premier Don Dunstan demanded that surf clubs admit women or face withdrawal of funding from the South Australian lifesaving body. Six years later, on 1 July 1980, women were finally permitted to qualify as active lifesavers and undertake patrols. Some clubs held out, citing a lack of women’s facilities as a reason, and many of the first female Bronze Medallion holders faced discrimination and bullying from dissenting members of their club.

02

Things were different at my club, the Helensburgh Stanwell Park SLSC; after a lively discussion about the matter, women were accepted straight away, and the council provided bathroom facilities from day one.

Currently in New South Wales, women make up 37 per cent of patrolling members, and many have executive roles in their local surf clubs.

On 1 July 2020, Surf Life Saving celebrated the 40-year anniversary of women’s involvement in active lifesaving. Steven Pearce AFSM, Chief Executive Officer of Surf Life Saving NSW, says that he finds it ‘bizarre and extreme’ that women were not formally allowed to participate in patrols until 1980: As CEO of Surf Life Saving New South Wales and an active patrolling lifesaver at Stanwell Park Surf Life Saving Club, I see and hear regularly the amazing and outstanding rescues that women lifesavers perform on our beaches up and down the coast.

In fact, the patrol I am attached to at my club has eight members, five of whom are female and regularly perform rescues and active lifesaving … and this is done without fanfare or on a gender equity platform. It’s just who we are now … an organisation of women and men protecting and saving lives.

For more about the first female lifesavers, see nfsa.gov.au/latest/australias-first-female-lifesavers Anne Doran is an Assistant Curator of Special Projects at the museum. She became involved with her local surf club as a child. In 1983 she was one of six girls from her local club aged 15 to receive her Bronze Medallion. She later gained her IRB (inshore rescue boat) crew certificate and patrolled beaches regularly for several years.

Australian National Maritime Museum

49

Whatever happened to Blythe Star?

A freighter’s fatal last voyage

A routine delivery turned into disaster for the Blythe Star when it sank off Tasmania in 1973 and an extensive week-long search found no trace of the ship or any survivors. Michael Stoddart analyses the fateful voyage and its consequences.

BLYTHE STAR’S FINAL VOYAGE started like any other.

At 8 am on Thursday 11 October 1973, waterside workers arrived at Hobart’s Prince of Wales Bay to begin loading pallets of fertiliser to be shipped to King Island in Bass Strait. On charter to the Tasmanian Transport Commission from the Bass Strait Shipping Company, Blythe Star was a typical post-war freighter of 321 tons gross. Its 650-horsepower motor pushed it through the water at 9.5 knots, making it a useful ship for general work. This was to be its 38th voyage for the Commission; no-one thought it would be its last.

By 6 pm on Friday 12, the ship was loaded with one tonne of barrelled beer and 350 tonnes of fertiliser: 267 tonnes in the hold, and a further 30 inside the 750-millimetre-high hatch coamings. The first officer, Ken Jones, calculated how much could be carried on top of the hatch covers, and after discussion with management, agreed to take 60 tonnes on the hatches, as it had on a previous voyage. In the event only 54 tonnes were loaded, due to limitations of the ship’s derricks.

Inexplicably, Jones appeared to have forgotten that on the first voyage Blythe Star made for the Commission four months earlier, on which he had been first officer, a serious stability problem was encountered at Sea Elephant Bay off King Island’s east coast. On that occasion the ship carried 300 tonnes. All went well until about 14 hours into its voyage, when the ship developed a serious list. The captain, Richard Turner, instructed the engineers to press up the ship’s double-bottom ballast tank No 2 with 44 tonnes of sea water. The ship righted itself.

50

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

In port at Grassy, Turner and Jones discussed what had happened, and agreed that 60 tonnes on the hatches was too much. They recommended that a limit for deck cargo be set at 25–30 tonnes, and telephoned this advice to the Commission’s shipping manager, Alistair Maddock, in Hobart. Apart from informing the Commission’s agents, Maddock kept this information to himself and did not disseminate it to those who would need it.

In 1970 Blythe Star’s owners had employed a firm of naval architects to review the ship’s stability characteristics, in accordance with the Department of Transport’s new minimum stability standards. The firm recommended that ballast tank No 2 be kept full at all times. Such advice flew in the face of established practice which held that, if the hold was full, no ballast water was needed. Many captains and mates relied on the distance between a ship’s centre of gravity and its metacentric height, known as the GM distance, to inform them of stability. If this was at least one foot (30 centimetres), the ship was considered good to go. On this voyage it appeared that the GM distance was a little above a foot, and the hold was full. The captain testified to the Court that the ballast tank was empty.

On its fateful final voyage Blythe Star’s master, Captain George Cruickshank, agreed to travel from Hobart via Tasmania’s west coast to King Island as the route was four-and-a-half hours shorter than via the east coast. Before casting off he checked his load line to satisfy himself he wasn’t overloaded, then took his ship out into the River Derwent.

Blythe Star alongside at Prince of Wales Bay, Hobart.

Image Maritime Museum of Tasmania

The inquiry revealed multiple failures on the part of the captain

Australian National Maritime Museum

51

No-one was properly dressed for an eight-day ordeal on the Southern Ocean and everyone suffered mightily from the extreme cold

52

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Survivors Alf Simpson and Mal McCarroll. Image Maritime Museum of Tasmania

At 9 pm, as he was heading west from Bruny Island, he spoke on the radio to Captain Trevor Roberts, master of Joseph Banks, telling him he was going west-about to King Island. By 5.15 am on Saturday morning, the lighthouse keeper on duty at Maatsuyker Island logged a small, grey, tanker-like freighter making its way westwards, though he was unable to read its name. Shortly before 8 am the helmsman noticed that the ship had developed a slight list to starboard. So too did the chief engineer, John Eagles, who rushed up to the bridge to ask the captain what was going on. The captain said he didn’t know, but that the list seemed to be righting itself. The chief went below to check if any of the tanks had taken water. He returned a few minutes later to report that all were dry but, on an afterthought, he said he’d forgotten to check one and he’d go back to do it. Hardly had he reached the engine room when the ship lurched further to starboard. By the time it rolled to 90 degrees, the crew had scrambled aft to where the bosun was launching the rubber life raft. Eagles managed to kill the engine and the crew jumped into the raft. In the nick of time they cast off as Blythe Star gave a great hiss and sank stern first. All 10 crew had made it to safety, with little more than a few cuts and bruises.

They were five miles west of Tasmania’s Southwest Cape.

Their euphoria at getting away from the sinking ship was cut short when Captain Cruickshank said he’d been unable to send a May Day signal because he was not on the bridge as the ship’s condition worsened and couldn’t get to the radio. Neither had he been able to grab the portable life-boat radio. Nobody knew the ship had sunk, or where the life raft was. As the captain descended into a state of shock, Ken Jones took charge of the crew and set off a parachute flare hoping Maatsuyker Island lighthouse would see it. It didn’t.

