Signals 145

A

Sketches from a war

The art of Rex Julius

A life underwater

Bearings

From the Director

WELCOME TO THE SUMMER EDITION of Signals

And what a summer it will be! You will find an article in this issue about our summer Wonderwater program, where we celebrate the wonder of the water that surrounds us and highlight our love of the ocean. Please come and visit us – every part of the museum will come alive in a celebration of water.

We have recently opened Ocean Photographer of the Year. We are so pleased to have turned this competition into a world-first exhibition with the competition’s creators, Oceanographic magazine.

The images, showcasing life in and around our oceans, are breathtaking and provide a wonderful photographic counterpoint to Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Also recently opened is Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life. This marks the museum’s first exhibition chronicling Australia’s own pioneering conservationist, photographer and filmmaker. As you may be aware, Valerie donated a considerable archive of images and objects to the National Maritime Collection and this exhibition marks the first of what will be many exhibitions, displays and digital treatments of the collection.

At a time when oceans are under threat, Valerie Taylor has been a key changemaker, breaking the mould, pushing boundaries and capturing an underwater life that, in some places, no longer exists. She shows the impact one person can have and embodies the urgency to act now.

December also sees the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Endeavour replica, which we mark with a new publication that looks at the complete history of both HMB Endeavour and our replica. We are also planning a couple of short voyages for Endeavour early in 2024.

And we are, once again, part of the Sydney Festival in January. We are excited to see four free performances of Puccini’s opera Il Tabarro, which will use our lightship Carpentaria as the stage. Also in the program is an immersive show for families called Octopus Garden and the popular New Beginnings Festival in conjunction with our friends at Settlement Services International.

I would like to pay tribute to our wonderful volunteers, who, over the period 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2023, gave more than 50,000 hours of passionate and considered contributions. An extraordinary achievement.

As ever, I am always happy to hear from the museum family about what matters to you, so please, if you have any ideas, drop me a line to thedirector@sea.museum.

I may not be able to respond directly to every person, but please be assured, different voices are both welcome and encouraged.

Finally, I wish the very best of festive greetings to all our museum friends and we look forward to seeing you over the summer or in the new year.

Daryl Karp AM Director and CEO

Valerie Taylor and a harp coral, 1980s. Image donated through the Australian Cultural Gifts Program in memory of Ron Taylor ANMS1457[313]

Contents

Summer 2023–24

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

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.

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

The museum is proud to fly the Australian flag alongside the flags of our Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Australian South Sea Islander communities.

2 A forgotten artist

Rex Julius evokes life in World War II

8 Maritime history prizes

Announcing the winners

10 Oceans in focus

The inaugural Ocean Photographer of the Year exhibition

14 Valerie Taylor

Six decades of adventure and activism

20 Climate action in Antarctic waters

Solo sailor and record-breaker Lisa Blair

26 Making Blueback

From page to film, from puppet to exhibition

32 Endeavour’s timbers

Finding raw materials for the mighty replica

40 Operation Digger surveys Deep Creek

An abandoned Nazi camp in suburban Sydney

46 Endeavour heads to sea

Two new sailing itineraries for February

48 Sponsor the experience of a lifetime

Our Foundation seeks support for a youth sailing program

50 Beneath the Surface

Free online talks by our curators

52 Members news and events

Talks, tours and on-water events for summer

56 History in your hands

Go behind the scenes with our new White Gloves Tour

58 Exhibitions

What’s on show this summer and our new program Wonderwater

64 Education

We profile three of our talented museum educators

68 National Monument to Migration

Two recent ceremonies add more than 1,000 new names

72 Settlement Services International

The Welcome Program: creating connections

74 Readings

Through Darkest Seas by Graeme Cocks; Dr Rip’s Essential Beach Book

80 Currents

Remembering Operation Jaywick and the Black Armada; volunteers awarded

Cover Mobula rays in the shallow waters of the Gulf of California, off Mexico (detail). Image © Nicolas Hahn/Ocean Photographer of the Year

A forgotten artist Rex Julius goes to war

In 1944, Rex Julius was selected as the Royal Australian Navy’s first official war artist on the strength of drawings he had made in his spare time. In his short career, he produced evocative portrayals of wartime life, writes Rebecca Boyle .

The upper deck of a Fairmile vessel.

All images National Archives of Australia: B6121, 19E

In 1940, Rex enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy. He trained in submarine detection, and was promoted to Able Seaman in 1941

IN THE COLLECTION of the National Archives of Australia, there are four sketchbooks, dated 1944. Filled with bold watercolours and striking pencil drawings, they show human moments against the backdrop of a ferocious naval war. Men swim off the side of a ship or peel potatoes. Members of the Women’s Royal Australian Navy (WRAN) work at the telephone switchboard or drive around base. But like many stories from the Second World War, the tale of the man who made these sketches is one of a life tragically cut short.

In 1944, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Historical Section appointed two men to serve as official war artists. One was sculptor Jeffery Wilkinson (1921–97), whose time with the navy was only part of a long career, including many solo exhibitions, prizes and public art commissions. The other was Rex Lawson Julius.

Rex was born in 1914, the son of Henry ‘Harry’ Julius and Isabel Lawson. He had an artistic pedigree. Harry Julius (1885–1934) had co-founded the commercial art firm Smith & Julius, and was known for his caricatures and newspaper cartoons. Later in his career he specialised in animated cartoon cinema advertisements – Australia’s first. His series ‘Cartoons of the Moment’ delivered wartime humour and propaganda to Australian audiences in the First World War.

As for his son, only parts of Rex’s pre-war career are known. Rex initially followed in his father’s footsteps as a commercial artist. We also know that he took painting excursions around Australia. An article in The Bulletin from October 1937 describes his return from a trip to Alice Springs with ‘paintings that suggest the desert as an artist’s paradise’.

In 1940, Rex enlisted in the RAN. His service record describes him as five feet six inches tall, with brown hair, blue eyes and a ‘fresh complexion’. He trained in submarine detection and was promoted to Able Seaman in 1941.

In his first three years in the navy, Rex saw the world. He served at naval bases HMAS Rushcutter in Sydney, HMS Osprey in the United Kingdom, HMS Sheba in Yemen, HMS Lanka in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and HMS Braganza in India. During this time, he sketched and painted the world around him. In 1943, he took leave to attend the Australian Watercolour Institute’s 20th annual exhibition in Sydney, where he displayed one of his own works, Aden. Aden, Yemen, was where HMS Sheba was located. It has been difficult to discover what exactly this painting featured, what happened to it after being exhibited or whether it still exists. But we do know that Rex was exhibiting in good company; another artist on display was the infamous Norman Lindsay.