For eight days the raft drifted around the south of Tasmania at the mercy of wind and currents. Its emergency pack contained glucose tablets, high-protein biscuits, and 20 litres of canned water. Two or three crew members had been in bed when the capsize occurred and were dressed only in underpants and a T-shirt. They shivered with cold.

The captain gave his jacket to 18-year-old ordinary seaman Mick Doleman, who’d been thrown from his bunk when the list increased. No-one was properly dressed for an eightday ordeal on the Southern Ocean and everyone suffered mightily from the extreme cold; had the raft not had an enclosed canopy it is unlikely anyone would have survived.

For much of the first two days the raft drifted around the Pedra Branca archipelago – the site of many shipwrecks.

The men had to paddle feverishly to steer the raft clear of the jagged rocks.

Five days into the ordeal the second engineer, John Sloan, became sick from a long-standing thyroid problem, as the pills he needed to treat it had gone down with the ship. He deteriorated quickly and died on Thursday.

He was given a brief funeral before being committed to the waves. Ken Jones didn’t allow dark sentiments to dominate the conversation even when things turned very black, as they did when a nearby fleet of Japanese fishing boats failed to respond to flares and SOS signals and turned away.

Early on the morning of Sunday 21 October, after traversing 400 kilometres of the Southern Ocean, the raft drifted into Deep Glen Bay, a tiny rocky bay on Tasmania’s east coast, about 75 kilometres southeast of Hobart. Stumbling ashore, the men slaked their burning thirsts from a little creek flowing into the bay.

All around them were 200-metre-high sheer cliffs, and the bush everywhere was thick and dense.

Despite several attempts, no-one found a way out that first afternoon, or on the next day.

A few hours after making landfall, John Eagles crawled down the shore to the raft, lay down and died.

He was followed early the next morning by Ken Jones, both men succumbing to hypothermia and exhaustion.

Their deaths had a crushing effect on the remaining men, who now knew that time was running out for everyone.

The rations from the raft were all but exhausted, and their will to live was going the same way. On the morning of Tuesday 23 October the three youngest members – Mick Doleman, Mal McCarroll and the ship’s cook Alf Simpson – left the camp knowing that if they did not find a way out they were all doomed. Panels cut from the raft’s canopy served as ponchos, and more pieces tied around their feet sufficed as boots. They climbed up the steep cleft through which the creek flowed to emerge after some hours on the top of the ridge overlooking the bay. The bush at the top was impenetrable, sometime slowing the group’s progress to less than 100 metres per hour. Exhausted by the end of the day, they climbed into a huge hollow tree and covered themselves with bracken to spend a wet, uncomfortable night.

Australian National Maritime Museum

53

For much of the first two days the raft drifted around the Pedra Branca archipelago – the site of many shipwrecks

The next morning they drank rainwater from a moss-covered log and pressed on. Alf Simpson was a big man who had trouble getting through the bush.

Regularly he’d fall through the tangled horizontal scrub, but fortunately didn’t hurt himself. Before lunchtime they stumbled on a logging track and followed it for several miles, hoping it would lead them to civilisation.

Then they heard it – the faraway sound of a log truck grinding its gears, and it was coming their way.

Doleman was afraid the driver might not stop for three bedraggled men who looked like escaped prisoners, and told the others to wait at the side of the track.

At the last moment he ran out in front of the truck, which stopped dead. They persuaded the driver they were who they said they were, whereupon he hauled them aboard. The driver had nothing to eat or drink except a packet of Minties and some cordial, which they quickly devoured. He drove to Dunalley township where the postmistress took them in, found them clothes, ran a warm bath and fed them soup and raisin bread.

Fortunately her husband had been a fisherman, and knew from their description of the rocky bay where their shipmates were. Later, while they climbed into an ambulance for the drive to Hobart, a police helicopter winched the four survivors to safety.

News of the ship’s disappearance, and of the massive search and rescue operation which failed to find any trace of them, had filled the nation’s newspapers and TV screens for days. When the seven survivors turned up, radio and TV reporters flocked around in an unseemly display of invasive journalism, for it was not often that people returned from the dead.

The Commonwealth Minister for Transport established a Court of Marine Inquiry to find out what caused the ship’s capsize on a calm sea on a morning of light wind. Presiding over the inquiry was Mr Justice Edward Dunphy – an old-school judge with a reputation for unorthodox judgments and confronting gruffness.

The inquiry sat for 25 days and produced a transcript twice as long as the King James bible.

54

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Approximate drift route taken by Blythe Star’s life raft.

1 Maatsuyker Island 2 Pedra Branca rocks 3 Bruny Island 4 Deep Glen Bay 5 Dunalley township

One third of the Court’s time was taken up with deciding whether Blythe Star had gone to sea with or without ballast water. Naval architects used all the information available about how the ship was loaded, and concluded that if it had carried ballast, the ship would have been more than five inches below its marks. Counsel assisting the Court concluded the capsize was caused by the ship having insufficient positive stability upon its departure.

The Court’s decision was a bombshell. The judge did not accept this view, instead declaring the ship had gone to sea ballasted. He ruled that it capsized because the chief engineer had emptied ballast from No 2 tank instead of emptying the bilges. Counsel appointed to assist the Court, Mr John Winneke, had forensically analysed the evidence to conclude that the ship capsized as it carried too much weight above the deck-line and was top heavy, and thus the seeds of its fate were sown before it left Hobart. A combination of factors, including the ship’s poor stability, lack of ballast and the ‘sloshing’ of liquid in the fuel and fresh water tanks, was enough to unsettle the ship. When the captain ordered the helmsman to put a few degrees to starboard on the wheel at 8 am that Saturday morning, the change in the ship’s direction was enough to push it over. There was no evidence to suggest the involvement of any engineer. Why the judge rejected Mr Winneke’s advice, and put blame on a man who could not defend himself, is a mystery. But in inquiries of this sort, the decision of the Court is final.

Nobody knew the ship had sunk, or where the life raft was

King Island Sea Elephant Bay Port of Grassy

5

Hobart Location of capsize

4 3

1 2

The inquiry revealed multiple failures by the captain, who failed to check his first officer’s stability calculations, to send out a May Day, to be on the bridge during the crucial 30 minutes, and to show leadership when his crew were abandoning ship. The judge also criticised the Transport Commission for its laissez-faire attitude to running a shipping operation. Difficulties were found in the relationship between the newly formed Marine Operations Centre in Canberra and the RAAF and RAN, who flew 300 hours in 17 aircraft without finding any trace of the life raft. For five years the Department of Transport had been looking into radar reflectors for life rafts, as was required by the Navigation Act, but so far had not recommended a single device.

Reports of Maatsuyker Island’s sighting of the ship passing westwards on Saturday morning, admittedly muddled because of poor radio connections, were ignored by Canberra, which argued to the end that the Commission was unable to tell it whether the ship had sailed west or east-about.

Some good came from the disaster. The requirement for ships to report their position daily (AUSREP), and for life rafts to be equipped with EPIRBs, came from the inquiry. That three men had to die leaving widows and orphans to fend for themselves was an appalling price to pay for such a litany of indifference, failure and neglect displayed by those who had a duty of care for Blythe Star and its crew.

References Court of Marine Inquiry report No 156: MV Blythe Star (on 315392) Australian Government Publishing Service 1975 Commonwealth Archives (Hobart) files: T73/236; T73/237; T74/221 Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office files: 544/01/78; AB984/1/939; AB984/1/940 AB984/1/1074; AB984/1/1075; AB984/1/1087 Contemporary newspaper clippings, The Mercury, Canberra Times, The Examiner, Sydney Morning Herald.

Maritime Museum of Tasmania D_2012-086 Miscellaneous papers relating to the loss of Blythe Star.

Maritime Museum of Tasmania Box 049

Michael Stoddart is a biologist who has worked in several universities in the UK and Australia.

He was formerly Chief Scientist of Australia’s Antarctic Program and is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Tasmania. He is currently a researcher at the Maritime Museum of Tasmania in Hobart, and his first maritime book – Tassie’s Whale Boys. Whaling in Antarctic waters – was published in 2017 by Forty South Publishing. His new book, The Blythe Star tragedy. How incompetence and neglect sank a ship and cost the lives of three men, will be published later this year, also by Forty South Publishing.

Australian National Maritime Museum

55

Museum events

We regret that due to COVID-19, some of our regular activities have been cancelled or curtailed.

For the most up-to-date information and details of coming talks and activities, please see sea.museum/events.

A celebration of migrant stories

Access program

The Sunday Stir

Sensory-friendly Sundays

12–5 pm Sunday 21 March

8.30–11.30 am Sundays 14 March, 11 April, 23 May

Mix it up at the museum with an afternoon of art, storytelling, music and culture. Experience local contemporary artists sharing their stories of migration through drawing, poetry, story and song in a vibrant and interactive program that celebrates Australia’s multicultural society.

The artists will perform throughout the museum, interacting with visitors.

Presented in association with Blacktown Arts and Settlement Services International

On Sensory-Friendly Sundays our new exhibitions and activity areas will be open extra early for a quieter experience and modified to suit people on the autism spectrum and with a range of differing abilities. Our trained staff and volunteers will be on hand to facilitate creative activities.

Maryam Zahid will be one of the performers at the Sunday Stir. Image Anna Kucera

$12 child/adult. Free for children under 4 and Members or annual pass holders. Minimum height 90 cm for entry to Action Stations and vessels.

Booking is encouraged

Bookings and enquiries

A sound and taste excursion

April school holiday entertainment

Please note that booking is essential unless otherwise stated.

Book online at sea.museum/whats-on or phone 02 9298 3646 (unless otherwise indicated) or email members@sea.museum.

Minimum numbers may be required for an event to go ahead. All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change. Readers are advised to check our website for updated and new event information.

Audamus

Ocean Spirit Rising

7–10.30 pm Friday 19 March , Thursday 1 April, Fridays 23 April and 28 May

7 and 8 pm Thursday 8, Friday 9 and Saturday 10 April (duration 20 minutes)

A rare sound and culinary experience, featuring a line-up of ambient/downbeat/ electronica artists performing live, teamed with a menu curated by a different Sydney restaurant for each event.

At times gentle and beautiful, at other times explosive and exciting, this spectacular free outdoor event features an array of live performers alongside a dramatically tall, beautifully lit special effects fountain.

For further information, including dates and ticketing, see electronicmusicconference.com/ audamus

Check our website for dates and performance times

Museum events

Kids and family activities

Science discovery space

For carers with children 0–18 months

Autumn holidays at the museum

Ocean lab

Seaside Strollers tours and play

Daily 4–18 April

4–18 April and Sundays in term time

There’s boatloads of fun for the whole family every day these school holidays with exhibitions, vessels, creative workshops, tours, trails and more.

Enjoy art making and scientific experiments in Kids on Deck, explore the harbour’s smallest inhabitants at the Ocean Lab, venture on a museum Treasure Trail, see a film and more.

Meet the pint-sized planet protectors that save our seas at our ocean laboratory – a space to explore what lies beneath the surface of the harbour. Discover more about the secret life of plankton, see films captured by our underwater drones and learn more about the biodiversity of our Sydney harbour environment through experiments and demonstrations.

Join our carers and babies tour through new exhibitions. Enjoy delicious refreshments from Yots cafe, adult-friendly conversations in the exhibition and baby play time in a sensory space.

Strollers, front packs, baby-slings and breastfeeding welcome.

Find out more and book online at sea.museum/kids See sea.museum/schoolholidays for full program information

For ages 4–14 and adults. Free entry.

Session times and activities will vary each day. More information will be available on the day of your visit

12.30 pm Tuesday 26 May – tour: Hiroshima; play: Colour and Shape theme

Creative workshops

For ages 2–5 plus carers

Art and science fun for families

Photography and TV presenting

Mini Mariners

Kids on Deck activity space

10 am – 4 pm Thursdays 8 or 15 April Macro with Mini Beasts and More – photography workshop (1 day)

10.30 or 11.30 am, selected Tuesdays and one Saturday each month

30-minute sessions every 45 minutes 10.30 am–4 pm daily during school holidays and Sundays during term time

ANMM image

Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 April Underwater Explorers – ocean science and TV presenting workshop (2 days) Photography workshop $70 Members, $85 general. TV presenting workshop $150 Members or early bird (before 6 April); $170 general. Online bookings essential ANMM image

Explore the galleries and sing and dance in interactive tours with costumed guides.

Enjoy creative free play, craft, games and story time in our themed activity area.

April – Under the Sea; May – Alphabet Animals; June – Pirates Ahoy To ensure safe distancing, tours are running at reduced capacity and extra hygiene measures are in place.

Child $12, adult $8, Members free.

Booked playgroups welcome.

Online bookings essential at sea.museum/kids

10.30 am or 12.30 pm Monday 19 April – tour: Wildlife Photographer of the Year; play: Jungle theme

$23 adult, $15 Member adult, babies free. Includes refreshments and exhibition admission. Book online

Be inspired by current exhibitions as you enjoy art making and experiments with your family. These timed facilitated sessions feature limited capacity, distanced seating (one table per family group) and additional hygiene measures.

For ages 4–14 and adults.

Entry included in any paid admission.

Members free. Limited capacity – book a timeslot at reception on arrival Kids On Deck play and activities.

Image Kate Pentecost/ANMM

Exhibitions

Remarkable – Stories of Australians and their boats April 2021–January 2023

WITH OVER A THOUSAND rivers and a coast that stretches more than 36,000 kilometres, it is no surprise that Australia’s history abounds with stories of people who have lived and worked on the water. Every town holds many stories of local people and their vessels: tales of tragedy, survival, heroism, discovery, adventure or love. It is these stories that give a unique insight into the lives of individuals and their communities. Remarkable – Stories of Australians and their boats is a graphic panel display produced by the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian Maritime Museum Council (AMMC). It is the result of a national project in which workshops were held across the country to develop and source unique stories.