After three years in the navy, Rex was officially a war artist

Relaxing in the mess – one of a series of drawings depicting the launch and operations of Australian-built Fairmile vessels.

Sketches of men relaxing in the mess, or dozing with their feet up on a table, are wonderfully intimate, wonderfully human

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One of a series of sketches featuring members of the Women’s Royal Australian Navy (WRAN).

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Men swim off the side of the ship in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea, 1944. Note the rating with a Thompson submachine gun on the alert for sharks.

Rex attended the exhibition in the company of his younger sister, Ruth (born in 1919), who was also carrying on the artistic family tradition. She had been studying art at the Australian Technical College, but by 1943 was doing her bit for the war effort by working as a mechanic at a Sydney air base.

It was not until 1944 that Rex’s art finally caught the eyes of his superiors. He was the first artist appointed by the RAN Historical Section. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘The appointment came soon after high naval officers had seen a portfolio of drawings which Julius had made for his own amusement during his spare time at sea’. Did Rex put himself and his artwork forward, or did he have an ally who gave his art a nudge in the right direction? Or was he simply spotted sketching by a rail as the right person walked by? The record doesn’t show – but after three years in the navy, Rex was officially a war artist.

The four sketchbooks held by the National Archives of Australia, and two paintings in the Australian War Memorial, were all produced in the first half of 1944. It appears that the sketchbooks represent the work of a just a single month, April.

Starting at HMAS Rushcutter, Rex sketched life on base. A series of drawings featured the WRAN. Bold, thickly outlined pencil sketches feature women drivers, switchboard operators and drafters.

Made apparently at the same time, another series of drawings featured the launch and operations of Australian-built Fairmile vessels. Several of these were reproduced in an article in picture magazine The Australasian the same month as part of a feature on the Fairmiles. The sketchbooks show Rex experimenting with potential picture and text layouts for the publication. The upper deck and operating room of the vessels are shown, as well as weapon operations. But perhaps the most appealing are the sketches of the men relaxing in the mess, or dozing with their feet up on a table. They are wonderfully intimate, wonderfully human.

Shortly after this, Rex boarded HMAS Lithgow, bound for Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. A second series of sketches and watercolours show life aboard ship, accompanied by handwritten notes. They tell of the leading cook ‘who earns a few bob as a barber’. A sketch of two men peeling potatoes on deck has the note: ‘Spud barbers. A good bludge this because no one stands over you’. And an image of men swimming off the side of the boat in Milne Bay makes sure to mention that a Rating is watching his mates ‘with a tommie [sic] gun in case of sharks’.

Unfortunately, after this flurry of activity, there are no more sketchbooks. In May, Rex was admitted to Milne Bay Hospital, suffering from a gangrenous throat abscess. He died on 19 May 1944, and was buried in Port Moresby (Bomana) War Cemetery.

The first artist commissioned by the RAN Historical Section, Rex Julius served in his official capacity for just a few months. But in those months, he produced enough work to leave a legacy, if only a small one. A selection of his works was published posthumously in the RAN’s fourth wartime book, HMAS Mk IV. Rex was a highly talented artist, born to a talented family. His sister, Ruth, went on to become a successful artist, exhibiting her paintings until the 1970s.

Rex was clearly on his way to professional success. He had already exhibited alongside notable Australian artists who would go on to have long, productive careers. Likewise, many of the war artists officially commissioned during World War II were well known at the time and are still highly regarded to this day. Rex, with his tooshort career, is not one of these. Like the many who died in World War II, he was a young man full of unrealised potential. A man worth remembering.

HMAS Mk IV is held by the Vaughan Evans Library, 940.545994 HMA.

Rebecca Boyle is the Digital Publishing Manager at the National Archives of Australia.

Maritime history prizes

Congratulations to the winners

The Australian Association for Maritime History and the Australian National Maritime Museum are delighted to announce the winners of the 2023 round of two key maritime history prizes.

The winner

Ian Hoskins, Australia and the Pacific: A History, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2021

THESE PRIZES, awarded every two years, reflect the wish of the sponsoring organisations to promote a broad view of maritime history, demonstrating how the sea and maritime influences have been central to the shaping of Australia, its people and our many cultures.

Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize

The aim of the Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize is to further the study and enjoyment of maritime history in Australia. The winner receives an award of $8,000.

The judges considered the quality of research, the liveliness of the writing, the likely audience appeal and the enduring value of the work as a contribution to maritime history. In this round of entries, there were many personal stories of lives at sea, or lives shaped by the oceans, as well as a healthy collection of books focused on individual ships or groups of vessels. Although there was no First Nations representation, the often-harrowing experiences of immigrant communities came to the fore in many entries.

We commend the winner and runners-up to readers and libraries around Australia. All three shortlisted books offer vibrant new perspectives on Australia’s maritime history, in line with the aims of the prize. We encourage authors, publishers and readers to consider submitting works published in 2023 or 2024 for the next round of prizes (see opposite).

Ian Hoskins’ study of Australia’s relationship with the Pacific Ocean is masterfully woven. It convincingly demonstrates how the geography of the Pacific and its cultures have influenced our climate, society, economy, politics and national identity. The narrative spans millennia, from deep time through to European exploration, colonisation (with discussion of Australia both as a colony and a coloniser), the Cold War and a future focused on the urgent challenges of climate change. Each chapter is well organised and presents key themes in a clear and highly readable way. Hoskins explores broad aspects of trade, exploitation, immigration and defence. The text uses the voices of participants, such as soldiers, politicians, women and Pacific Islanders, as well as the views of other historians and intellectuals. These include archaeologists, anthropologists and literary authors, all of whom contribute to how we understand our continent’s place in the context of our island neighbours. In summing up the major issues and perspectives surrounding them, Hoskins’ insights offer surprising juxtapositions and connections. Australia and the Pacific dissects the core of our identity as a multicultural nation and puts into context our place in the world’s largest ocean.

Runners up

Mike Carlton, The Scrap Iron Flotilla, William Heinemann, Southbank, 2022

This book is thoroughly engaging from the first sentence to the last. Using published sources, oral histories and selected archival records, it summons up the extraordinary tenacity of Australian sailors during World War II. The author demonstrates a deep love for his topic – and for the human stories at its heart – while bringing to life the character and foibles of the Royal Australian Navy vessels that made up the ‘Scrap Iron Flotilla’. The work introduces readers to the rhythms, duties, traditions and jargon of mid-20th-century navies, foregrounding the voices and recollections of participants. This work advances the accessibility of Australian maritime history and shares a story that deserves to be well understood.

Ruth Balint and Julie Kalman, Smuggled: An Illegal History of Journeys to Australia, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2021

In focusing on unexpected voyages and voices, this book provides a counter-narrative to the often-xenophobic rhetoric that has typified Australian responses to asylum seekers and ‘illegal immigrants’. The authors empathetically evince the diverse motivations for flight from homelands, plus the many pathways that brought unauthorised arrivals to our shores. They do not romanticise these experiences, nor do they shirk from noting illicit behaviours on the road to refuge. This is a humane and timely work, as the world opens up from a traumatic pandemic and faces new prospects of political and climate upheaval.

Australian Community Maritime History Prize

This prize acknowledges a community-based work that advances the field of Australian local maritime history. The winner receives an award of $2,000.

Winner

Ian Ferrier, John Oxley Odyssey: The Life and Times of a 1927 Steamer, Ian Ferrier, 2022

This enjoyable book draws together diverse archival and published sources to tell the story of John Oxley, the last coastal steamer in Australian waters. It provides context for why this vessel is not only an important part of Australia’s seafaring history, but why its heritage is significant in both national and international contexts.

Runner up

Sarah Hamylton, Pat Hutchings and Ove Hoegh Guldberg (eds), Coral Reefs of Australia: Perspectives from Beyond the Water’s Edge, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, supported by the Australian Coral Reef Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences, 2022

This diverse and inclusive account is well edited and presented. It is relevant to many marine environments, presenting historical vignettes and current perspectives on the coral reefs that surround Australia’s extensive coastline.

Judges

Dr Ross Anderson, Curator, Maritime Heritage, Western Australian Museum and President, Australian Association for Maritime History

Dr Peter Hobbins, Head of Content, Australian National Maritime Museum, and Editor, The Great Circle

Dr Wendy van Duivenvoorde, Professor of Maritime Archaeology, Flinders University

All three shortlisted books offer vibrant new perspectives on Australia’s maritime history

2025 maritime history prizes

Books and digital products published in 2023 or 2024 and relevant to Australian maritime history will be eligible for the next round of prizes. For criteria and how to nominate, see sea.museum/about/grants-and-awards/ maritime-history-prizes Nominations will close on 30 March 2025.

Winner Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize.

Winner Australian Community Maritime History Book Prize.

Oceans in focus

A world-first exhibition

This summer, the museum partners with Oceanographic magazine to present the inaugural Ocean Photographer of the Year exhibition. Curator Inger Sheil provides a preview.

SUSPENDED AMID scattered specks of light, a tiny paper nautilus rides on a twig. It is a delicate yet sculptural image, a moment of ethereal beauty captured as if in a snow globe.

Underwater photography can be challenging even in clear water and calm surroundings. In the wake of the Taal Volcano eruption in the Philippines, the conditions that Jialing Cai faced were far from ideal. The event had stirred up sediment and visibility was low in the debrisfilled waters. Particulate matter in the water column is one of the difficulties a photographer must navigate, as without careful handling of strobe lighting the illuminated particles can cause a backscatter effect that may ruin the most carefully composed shot. Cai turned this challenge into an opportunity. She recalls:

When I pressed the shutter, the particles reflected my light. The scene felt unusually serene following the natural disaster and reminded me of a fairytale set in a snowy night. As underwater photographers, we aim to shoot in clear water, but this image reminds us that grains of sand, organic matter, or tiny organisms are integral parts of the underwater environment.

The resulting image, the winner of this year’s Ocean Photographer of the Year award, has a sense of magic and wonder.

Founded by Oceanographic magazine in 2020, the annual awards explore the diversity of life in and around our oceans, from the intricate world of macro photography to sweeping, dramatic seascapes. For the past two years, the magazine has displayed open-air showcases of selected winners in London. In 2023, the Australian National Maritime Museum has partnered with Oceanographic to develop a full-scale exhibition of the works.

Editorial Director of Oceanographic and Ocean Photographer of the Year, Will Harrison, says:

We are delighted to be collaborating with the Australian National Maritime Museum to showcase this year’s beautiful and thought-provoking ocean imagery in a ground-breaking event. The exhibition marks the first time all imagery – finalists and winners alike, totalling more than 100 photographs – will be featured together in a physical gallery. It will be a spectacle; I can’t wait for the public to see it.

‘As Australia’s museum of the sea, we have embraced the opportunity to display these amazing images from ocean photographers globally,’ says the museum’s Director, Daryl Karp. The result is an immersive experience that encourages visitors to consider their role in preserving the oceans around us.

The power of the ocean is on display, and so too is its vulnerability to human activity

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In the Philippines, a curious spider squat lobster checks out the photographer’s camera lens.

© Yung Sen Wu

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The overall winner was this image of a paper nautilus, taken in the Philippines in early 2020. Image © Jialing Cai

Jialing Cai’s intimate, intricate paper nautilus photograph sits at one end of the spectrum of technical challenge and aesthetic vision. It contrasts in scale and effect with works such as Michael Haluwana’s aerial photograph of Shark Bay in Western Australia. As Haluwana explains:

For this shot, I was harnessed in an open-door aircraft flying over Shark Bay in Western Australia, photographing its beautiful coastline. I thoroughly enjoyed the interplay of the golden sand against the turquoise blue ocean.

The power of the ocean is on display, and so too is its vulnerability to human activity. Fragile Arctic environments facing climate change, the shark fin trade, the damage caused by ghost nets, a whale shark swarmed by over-enthusiastic tourists – these expressions of the photographers’ art document these moments, evoking strong emotions and inviting us to reflect on how the ocean affects us, and how we affect the ocean. Running through is a thread of hope – Sylvie Ayer, whose portrait of a manatee framed in a luminous sunburst won the conservation category, expressed the wish that the image would ‘raise awareness of the need to protect these mammals’. In other images, octopuses wind their limbs around each other in the thriving environment of a human-created artificial reef, and a PhD student plants seagrass to rehabilitate a vital habitat.