Forty-six stories were nominated by a panel of Australian maritime museums and heritage institutions, with the 12 most compelling stories selected.

58

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

These include those of lesser-known maritime significance that illustrate the remarkable connections that people and communities have with boats of various types: from Indigenous watercrafts and leisure vessels, to those used for migration and service in war.

Remarkable continues a program developed by the Australian National Maritime Museum and the AMMC to support and increase collaboration between maritime museums and heritage centres across the country. It was made possible thanks to the efforts of the passionate staff and volunteers of museums, historical societies, discovery centres and AMMC members across the country.

The tour of this exhibition has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia Program.

A rescue team in action in Charters Towers Road, Townsville.

Image Evan Morgan, used with permission of the Townsville Bulletin

Exhibitions

A Mile in My Shoes Extended until 30 April A Mile in My Shoes by the Empathy Museum is a shoe shop where visitors are invited to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes – literally. This roaming international exhibition holds a diverse collection of shoes and audio stories that explore our shared humanity.

The Maritime Museum’s version gives voice to Australia’s diverse refugee and immigrant stories. Visitors are invited to take an empathetic and physical journey by walking a mile in a stranger’s shoes while listening to their story. sea.museum/a-mile

Haenyeo: the sea women of Jeju Island

Beach Couture

From 8 March

Beach Couture is a collection of wearable artworks made from rubbish by artist and environmentalist Marina DeBris.

Collected from beaches and oceans in Sydney and Los Angeles, it makes visible, in grotesquely amusing fashion, what is often overlooked – but shouldn’t be.

The haenyeo are communities of Korean women who dive for hours at a time to harvest food from the sea floor.

For generation after generation, they have performed this skilled, physical and dangerous work in all conditions and weathers.

Large-scale photographic portraits

by Korean artist Hyungsun Kim explore the human face of this centuries-old, sustainable sea harvest.

Map It!

Now showing

From 27 March

For the first time, we bring together works

by Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait Islands) artist Alick Tipoti, respected for his work in regenerating cultural knowledge and language. Tipoti’s storytelling encompasses traditional cosmology, marine environments and ocean conservation – focusing on what it means to be a sea person.

Undertake a quest across land, sea and space to explore the role of mapping and navigation in everyday life.

Visitors will find seven ‘quest’ stations to solve puzzles and collect different parts of their own map, which can then be viewed and brought to life through augmented reality. The exhibition also has direct links to the Australian Curriculum.

For children aged 5–12 years and their families.

sea.museum/mariw-minaral Mariw Minaral exhibition view.

Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

The exhibition also features the wildly subversive Inconvenience Store, which repackages single-use ‘convenience’ items found washed up on beaches. sea.museum/beach-couture

sea.museum/haenyeo

Mariw Minaral (Spiritual Patterns)

Mariw Minaral showcases Tipoti’s linocuts, award-winning sculptural works, contemporary masks and film.

Until 18 April

Exhibition developed by SciTech and produced by Imagine Exhibitions sea.museum/map-it

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 56 From April This world-renowned exhibition features 100 awe-inspiring images, from fascinating animal behaviour to breathtaking landscapes. Wildlife Photographer of the Year is the most prestigious photographic event of its kind, providing a global platform that has showcased the natural world’s most astonishing and challenging sights for more than 55 years. Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. sea.museum/wildlife Late delivery © Catherine Dobbins d’Alessio/ Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Exhibitions

Duyfken replica

Dark Victory – Operation Jaywick

Now on display

Mandurah Community Museum, City of Mandurah, Western Australia 7–28 April

We are pleased to announce that following negotiations with the Duyfken Foundation in Western Australia, the museum has assumed ownership and management of Duyfken, the replica of the ship in which Willem Janszoon arrived at Cape York in 1606. Twilight sails on Duyfken will soon be available for bookings. Please check our website for more information. sea.museum/duyfken

Travelling Exhibitions

Cats and Dogs: All at Sea – Photographs by Samuel Hood Bass Strait Maritime Centre, Devonport, TAS Now showing Dogs, cats, monkeys and birds have been cherished on board ships for as long as people have made sea voyages.

In a life from which children and families were usually missing, pets provided an important source of comfort and affection. Photographer Samuel Hood boarded hundreds of ships between the 1900s and 1950s that were moored in Sydney Harbour. He took thousands of photographs of crew members – and their pets – as a souvenir of their visit and to send home to families and loved ones.

To commemorate this daring raid on Japanese-occupied Singapore Harbour in 1943, fleet staff and curators from the Australian National Maritime Museum returned Krait to its World War II configuration. The museum then joined forces with the National Museum of Singapore to produce a wide-screen film about Operation Jaywick and a virtual-reality experience that will take people ‘on board’ the historic vessel.

The exhibition also includes 11 banners with content on the lead-up to the raid and the personnel involved. It will be supplemented with collection material from the Special Air Service Historical Foundation in Western Australia.

James Cameron – Challenging the Deep Durham Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, USA 22 May–September In an exhibition that integrates two worlds of modern museums – the power of the artefact and the thrill of experience – visitors will encounter the deep-ocean discoveries, technical innovations and scientific and creative achievements of underwater explorer James Cameron.

Created by the Australian National Maritime’s USA Programs and supported by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund Produced in association with Avatar Alliance Foundation and toured internationally by Flying Fish flyingfishexhibits.com/cameron

Sea Monsters – Prehistoric ocean predators

Submerged: Stories of Australia’s Shipwrecks

Queensland Museum, Brisbane Until 3 May

Touring community museums and libraries throughout Australia Until 30 June

An exhibition combining real fossils, gigantic replicas, multimedia and hands-on experiences to reveal ancient monsters of the deep. Find out how three main types of ancient reptiles – ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs – left the land to rule the seas. In the oceans, they developed into awesome, enormous predators that make today’s great white sharks seem almost friendly! sea.museum/sea-monsters-travelling Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

The Australian Maritime Museums Council (AMMC) and the Australian National Maritime Museum partnered to develop the graphic panel display Submerged: Stories of Australia’s Shipwrecks. Content was developed by AMMC members at maritime heritage organisations across the country and merged into a nationally touring display by the museum.

This display is supported by Visions of Australia sea.museum/submerged

sea.museum/cats-and-dogs

Dates listed for onsite and travelling exhibitions are subject to COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines, and may change at short notice. Please check our website sea.museum for updates.

60

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Exhibitions

Australian National Maritime Museum

61

A Greek odyssey Hellenism and repatriation

Two decades before Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, British diplomat Lord Elgin removed a collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens. To mark this year’s bicentenary of the start of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, curator Kim Tao relates the story of a tireless campaigner for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles from Britain to Greece.

62

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Emanuel Comino at the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, 2013.

All images reproduced courtesy Emanuel John Comino AM

Tales from the Welcome Wall

Emanuel Comino has spent the last 44 years travelling around Australia and the world, presenting lectures and advocating for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece In 1931, John married Sophia Venery (who emigrated from Greece in 1924) and the couple had two sons, Peter (1932–2006) and Emanuel (born 1933). John and Sophia ran a successful restaurant in the coastal town of Yeppoon in central Queensland, until Sophia sadly died from an illness in 1936, aged just 30.

‘MY MIGRATION STORY is slightly different to others’, notes 87-year-old Emanuel John Comino AM. ‘I was born in Queensland and was taken to [the Greek island of] Kythera as an infant. When I returned to Australia as a young teenager, I could not speak English and essentially had no education’. Emanuel has spent the last 44 years travelling around Australia and the world, presenting lectures and advocating for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, following their removal by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, at the beginning of the 19th century.

Emanuel says: I will fight on as long as I live, until England promises to send the marbles back to Greece. I will continue to work for their restitution until the day I die. They were, and remain, an integral part of the Parthenon, as a monument to the glory of Classical Greece and the civilisation it gave to the world.

Emanuel’s story begins with the emigration of his parents, John Peter Comino (1899–1978) and Sophia Venery (1906–1936), from Greece in the early 1900s.

John Comino arrived in Sydney in 1912 as a 12-year-old unaccompanied minor on the Orient liner Omrah.

A policeman found John crying at Circular Quay and placed him in temporary accommodation until he was sent to live with relatives in Rockhampton, Queensland.

John, who was now widowed with two toddlers, decided to return to Greece temporarily. John and his two sons lived with family in Athens until 1939, when they relocated to Kythera – one of the seven main Ionian Islands – as World War II was declared in Europe. Without a permanent home on Kythera, John relied on the support of his family and friends, moving his sons from house to house in the villages of Potamos, Perlegianika, Firoi and Drimonas, as the island was occupied by German and Italian forces. At times, brothers Peter and Emanuel were separated from each other and their father for several months to ensure their safety. Emanuel remembers: These were tough years and like most children of our generation, we had little education. Our schooling at Logothetianika [one of the oldest villages on the island] was basic and short-lived, but somehow we were placed in the high school in Hora [the island’s capital]. This led to me experiencing one of the most important events to happen in Kythera – being on the beach when the Allied troops landed in Kapsali in September 1944 [leading to the liberation of Greece from Nazi occupation].

In 1946, John remarried and made plans for his family to return to Australia. John, Peter and Emanuel departed Greece for Egypt, embarking from Port Said on the Royal Mail liner Asturias on 30 May 1947. They arrived in Sydney on 23 June 1947 and travelled onwards to Rockhampton, and then Gympie, in Queensland.

John’s new wife Potitsa followed three months later.

Australian National Maritime Museum

63

Tales from the Welcome Wall

‘I was 14 years old, with no English, going to a small outback school’

01 Emanuel Comino (right) with his mother Sophia and brother Peter in Yeppoon, Queensland, c 1933–35.

02 Emanuel Comino (centre, in RAAF uniform) with his father John (left), Queensland, c 1952.

03 Emanuel Comino driving the truck for his father’s café in Wowan, Queensland, c 1955.

By this time, Emanuel says, ‘I was 14 years old, with no English, going to a small outback school. Of course, my formal education here was short and within a few months, it ended. I was sent to Rockhampton to work in various cafés, principally owned by fellow Kytherians.’

By 1949, John had saved enough money to buy a café in the nearby rural town of Wowan. Emanuel worked in his father’s café until 1952, when he was called up for National Service in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in Townsville. Emanuel remembers: At the age of 18, without any formal education, the RAAF presented me with the opportunities to learn and thrive.

I trained as a military photographer, flying in Lincoln bombers at the time of the Korean War [1950–1953].

These were good years for me. My Aussie roommates helped me to improve my English and I learned to box and play football. I entertained my mates with my violin and clarinet and became a good dancer. I owe a lot to these mates, who I keep in touch with to this day.

64

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

01

Emanuel’s service in the RAAF also encouraged him to reconnect with his Greek heritage. As he explains: During this time, I was introduced to a British Air Commodore who recognised my name as Greek.

He told me tales of courageous, intellectual, brave Greeks throughout history. ‘You should be proud of your Greek heritage’, he told me. He even told my mates that they should be proud to have a Greek serving beside them. This encounter was the awakening of my love for everything Greek and made me want to learn more about my Greek heritage.

When Emanuel’s National Service ended in September 1952, he signed up for the RAAF Reserve for a further seven years. In September 1956, Emanuel met Matina Masselos, who lived in the suburb of Hurstville in Sydney’s south. Emanuel recalls it was love at first sight; by 1960 he relocated to Sydney and married Matina.

The couple had two sons, John and Greg, and purchased a milk bar in the western Sydney suburb of Guildford.

Tales from the Welcome Wall

‘At the age of 18, without any formal education, the RAAF presented me with the opportunities to learn and thrive’

02

03

Emanuel and Matina worked seven days a week in the milk bar, and their two sons grew up in the shop, as was the case in so many hardworking Greek immigrant families at the time. Emanuel later moved into the insurance industry, firstly life and then general insurance. In the mid-1960s, he decided to sell the milk bar to focus on the insurance business, which continues to operate today under the management of sons John and Greg. Emanuel still maintains strong professional and personal relationships with many of his early clients from the Greek community.

Today it is estimated that the tight-knit Kytherian community in Sydney numbers about 50,000, while Australia remains home to one of the world’s largest Greek communities outside of Greece.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, emigration from Greece reached its peak in the aftermath of the Second World War, and tens of thousands of Greek immigrants settled in Sydney. Emanuel and Matina became involved with the Kytherian Association of Australia, which was established in 1922 to promote Kytherian culture and preserve the diaspora’s links with the small island located off the southern coast of the Peloponnese.

Emanuel has passionately supported Sydney’s Greek community through his involvement as a foundation member of the Pan-Hellenic Soccer Club (now Sydney Olympic Football Club); president and secretary of the Greek Orthodox Church of Kogarah; community liaison officer in the Kogarah police district; member of the Southern Sydney Health Services Board overseeing St George, Sutherland and Canterbury hospitals; and president of the Australasian Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), a non-profit organisation that fosters Australian and Greek relations by raising awareness of Hellenic language and culture.

AHEPA is the largest Hellenic association in the world, with chapters in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Cyprus and Greece.