‘This image reminds us that grains of sand, organic matter, or tiny organisms are integral parts of the underwater environment’ –Jialing Cai

01 A manatee in the crystal-clear waters of the Homosassa River, Florida, USA. Image © Sylvie Ayer

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A scuba diver explores the underside of a gigantic iceberg in East Greenland. Image © Franco Banfi

There is awe-inspiring beauty in these images, as well as delight in the ocean’s environs. In an image selected as the museum’s ‘Director’s Choice’, Peter Marshall photographed a group of children in Indonesia swimming under water to joyfully interact with scuba divers (reproduced on page 60).

The photographers meet the ocean’s many moods and challenges with a range of techniques and styles. The contemplative serenity of a freediver deeply submerged in the open ocean off Hawaii in a tranquil image of balletic poise contrasts with that of a surfer on the peak of a wave on a big swell off Sydney, caught in an almost impressionistic moment of movement and high energy.

Showcasing the work of ocean photographers of all disciplines and experience levels, amateurs and professionals alike, and judged by a panel of some of the world’s leading ocean photographers, Ocean Photographer of the Year 2023 takes us from shoreline shallows to the depths of the sea, inspiring a more profound connection with and understanding of our Blue Planet.

Ocean Photographer of the Year is now showing at the museum.

Valerie Taylor Conservationist and changemaker

In 2018, Valerie Taylor donated her archive of 10,000 images and associated objects to the National Maritime Collection. This important cultural gift is the focus of a new exhibition, and is also being shared publicly, writes Emily Jateff.

Valerie Taylor with a fan coral, 1980s. ANMS1457[319]

All images ANMM Collection donated by Valerie Taylor through the Australian Cultural Gifts Program in memory of Ron Taylor © Ron and Valerie Taylor

‘There are very few people alive who have seen what I’ve seen in the marine world,’ Valerie says

Valerie realised that a diving woman with a camera and a voice was in a unique position to take action

01 Valerie and Ron Taylor, April 1992. Photographer Mark Heighes. ANMS1469[890]

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Valerie with a grouper (potato cod). Her activism resulted in the area where these fish congregated – known as Cod Hole – being gazetted as the first protected area in what would soon become the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. ANMS1462[165]

WHEN VALERIE TAYLOR was younger, she killed sharks, and many other types of fish. She was a champion spearfisher, sent by the St George’s Spearfishing Club in Sydney to represent the sport around the nation. This is what first got her under water – her talent with a spear and the thrill of the chase. In the 1960s, the seas were full of marine life. There was an assumption that the seas were like the fairy tale of Fortunates and his magic bag –never empty.

‘The problem with marine animals is that they are free for the taking,’ Valerie says.

It wasn’t until years later, after she and her husband Ron Taylor put down their spears and picked up cameras instead, that they started to realise the devastation that such unregulated activities wrought. She saw seals slaughtered as bait in South Australia and secretly climbed aboard dive boats in the Timor Sea to take photographs of shark fins littering the decks. She began to understand the horror and negative impact on the marine environment of free-for-all carnage. And she realised that a diving woman with a camera and a voice was in a unique position to take action.

Valerie’s war chest for conservation action was to take the pictures, get her story straight and go to the media. In 1971, on an expedition to the Northern Great Barrier Reef, Ron and Valerie came across a dive spot that was teeming with giant grouper (potato cod). For years, they kept it a secret among friends. In 1982, Valerie was informed that someone was killing the fish. She was furious and launched a campaign to ban fishing just in the one square kilometre where the grouper lived. Most government officials agreed with her, but at the time were too nervous to take action. But Valerie wouldn’t give up. She showed footage on television and spoke on radio and to anyone who would listen. Eventually, she found a government ‘champion’ and Cod Hole was gazetted as the first protected area in what would soon become the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Valerie Taylor’s cultural gift of six decades of work will serve as an archive of the ocean as it was in the 20th century

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Valerie’s shot that won the American Press Club’s American Nature Photographer of the Year (1997) of her nephew swimming with a whale shark at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. ANMS1457[813]

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Ron and Valerie Taylor were also pioneering photographers and filmmakers. Ron made many of the housings that enabled their cameras to be used under water. ANMS1457[059]

Valerie began to understand the horror and negative impact on the marine environment of free-for-all carnage

Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life is the museum’s new exhibition that features images, objects and stories donated to the museum by Valerie Taylor. It not only gives us a glimpse of one woman’s incredible life under water, but also serves as a record of what once was. Valerie has swum in bountiful waters that no longer exist along our nearshores. She has seen schools of grey nurse sharks at Seal Rocks. She has hammed it up while posed on a huge fan coral. She was there, in an underwater world that is now profoundly changed.

‘There are very few people alive who have seen what I’ve seen in the marine world,’ she says. ‘And when I die, there will be no one who knows what it once was.’

This is why the Australian National Maritime Museum has partnered with the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to provide undergraduate work experience students with access to the newly digitised Valerie Taylor Image Collection of 10,000 images. Working from baseline knowledge provided by interviews and research conducted by Assistant Curator Cay-Leigh Bartnicke, UNSW students Tiffany Tisher and Phoebe Peng have been adding details of location, date, species and environmental data to object records so that this information can be shared publicly through our new online collections database. Valerie Taylor’s cultural gift of six decades of work will serve as an archive of the ocean as it was in the 20th century – and, we hope, inspire new research.

Valerie Taylor AM is a changemaker. Not only for the ocean, but in herself. She is an example of the capacity for change that each one of us holds within ourselves. To see a different path and not be afraid to grasp it. And in doing so, to have a life worth remembering.

Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life is on now at the museum.

Emily Jateff is the museum’s Curator of Ocean Science and Technology.

Climate action in Antarctic waters

Extreme sailing for science

As a solo sailor, adventurer and climate activist, Lisa Blair has carried her climate action campaign to the far reaches of the Southern Ocean, undertaking scientific recording while also breaking records. By David O’Sullivan.

Lisa Blair’s yacht Climate Action Now is covered in a graphic of Post-it Note messages sent to her by members of the public.

Image Corinna Ridgway

LISA BLAIR HOLDS THE RECORD of being the first and fastest woman, and only the third person ever, to circumnavigate the 16,000-nautical-mile (29,000-kilometre) route around Antarctica. She completed this voyage in 92 days in 2022 in her 50-foot (15-metre) yacht Climate Action Now. Lisa first attempted this record in 2017 during the Antarctica Cup Yacht Race, completing the round trip from Albany in Western Australia. This race is undertaken between the latitudes of 45 degrees and 60 degrees south in the Southern Ocean, a course that requires sailing in a storm belt the entire time. During her first voyage, Lisa endured a near-fatal dismasting on day 72 while in eight-metre seas. This was a pivotal moment that caused her to complete the voyage again in 2022, when she broke the speed record.

In addition to breaking world records, Lisa has sought to use her sailing projects as an avenue for change. When competing in the Clipper Round the World Race in 2011–12, Lisa observed widescale pollution in the world’s oceans. Two legs of this race, from Australia to China and Cape Town to Geraldton, particularly shocked Lisa: It was everywhere, any square foot of ocean that you looked at there was a plastic bottle, a flip flop, a coffee cup, it was just astronomical how much was in the ocean. It wasn’t until I did the leg from Cape Town to Geraldton that we sailed in the Southern Ocean, and I saw a Styrofoam box floating past while I was helming the boat. We were 20 days from land. And it just made me really think, what are we doing?

Before the 2022 voyage, Climate Action Now was effectively converted into a mini floating meteorological research station

It was this experience combined with her goal to break the Antarctica record that led Lisa to kick-start the Climate Action Now campaign:

I really felt by doing a record of such an extreme nature around somewhere like Antarctica, that was so critical to the climate and critically impacted by climate change, that it would be a way of creating a positive conversation. Central to this positive conversation is Lisa’s Post-it Note project. This is an awareness initiative envisaged before her first voyage in 2017 and continuing to the current day. Via her website, and through in-person events, Lisa has gathered tens of thousands of messages from members of the public on what they are doing to combat climate change. These messages are then transferred onto a vinyl graphic and applied to the hull of her vessel as an evocative symbol for her campaign.

Lisa with a drifter buoy during her 2022 voyage. Image Lisa Blair

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Lisa Blair at the research science station on board Climate Action Now. Image Corrina Ridgeway

Lisa has gathered tens of thousands of messages from members of the public on what they are doing to combat climate change

Following her 2017 voyage, Lisa started her own science research project focusing on microplastics and ocean health. The Southern Ocean is a very difficult place to gather data due to its extreme weather conditions. Most scientific research has been undertaken on the continent of Antarctica and around Cape Horn, leaving a gap between neighbouring continents and Antarctica. Lisa filled this research gap during her second voyage in 2022.

At the Australian symposium for the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science in 2020, Lisa was connected to the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), an organisation responsible for operating a range of observing equipment through Australia’s coastal and open oceans. All IMOS data is accessible to the marine and climate science community. Lisa further partnered with Ocean OPS, a global database for ocean data, and through the Odyssey Program her project was endorsed as a Decade of Ocean Science Initiative.

Before the 2022 voyage, Climate Action Now was effectively converted into a mini floating meteorological research station. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) provided Lisa with drifter buoys, and the CSIRO donated an Argo Float for temperature and salinity readings. The Australian Institute of Marine Science fitted the vessel with equipment for microplastics collection and a subsea research unit which tested for biometrics, acidity and partial pressure of carbon dioxide (PCO2). These tests were important given that carbon pollution has affected the ocean’s chemistry, slowing its ability to take up CO2 and resulting in higher acidity levels affecting marine life. Lisa collected data at all hours of the day throughout the trip.

These data collection instruments were designed to be easy for Lisa to use while navigating the vessel solo in the treacherous conditions of the Southern Ocean. One of her regular commitments was a twice-daily change of the filters collecting microplastics. These filters were in the sail locker, a confined space forward of the mast. Changing them could be very challenging in rough seas, and admirably Lisa was never deterred by any impact this might have on her sail course: ‘If it meant I sacrificed performance to get the science, the science far outweighed the record in the end.’

Ultimately it had no adverse impact, and Lisa broke further records with her research. To date, it is the most comprehensive dataset for the Antarctic region, both in the number of samples analysed and their spatial coverage. In total, 5,325 potential microplastics were visually identified in the samples using microscopy. From these, 49.97% were confirmed to be microplastics. In composition, these samples were 85.2% synthetic and 14.8% semi-synthetic, and in shape 64.8% fibre and 35.2% fragment. Sadly, the findings confirm that the Southern Ocean is just as broadly contaminated with microplastics as other oceans closer to land.

Lisa’s Antarctic voyages are just the beginning of a longer Climate Action Now campaign. Her next goal is to break the Australia to New Zealand solo speed sail record and fundraise an amount that will allow her to take her campaign to schools. Then she plans a trip around the Arctic Circle. Such a voyage was, until very recently, impossible; that it can now be achieved is due solely to global increases in ocean temperatures and a reduction in pack ice. From the south pole to the north, one can count on Lisa breaking more records in the near future.

David O’Sullivan is the museum’s Community Outreach Program Coordinator.

A complete oral history recording with Lisa Blair can be accessed in the Vaughan Evans Library, and a selection of objects from Lisa’s two voyages are now on display in the museum’s Blackmores First Lady Gallery. These sit alongside examples of microplastics like those collected during her voyages, and an interactive where you can write down on a sticky note what you are doing to curb climate change.

Lisa Blair’s yacht Climate Action Now at the museum in October 2023. Image Callum Sherington

Making Blueback

From book, to film, to exhibition

One of the museum’s summer attractions is the small exhibition Blueback: sharing the secrets, which details the creation of the film Blueback and its use of an innovative giant underwater fish puppet. By Emily Jateff and Em Blamey.

Emily Jateff talked to Blueback ’s director, Robert Connolly, about his inspiration for the film and the challenges of making it. She writes:

I FIRST HEARD about the film Blueback in the galley of a long-haul flight to North America. Amid that jumble of bored and tired people milling about the bathrooms, I met Ilsa Fogg’s mum. Ilsa Fogg is the young actor who plays ‘teen Abby’ in the film. I was inspired by the film’s conservation message and the thought of acquiring the technological marvel of a life-sized blue groper puppet created for use under water. I tracked down the production company, Arenamedia, and sent them an email. I couldn’t believe my luck when the film’s director, Robert Connolly, wrote back. This was the start of a year-long partnership that has produced not only the exhibition Blueback: sharing the secrets (see page 30), but also a major acquisition of objects from the film, and an associated screening of selected scenes in the museum’s theatre.

Recently, Robert Connolly joined me from the set of his newest film, now shooting in Western Australia, to answer a few questions about Blueback

Rob, why this film? And why now?