Australian National Maritime Museum

65

Tales from the Welcome Wall

During their visits to European museums in the 1970s, Emanuel and Matina became horrified by what they saw as the looting of Greek antiquities

01 Emanuel Comino and Matina Masselos at their engagement, Sydney, c 1956.

02 Emanuel Comino behind the counter of his milk bar in Guildford, Sydney, 1960s.

01

66

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Tales from the Welcome Wall

02

During their visits to European museums in the 1970s, Emanuel and Matina became horrified by what they saw as the looting of Greek antiquities, including the Classical Greek marble sculptures that were removed from the Parthenon (the Temple of Athena) on the Acropolis in Athens between 1801 and 1812 and taken to Britain. This inspired Emanuel’s odyssey to educate the world about the plundering of Classical antiquities, particularly the Parthenon Marbles, which Emanuel describes as ‘our pride, our sacrifices, a noble symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are the essence of Hellenism’.

A highlight of Emanuel’s campaign was being invited to speak about the case for the restitution of the marbles at The Hague in the Netherlands in 2003.

Emanuel is currently the vice chairman of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, as well as the founder and chairman of the International Organising Committee – Australia – for the Restitution of the Parthenon Sculptures. Today the marbles remain on display in London in the purpose-built Duveen Gallery at the British Museum.

In 1985, Emanuel Comino was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the Australia Day Honours List for services to multiculturalism. In 2010 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Emanuel reflects: I am now 87 years old and blessed with a loving wife of 64 years, two sons, six grandchildren and a beautiful great-granddaughter. Despite the hardships of the premature death of my mother, living through the war in Greece and not having a formal education, Australia has provided me with so many opportunities.

I will be forever grateful.

A highlight of Emanuel’s campaign was being invited to speak about the case for the restitution of the marbles at The Hague in the Netherlands in 2003

The author wishes to thank Katina Comino and the Kytherian Association of Australia for their assistance with this article.

A Welcome Wall inscription is a great gift idea to honour your family’s journey to Australia.

For more information go to sea.museum/welcomewall or call Adam Sherar on 02 8241 8309.

Australian National Maritime Museum

67

Ladies of the lamps The lives of female lightkeepers

01

68

AUTHOR SHONA RIDDELL has a long-held fascination with lighthouses and family connections to two lightkeepers. Her engaging book offers a very useful history of both the social and technical evolution of lighthouses and lightkeeping, ranging from ancient times right up to 2020. It focuses on (mainly white) women’s roles as lightkeepers and their relations, but also covers rare instances of Aboriginal, Native American, African–American and Hispanic keepers of both sexes.

Attending a lighthouse’s lamp was described in 1870 as a task ‘so easy that it can be discharged by a woman’, but female lightkeepers were largely expected to do the same duties as their male counterparts on top of their traditional tasks of child rearing and caring for a household. Many women inherited the job from fathers, brothers or husbands who died or became ill, but others were appointed on their own merits. Some served for decades.

The book’s eight chapters deal with the origins and evolution of lighthouses; the role of a keeper; lighthouse heroines Grace Darling and Ida Lewis; the lives of female keepers; the impact of isolation; ghosts, legends and mysteries; lighthouse women in the 20th century; and today’s keepers and caretakers. Riddell relates the stories of a wide variety of women who lived with, loved and hated their lights. Emily Fish, the ‘socialite keeper’, filled her quarters with antiques and art, hosted soirées for artists and writers and kept thoroughbred horses and French poodles. Kate Walker spent 33 years at Robbins Head Lighthouse, New York, first as assistant and later as head keeper, at the same time raising two children and, weather permitting, rowing them to school.

(By 1966, four men were performing the job that tiny Kate – 1.4 metres tall and weighing just 45 kilograms – had undertaken for more than three decades.)

A few of these ‘women’ were mere girls, like Ida Lewis, who by 15 was helping her mother with lighthouse duties, and by 16 had rescued the first of many (mostly drunk and ungrateful) men from peril. Ida became the most famous – and highest paid – lightkeeper of her time.

She spent 54 of her 69 years at Lime Rock, off the coast of Rhode Island, and is the only American lightkeeper to have a lighthouse named after her.

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

The book examines both the romantic place that lightkeeping holds in art, literature and the popular imagination and the very real lack of romance that such a life entails. Many of the dangers are obvious: gales, storms, high seas, hard work, loneliness and isolation.

Other, more obscure perils include death by swallowing molten lead, being hit by an iceberg or a Zeppelin, or suffering terrifying and destructive mass bird strikes.

Readings

Guiding lights: The extraordinary lives of lighthouse women

By Shona Riddell, published

by Exisle Publishing, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2020. Hardcover, 244 pages, illustrations, bibliography, notes, appendix, index. ISBN 978-1-925820-62-1 RRP $40.00

And, if the loneliness didn’t drive you mad, the howl of the wind or the sound of foghorns might. The bleak lighthouse life sometimes drove animals crazy, too; Riddell mentions a cat and a cow who both suicided.

The particular difficulties of such a life are diverse and often hair-raising: having to throw babies up cliffs in the absence of safer options, or haul buckets of lard oil up towers when the lamp needed refilling, or arrange an elopement by semaphore, or sew your own son’s ear back on after a failed experiment with dynamite.

Riddell does not exaggerate these stories or attempt to pluck at the heart strings, leaving the drama and tedium of these women’s lives to speak for themselves.

Most of the stories are from North America – where women have been lightkeepers since at least the late 1700s – the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Others are from Europe, Japan and South America.

The book is an easy read, but not at all lightweight; it is painstakingly researched, attractively illustrated and thoroughly referenced, with bibliography, endnotes, an appendix listing the lighthouses mentioned in the book, and an index. The very recent history of lighthouses is covered through stories of those who still staff them, even in this age of automation, or tend them, such as Wildcare volunteers.

This fascinating and approachable book is highly recommended and should appeal to a wide range of readers.

Reviewer Janine Flew is the editor of Signals.

02

01 Hannah Sutton and her partner Grant spent six months alone in 2019 as volunteer caretakers on Maatsuyker Island, south of Tasmania.

02 Fannie Salter polishing the lens at Turkey Point Light, Maryland, USA, in 1945.

Australian National Maritime Museum

69

Readings

When the Ship Hits the Fan: Rip roaring tales from a life at sea

By Captain Rob Anderson, published by Affirm Press, South Melbourne, 2020. Softcover, 288 pages. ISBN 978-1-925972-99-3.

RRP $30.00

Accidents, incidents and alcohol Tales from a seafaring half-century

YOUNG ROB ANDERSON had never been more than 20 miles from his Melbourne home when he escaped trouble both there and at school by going to sea.

Aged 15, he began as ‘the lowest form of marine growth’, a deck boy – and from the start, things were wild. On his first trip, he faced a bullying fellow deck boy and a madman running amok with a meat cleaver.

After a rocky start, he soon found his niche, gained skills and learnt – and earnt – respect. By the very young age of 28, he had become Master of his first ship.

His career took him around the world, on and off all manner of vessels and into many dangerous and unpleasant corners of the maritime world.