I read Tim Winton’s Blueback when it first came out in 1997, and I was profoundly moved by this story of a young environmentalist. It was very much a story about the marine world and the way humans choose to interact with it, which, as we know, remains such a critical issue. But in the 25 years between the book coming out and now, the issue of climate change has grown in importance.

I’d worked with Tim Winton before, and I talked to him about the contemporary relevance of the Blueback story. And how to take a film, based on his book, on a journey that considers the issues of climate change and biodiversity through the lens of today.

Tim and I also spoke about how to inspire activism and change, about how, through our own positive actions, we can inspire for impact. So, it was important to me to tell a story that wasn’t just negative, but one that was optimistic.

Ilsa Fogg, as the teenaged Abby, protesting with local residents against development of their bay. Image Arenamedia

‘It was very much a story about the marine world and the way humans choose to interact with it, which, as we know, remains such a critical issue’ –Robert Connolly

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PhD student Ronni King with an oceanic manta ray, Ningaloo Reef, WA. Image courtesy Robert Connolly

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Technicians from Creature Technology Co pool-testing the Blueback puppet.

Image Creature Technology Co

Was this your first underwater film?

Films have the capacity to take people to places they’ve never been. I grew up in the Blue Mountains, outside Sydney. I was not an ocean person as a child, I was living my life in the bush. Embarking on this film, what I embraced in the adaptation was the concept of taking the audience with me on the journey of getting to know the ocean, as someone who isn’t familiar with it, who is learning to be comfortable in it, the wonders, threats, dangers and differences that it represents. Making it personal for me was the trick of adapting a world on the page to a world on screen.

Tell us a bit about the process of filming Blueback What was it like?

Tim said, ‘I think you should film in the Bay’. So, we drove five hours from Perth to Bremer Bay, got in a boat, and within five minutes a whale surfaced alongside the boat. We felt the magic of being led by the natural world to make the film there.

There is an old adage that you should never film under water, but I love the practical process of filming and investigating a new world – training actors to free dive and scuba dive, the euphoric joy of swimming with whale sharks. I was able to take them out into these incredible remote places and have them swim in the water and then use those interactions cut with scenes where they swam in a pool with a puppet.

There is also the practicality of how you film it. How do you get a camera under the water? How do you get actors under the water? How do you interact with the fish? How do you interact with other marine creatures? It came with challenges, but I loved it.

Speaking of the Blueback puppet, was there a point early in the process where you thought you might use VFX, or did you know that you wanted to build a realistic groper puppet from the beginning?

Initially we shot some footage of real blue gropers and we thought, could you make a film where the actors could interact with a real blue groper? That is where we naively began. But early on I realised that Blueback would need to be a puppet instead of VFX. A lot of my interest in making films is about the interaction of human beings with each other. And I couldn’t get my head around having a human interacting with visual effects instead of a physical character. I like old-fashioned and practical cinematic effects, so I worked with friends at Creature Technology Co to build the most incredible fish puppet. They studied gropers and worked out how to re-create realistic movement, believable skin, teeth and eyes, and the emotional experience of interacting with a life-like groper puppet.

What’s your favourite memory from the film?

One of my favourite memories was filming on the Ningaloo Reef. A spotter plane had identified an oceanic manta ray that was heading out into deep ocean. A young marine biologist on the boat was doing her PhD on mantas, and she’d never seen one in the wild. The captain asked if we’d let her come with us into the water, and of course we did. They’re very hard to film, but we managed to get the camera in the water with her as she studied it. To capture her excitement as she connected with her great passion in life was wonderful. The footage is incredible.

Like a real-life Abby.

That’s right. And then you relate that with the oceanic manta rays. Their face is like a fingerprint you can identify. And because that manta ray will end up in the northern hemisphere somewhere, and there’s only a finite number of them, they are registered once spotted. And so that one is now registered, and the biologist named it Abby. So, I’m hoping some marine biologist on the other side of the world one day sees that manta ray and knows it was the one we saw at Ningaloo.

Filmmaking is so industrial and organised. And I think the joy comes from the little things like this that happen around the edges. It’s not always about finite preparation as much as allowing the freedom for the magic.

What do you want people to take away from the film, or the exhibition?

One of the elements that Tim and I talked a lot about is the idea of citizen science. In the film, Abby documented the marine life in the Bay from when she was a little girl up through her teenage years. Her paintings became evidence that was used to create a marine sanctuary in the Bay. I hope the film will stir activism, but I know that is a big ask. I hope at least that the film, and the exhibition at the museum, inspire people to look at the natural world like Abby did. To go out there and fight, in their own way. To break the complacency we have about nature, and not take it for granted.

Blueback: sharing the secrets is now showing at the museum.

Emily Jateff is the museum’s Curator of Ocean Science and Technology.

Em Blamey is the Creative Producer of the exhibition Blueback: sharing the secrets. She looks at the creation of the puppet that portrays the huge fish known as Blueback.

TODAY, MANY AUSTRALIAN KIDS read Tim Winton’s Blueback at school, but I hadn’t heard of it I until I was asked to work on this project, so I quickly grabbed a copy from my local library. Fortunately, it’s a quick read, full of delightful lines that fizz in your brain and make you smile: The old groper flirted with them and ate crabs out of their hands. Stella shrieked in her snorkel when he nuzzled up to her. The fish’s eyes twitched and his gills heaved. He looked as fat as an opera singer.

I’d no sooner devoured the book than we headed to Melbourne to meet the star of its big-screen adaptation. The fantastic one-and-a-half metre long Blueback puppet was made by Creature Technology Co and we got to meet it at its birthplace – their workshops where dinosaurs walk and dragons are trained (and all visitors have to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so I can’t tell you much more about all the fabulous things we saw).

Film director Robert Connolly and Associate Producer Tara Bilston met us there and introduced us to Creature Tech’s Creative Director Sonny Tilders and Creative Producer Robert McNaught, who showed us around and delighted us with their creations.

Having just read Tim Winton’s words, hearing them all talk so passionately about the project inspired me to see if I could do the exhibition using only the words of the creators. It was a lovely idea – in theory. In practice, it was a challenge, but a fun one; to find words in the book, screenplay, interviews and emails that allowed Blueback ’s story to be told by those closest to it.

The result is a gentle little exhibition showing the original novel, key objects and props from the film, and items used in the design and construction of the puppet. And there’s Blueback himself, of course, complete with his intricate control system that took four people to operate. There’s also behind-the-scenes footage and some interactives, and it’s mostly labelled using direct quotes.