He transported livestock, worked in marine salvage and on passenger–cargo vessels, drove highly specialised ships for the offshore oil and gas industry and installed mooring systems for the Royal Australian Navy’s Collins class submarines. Along the way he encountered all the things that can and do go wrong at sea. Occasionally he also ran into his mariner father, reunions that were happy for neither party.

70

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Anderson comes across as a tough but decent man and a hard, but not harsh, taskmaster. This collection of loosely chronological anecdotes is succinctly told in a blunt and unexaggerated style; there are no tall tales or longwinded yarns here. The pages turn easily, and although the book is steeped in the sea, landlubbers won’t be totally baffled – mariners’ ways and processes are explained throughout, and a handy list of terminology appears right up the front. The language tends towards the robust, as do the recurring themes – accidents to the male anatomy, sexual shenanigans, impromptu surgery, unhygienic practices in the galley and plenty of drunken rage and idiocy. Among the shocking, irreverent, violent and vulgar stories, there are also interesting factual digressions, such as a behind-the-scenes description of burial at sea and an explanation of the ‘man overboard’ procedure.

This book might not suit people who are squeamish or easily offended, but those who can cope with the topics and tone will find it fast-paced and highly readable – perhaps best consumed on a boat, with a drink in hand.

Reviewer Janine Flew is the editor of Signals.

Map It! Complete a quest across land, sea and space and bring your own map to life through augmented reality.

Opens 27 March 2021 | sea.museum/map-it

CREATED BY

Currents

Belated recognition for heroism Ordinary Seaman Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean VC

Studio portrait of Teddy Sheean, 1941.

Image Australian War Memorial 044154

He shot down one bomber, kept other Japanese aircraft away from men in the water and was seen to be still firing as Armidale finally sank.

AFTER A LONG BATTLE FOR recognition, the heroism of Ordinary Seaman Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean and his actions aboard HMAS Armidale on 1 December 1942 have finally been acknowledged with the posthumous award of a Victoria Cross. Ordinary Seaman Edward Sheean VC becomes the first member of the Royal Australian Navy to be awarded the armed forces’ highest honour.

During its final battle, HMAS Armidale was attacked by at least a dozen Japanese aircraft. Two torpedoes hit the corvette, then a bomb struck aft. Survivors leapt into the sea and were strafed by machine guns.

Eighteen-year-old Sheean ignored the order to abandon the listing ship, strapped himself to a gun and went down with Armidale in battle.

72

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

Sheean was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery and in 1999 a Collins Class submarine was named after him – the only ship in the Royal Australian Navy to bear the name of an ordinary seaman.

After years of trying to have Sheean’s deeds recognised by a military award, his nephew Gary Ivory stated: I have been fighting for 32 years, we have had the ups and downs, but we have never given up.

It matters, because of the injustice in the beginning. Because ... nothing was done right from day one with it.

A recent Defence Honours and Awards Appeal Tribunal report unanimously recommended the commendation, which had previously been rejected by the Federal Government. The report found that there had been ‘maladministration’ in the original decisions not to award the military honour. In overturning the Government’s decision, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said:

Eighteen-year-old Sheean ignored the order to abandon the listing ship, strapped himself to a gun and went down with Armidale in battle

He was done a substantial injustice in the original decision-making period in 1942 to 1943 and his courageous sacrifice of his life to save his shipmates makes him eligible for the Victoria Cross.

In his investiture address, 78 years to the day of Armidale’s sinking, Mr Morrison said: Today, almost eight decades on from Teddy’s brave actions, we know his story grows with the ages. He now takes his place as one of the guiding lights of the country he indeed served to save.

His life brings to mind the words of the British officer and poet Thomas Mordaunt – ‘One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name’.

The name, the example, the glorious life of Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean VC will always be remembered.

For a full biography please go to navy.gov.au/biography/ordinaryseaman-edward-teddy-sheean-vc

Currents

Art inspired by war Illuminating multicultural Australia

War not only destroys cities and towns and objects of beauty, war defaces humanity. The effects of war can leave a person feeling empty. Art is a way out of that emptiness.

MAHER AL KHOURY, who arrived in Australia as a refugee from Syria four years ago, was one of 15 artists from First Nations, refugee and migrant backgrounds who contributed to an exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum in January.

Motherland – Exile/Refuge – Migration (repeat) was the first major initiative under a new partnership between the museum and Settlement Services International (SSI) that aims to build awareness of people’s experiences of migration to Australia and to help illuminate Australia’s multicultural success story.

The exhibition, produced by the SSI Arts & Culture team, attracted more than 1,400 visitors. It explored views and experiences of displacement, migration and settlement and raised important questions about belonging, identity and the complex layers of forced and voluntary human movement.

For Mr Al Khoury, art is an essential part of life. It supports wellbeing and is deeply healing, especially during times like war when there is little else to keep hope alive.

Maher Al Khoury explains his work Ground Zero during a tour of the exhibition Motherland – Exile/Refuge – Migration (repeat) at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Image Danish Ravi

Ground Zero, a new work commissioned for the exhibition, tells the story of his journey as an artist losing everything due to the destruction of his homeland and arriving in Australia in search of new memories. It explores new ways of seeing, new subject matter, new light, and the tragic poetry of a life destroyed but with visions of hope for a new future for himself and his family.

The partnership between the museum and Settlement Services International (SSI) aims to build awareness of people’s experiences of migration to Australia

Mr Al Khoury said: I am very proud to be a part of this exhibition at the museum.

It is the first major exhibition I have been a part of in this country. I want to share my story and my art with Australian people. I think this is important because Australia is such a beautiful place.

Australian National Maritime Museum

73

Acknowledgments The Australian National Maritime Museum acknowledges the support provided to the museum by all our volunteers, Members, sponsors, donors and friends.

The museum particularly acknowledges the following people who have made a significant contribution to the museum in an enduring way or who have made or facilitated significant benefaction to it.

Honorary Fellows John Mullen AM Peter Dexter AM Valerie Taylor Ambassadors Christine Sadler David and Jennie Sutherland Major Donors – SY Ena Conservation Fund David and Jennie Sutherland Foundation

Honorary Life Members Yvonne Abadee Dr Kathy Abbass Robert Albert AO RFD RD Bob Allan Vivian Balmer Vice Admiral Tim Barrett AO CSC Maria Bentley Mark Bethwaite AM Paul Binsted Marcus Blackmore AM David Blackley John Blanchfield Alexander Books Ian Bowie Ron Brown OAM Paul Bruce Anthony Buckley Richard Bunting Capt Richard Burgess AM Kevin Byrne Sue Calwell RADM David Campbell AM Marion Carter Robert Clifford AO Helen Clift Hon Peter Collins AM QC John Coombs Kay Cottee AO Helen Coulson OAM Vice Admiral Russell Crane AO CSM John Cunneen Laurie Dilks Leonard Ely Dr Nigel Erskine John Farrell Kevin Fewster AM Bernard Flack Daina Fletcher Sally Fletcher Teresia Fors Derek Freeman CDR Geoff Geraghty AM Anthony Gibbs

RADM Stephen Gilmore AM CSC RAN Paul Gorrick Lee Graham Macklan Gridley Sir James Hardy KBE OBE RADM Simon Harrington AM Christopher Harry Gaye Hart AM Peter Harvie Janita Hercus Robyn Holt William Hopkins Julia Horne Kieran Hosty RADM Tony Hunt AO Marilyn Jenner John Jeremy AM Vice Admiral Peter Jones AO DSC Michael Kailis Hon Dr Tricia Kavanagh John Keelty Kris Klugman OAM Judy Lee Matt Lee David Leigh Keith Leleu OAM Andrew Lishmund James Litten Hugo Llorens Tim Lloyd Ian Mackinder Stuart Mayer Jack McBurney Bruce McDonald AM Lyn McHale VADM Jonathan Mead AM RAN Ron Miller Arthur Moss Patrick Moss Rob Mundle OAM Alwyn Murray Martin Nakata David O’Connor Gary Paquet

Congratulations to Wayne M Coles, who won the Signals 133 caption competition with this entry: ‘Look! That fool thinks he’s the king of the world!’

74

Signals 134 Autumn 2021

David Payne Prof John Penrose AM Neville Perry Hon Justice Anthe Philippides Peter Pigott AM Len Price Eda Ritchie AM John Rothwell AO Kay Saunders AM Kevin Scarce AC CSC RAN David Scott-Smith Sergio Sergi Mervyn Sheehan Ann Sherry AO Shane Simpson AM Peter John Sinclair AM CSC Peter R Sinclair AC KStJ (RADM) John Singleton AM Brian Skingsley Eva Skira Bruce Stannard AM J J Stephens OAM Michael Stevens Neville Stevens AO Frank Talbot AM Mitchell Turner Adam Watson Jeanette Wheildon Hon Margaret White ao Mary-Louise Williams AM Nerolie Withnall Cecilia Woolford (nee Caffrey) Honorary Research Associates Lindsey Shaw Jeffrey Mellefont Paul Hundley Rear Admiral Peter Briggs Dr Ian MacLeod Dr Nigel Erskine David Payne John Dikkenberg

Autumn in Store

Open 7 days a week 02 9298 3698 Or shop online at store.anmm.gov.au Live nearby? We also offer Click-and-Collect for online orders.

Follow us on instagram.com/ seamuseum_store

Brass anchor hook Prehistoric sea monsters on sale A huge range of dinosaur and prehistoric sea monster goodies on sale now – books, toys, educational activities, tees, homewares, gifts and more!

Need a hook for your hats or coats?

Why be boring when you could be nautical? A perfect gift for the sailing enthusiast in your life. $8.95 / Members $8.05

Jackspeak: A guide to British naval slang and usage

Explore our specially selected range of items related to Duyfken, tall ships, navigation and early exploration.

What’s a ‘poop deck’? Or a ‘dit spinner’?

Jackspeak is a comprehensive reference guide to the humorous and colourful slang of the navy. $35.00 / Members $31.50

Ceramic trivets

3D model kit – humpback whale

These enchanting Australian wildflower ceramic trivets are a stylish addition to any modern home or the perfect gift for gardeners and nature lovers. $25.00 / Members $22.50

This environmentally friendly kit contains flat cards with individually numbered pieces, all ready for you to assemble. One of a huge range in store. $19.95 / Members $17.95

Duyfken

Royal Australian Navy in the Atlantic and Mediterranean This commemorative publication by the Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs is a part of the series ‘Australians in World War II’. $20.00 / Members $18.00

Book sale Need some adventure in your life?

There’s currently up to 65% off a huge range of titles, including history, adventure, kids, indigenous, science, art, photography and more.

Members’ discounts and further special discounts now available in store. (Members’ discount is not available on already discounted items.)

Signals ISSN 1033-4688 Editor Janine Flew Staff photographer Andrew Frolows Design & production Austen Kaupe Printed in Australia by Pegasus Print Group Material from Signals may be reproduced, but only with the editor’s permission.

Editorial and advertising enquiries signals@sea.museum – deadline midJanuary, April, July, October for issues March, June, September, December Signals is online Search all issues at sea.museum/signals Signals back issues Back issues $4 each or 10 for $30 Extra copies of current issue $4.95 Call The Store 02 9298 3698 Australian National Maritime Museum Opening hours 10.30 am–4 pm during COVID-19 2 Murray Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia. Phone 02 9298 3777 The Australian National Maritime Museum is a statutory authority of the Australian Government

Feed your imagination and explore Australia’s stories of the sea by becoming a museum Member.

Options for individuals, families and people who live interstate or overseas offer a great range of benefits, including unlimited entry to our museum, vessels and exhibitions, as well as special discounts.

Visit www.sea.museum/members

ANMM Council Chairman Mr John Mullen AM Director and CEO Mr Kevin Sumption PSM Councillors Hon Ian Campbell Mr Stephen Coutts Hon Justice S C Derrington Mr John Longley AM Rear Admiral Mark Hammond AM RAN Ms Alison Page Ms Arlene Tansey Dr Ian Watt AC Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation Board Chairman Mr Daniel Janes Mr Peter Dexter AM Ms Arlene Tansey Ex officio Chair Mr John Mullen AM Ex officio Director Mr Kevin Sumption PSM Mr David Blackley Mr David Mathlin Mr Tom O’Donnell Dr Jeanne-Claude Strong Mr Simon Chan American Friends of the Australian National Maritime Museum Mr Robert Moore II Mr John Mullen AM Mr Kevin Sumption PSM Ms Sharon Hudson-Dean Foundation sponsor ANZ Signals is printed in Australia on Hannoart Plus Silk 250 gsm (cover) and Hannoart Plus Silk 113 gsm (text) using vegetablebased inks.

Major sponsors Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation Nine Port Authority of New South Wales Sponsors Art Centre Melbourne Australian Maritime Museums Council AusRelief Challis & Company City of Sydney Colin Biggers & Paisley Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Empathy Museum Laissez-Faire Catering National Gallery of Australia Nova Systems Settlement Services International Sydney by Sail Tomra Wesfarmers Arts Supporters Australian Government Ovolo 1888 Property NSW Royal Wolf Shipping Australia Limited Silentworld Foundation TimeOut Tyrrell’s Vineyards

@seamuseum_ /sea.museum #seamuseum sea.museum/blog

Nova Systems Experience

Knowledge

Independence

Duyfken Meet the newest member of our fleet – a stunning replica of the first European ship to reach Australia in 1606.

NOW OPEN | Darling Harbour Sydney | sea.museum/duyfken Duyfken was built by the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation, jointly with the Maritime Museum of Western Australia, and launched on 24 January 1999 in Fremantle. Construction of the vessel was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Kailis family.

© Detail: Zack Clothier

Reconnect with nature Opens April 2021 | Darling Harbour Sydney | sea.museum/wildlife