The exhibition ends, in common with both the book and the film, with a message about how we can each do our bit to protect the oceans. In the words of Robert Connolly: Blueback is a film with a big environmental message –we have to save our oceans. It’s a film about young people having great agency for change, [and] the inspiration they get from their parents.

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Pool-testing the hand puppet of Blueback’s head, used for close-ups.

Image Creature Technology Co

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A still from the movie showing actress Ariel Donoghue, who plays the child Abby, meeting Blueback. Image Arenamedia

Blueback: sharing the secrets is currently showing at the museum. After premiering here, it will be available to tour. For more information about booking the exhibit, please email touringexhibitions@sea.museum or phone 02 8241 8347 or 0409 581 556.

The Blueback puppet has an intricate control system that took four people to operate

Endeavour ’s timbers

Sources and stories

This December marks 30 years since the launch of the museum’s replica of James Cook’s famous vessel HMB Endeavour. Building an 18th-century ship in the 20th century posed many challenges, not least of them finding suitable timbers. John Longley AM details the timbers that were used and the stories behind their sourcing.

The jarrah frames of the hull completed and planking in progress.

Images courtesy John Longley, John Lancaster and unknown photographers

WHEN HM BARK ENDEAVOUR (formerly the collier Earl of Pembroke) was built in 1764, it had an elm keel and Baltic pine topsides, decks and spars, with the rest being English oak. When the Endeavour replica build team was formed in Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1987, one of their first decisions was what to build the ship from. Due to Fremantle’s remote location and difficulty of supply, none of the above timbers were available. There was also the matter of the sheer amount of timber that would be required and the size of many of the component parts of the ship.

Thankfully, Australia has a wide variety of hardwoods that the build team was able to draw on, and they found a source of softwoods in America for the decks and spars.

Like many Western Australian vessels built prior to the 1970s, Endeavour is jarrah below the waterline with Douglas fir (oregon) topsides. Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) is only found in the southwest corner of Western Australia. It is a dense, red hardwood from slow-growing trees. One of the first exports from Western Australia, it was marketed in England as Swan River mahogany. It is resistant to rot and marine borers and is generally a good boatbuilding timber, although difficult to steam and bend.

It sounds too simple to be true, but the jarrah for Endeavour came from our local Bunnings. In those days Bunnings was mainly a timber supplier, rather than the huge hardware company of today. They had large leaseholds in the native forests south of Perth, from which they cut and milled timber that was mainly used in house construction. But we needed the timber to be cut into large slabs, or flitches, from which we would cut planks. In the ends of the ship, where the planks need to be steamed and bent, they were cut from flitches 1.5 metres across, 9 metres long and 150 millimetres thick. This required huge trees, most of which would have been over 400 years old. To achieve this, Bunnings restored one of their retired saws – the only equipment capable of slabbing logs of this size, as the modern saws tended to rotate the logs hydraulically to cut smaller-dimensioned timber.

It sounds too simple to be true, but the jarrah for Endeavour came from our local Bunnings

Port side from aft showing floors and midship frames in place.

The softwoods came from a supply of old-growth Douglas fir that had been earmarked for the US Navy to build minesweepers

01 Sailmaker and rigger Glen Hope was just one of hundreds of people who worked on the build.

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The lower deck (looking forward) being caulked, or sealed.

Besides the planking, Bunnings also cut large pieces of timber for the keel and stem and stern posts, and a great quantity of 25-millimetre kiln-dried boards that were glued together in packages with epoxy to make the massive curved floors and futtocks (frames).

The next requirement was for very long boards for the internal longitudinals. These timbers would never see the ocean, so could be made from another local timber, karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor – not to be confused with the New Zealand timber kauri). Karri is a straightgrained, gum-free timber that steams beautifully. Its only drawback is that termites and marine borers love it, but as we were only using it internally, this was not a problem.

The topsides and decks had to be made from a softwood for stability and to be true to the original build. The topside strakes varied from 100 millimetres thick at the waterline to 50 millimetres at the gunwale, and the decks were all 75 millimetres, with all planks being as long as we could get them. Obtaining such huge pieces of clear softwood was a challenge, but we got lucky when our agent in America sourced them from a supply of old-growth Douglas fir/oregon (Pseudotsuga menziesii ) that had been earmarked for the US Navy to build minesweepers. It was just being released, as the navy had moved to composite construction for these vessels. Once again, these trees were over 400 years old when cut down. Shortly thereafter, the logging of these old-growth forests was banned by President Bill Clinton as they were home to the endangered Spotted Owl.

Below the waterline the planks were fastened with galvanised coach bolts, but the topsides and internal planks were fastened using traditional treenails, or ‘trunnels’. They had to be made from a curly-grained or ‘carroty’ timber so as not to split when being driven home. We decided to use tuart (Eucalyptus gomphocephala), which is one of the main eucalypts of the southwest coastal plain of Western Australia. Although now heavily protected, it was used in the early days of the colony for axe handles, wagon wheels and any use that required a strong timber that would not split. We also used tuart for the ship’s deadeyes and the drum of the steering wheel, which came from a tuart taken down at my old school, Hale School, and offered to the project by the headmaster.

An interesting side story regarding the trunnels is that during the build we were contacted by NASA, who offered to take some item of ours on board the replacement Space Shuttle Endeavour on its maiden flight. After much discussion, we decided to send a simple tuart trunnel so that on its return it would become an integral part of the ship. Later in the build, Captain Dan Brandenstein USN, SS Endeavour ’s commander, came to Fremantle and drove the trunnel into the stern post in the Great Cabin. There is now an identifying brass ring around it. HMB Endeavour took almost three years to complete its first famous circumnavigation, but a small part of the replica Endeavour had already completed 141 orbits of the globe in nine days.

A trunnel travelled on the replacement Space Shuttle Endeavour on its maiden flight and later became an integral part of the ship

The weather deck beams are supported by large ‘knees’, which are naturally curved grown timbers

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Some of the spotted gum hanging knees supporting the weather (upper) deck.

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Shipwrights cutting jarrah knees in Alcoa’s leasehold in Western Australia.

New Endeavour book

The museum has published a new 52-page booklet, Endeavour: The ship that changed the world. It examines Cook’s voyages and their legacy, Indigenous encounters, the building of the replica, and the search for the remains of HMB Endeavour in Newport, Rhode Island. It is available from the museum’s shop for $19.95.

As we approached the weather deck and areas that would be readily seen while the ship was on exhibition, the build team was anxious to avoid laminating any parts of the ship as they would look too perfect. We became quite innovative – and in some cases plain lucky – in acquiring some of the large pieces of timber that were required.

For the forward and aft fall deck beams, we needed 11 dead straight, 9-metre-long, seasoned 250-millimetre square beams. After much searching we heard of a series of jarrah and asbestos sheds that were being demolished just outside of Perth. These buildings were on land that had been requisitioned by the army in World War II to build munitions. One of the buildings had 12 vertical timbers of those exact dimensions. The building had no windows, so the timber was perfect and still as red as the day it was cut in 1942.

We also needed large pieces of timber for the deck hardware – gallows, belfry, catheads, mast partners and so forth. Once again, our spies reported that the Main Roads Department had taken down an old rail bridge in the Darling Range. Its large beams had spent their life bridging a stream in the shade of other jarrah trees, so were in great condition. After fighting off Victorian furniture makers and some delicate negotiations with Main Roads, this bridge became part of Endeavour

The weather deck beams are supported by large ‘knees’, which are naturally curved grown timbers. Back in 1764 this was no problem, as oak trees have large bent branches, but Australian eucalypts tend to have large boles and smaller branches. One of our shipwrights heard that the Pacific Highway was being straightened north of Sydney and they were taking down some very large old spotted gum trees (Corymbia maculata). His dad and mate offered to cut knees for us from these trees’ roots, which they did with the agreement of the company that was doing the earthworks for the road building.

Smaller knees were sourced from a local forest where Alcoa was mining bauxite. We were forbidden to take any vehicles or animals into the forest, for fear of spreading the fungal dieback disease phytophthora. Our shipwrights consequently walked into the forest and, after cutting the knees, dragged them out with a human harness and then sanitised their boots.

Finally, it came to rigging the ship. The masts and spars were from Douglas fir, but for the 700 blocks and hearts needed, we chose Western Australian sheoak ( Allocasuarina fraseriana), a highly prized furniture timber. It is very stable and will not split when exposed to rapidly changing moisture and temperature. This beautiful timber has a stunning grain and is now very expensive and difficult to obtain.

On 9 December 1993 at 1753 hours, Endeavour was launched into Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour in front of a huge audience. Roaring down the ways went 400 tonnes of prime timber and 40 tonnes of lead ballast (with another 110 tonnes to be added after launch).

As I looked at the brand-new ship floating in the harbour, it occurred to me that it was already 400 years old, as the jarrah, Douglas fir and spotted gum trees that comprised much of its hull were all thought to be of that age. In fact, James Cook would have sailed past the spotted gum trees on his way north up the New South Wales coast. I wonder if he noticed these magnificent trees from the quarter deck of HMB Endeavour

John Longley AM managed the build of the Endeavour replica. After its launch, he also managed the ship’s circumnavigation of the globe, during which it visited 149 ports. He has been inducted into the America’s Cup Hall of Fame and is a member of the Council of the Australian National Maritime Museum.

‘It is somehow fitting that recording remains associated with such a dark period of history is now helping veterans’ recovery’ – A Vietnam War veteran who worked on the survey

Crew members from German ships being entertained at Deep Creek. Image State Library of NSW Call number ON 388/ Box 032/Item 214

Operation Digger

Surveying a pre–World War II German camp on Sydney’s Northern Beaches

When most people think of Sydney’s Northern Beaches area, they envisage golden sands, boutique cafes and surf culture –not Nazi activity in the late 1930s. Stirling Smith reports on a recent survey of an abandoned German Labour Front camp in the suburb of Narrabeen.

TUCKED AWAY on the northern side of Narrabeen Lagoon, on the banks of Deep Creek, are the remains of a camp established by the German Labour Front, or Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), in 1937. After 86 years, much has been reclaimed by the bush, but visible reminders remain: the footings of several huts, garden beds and rocks engraved with the names of visiting German ships and nationalistic symbols, including swastikas and German eagles.

When the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, restrictions on overseas travel were introduced. By the late 1930s, it had become difficult for the average German to travel overseas. Among those working-class people who still regularly visited foreign countries, however, were German merchant seamen. To keep these crews away from any potential liberal local influences and to provide entertainment, the DAF, the labour organisation of the Nazi Party, established a camp at Deep Creek, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

In 1937, Rudolph Duerkop and his wife, Helene Kranz, both members of the Nazi party, headed an organisation called Harbour Services Sydney. Members of Harbour Services would meet visiting German ships and provide crews with information on suitable accommodation, entertainment and social events in Sydney. The DAF also organised trips to its camp at Deep Creek. The crews would catch a ferry to Manly, then a tram to Narrabeen, then walk around Narrabeen Lagoon to Deep Creek. Once at the camp, crews could participate in organised picnics, sporting events and dances. They could also stay in canvas tents provided on site.

During their stays, many of the crews would inscribe their names or those of their ships onto the nearby sandstone rock faces. They also engraved other symbols, such as the German eagle (Reichsadler) and swastikas, which were the official emblems of Germany at that time.

The DAF operated the Deep Creek camp from 1937 right up to the outbreak of World War II. At the time, there were numerous allegations that the camp was used by the Gestapo for spying. Once war was declared in 1939, the Commonwealth Investigations Branch (CIB) arrested Duerkop and Kranz and interned them as enemy aliens for the duration of the war. The camp was then closed and abandoned. Today what remains of the site is located within the Deep Creek Reserve, which is maintained by the Northern Beaches Council.

Operation Digger

During their stays, many of the crews would inscribe their names or those of their ships onto the nearby sandstone rock faces

The remains of the camp have been known to the local community for many years, but had not been formally surveyed or archaeologically assessed. In December 2022, military veterans from Operation Digger, assisted by staff and students from the archaeology department at the University of Sydney, undertook the first preliminary archaeological survey of the site. Operation Digger is a community-based program designed to support veterans’ physical and mental wellbeing through involvement in recording archaeological and heritage sites in New South Wales. The information gathered by Operation Digger projects is provided free of charge to site owners, archaeologists, local councils and government agencies to assist them with heritage management and interpretation.

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Engravings photographed at Deep Creek in 1938, showing the names of four German merchant ships. SS Reliance was later damaged by fire, then sold for scrap in 1940. SS Mosel was sunk off Yoshima Harbour, Japan, by a mine in 1945. SS Lahn escaped to Argentina at the beginning of World War II and was scrapped in 1975. SS Dortmund survived the war and was scrapped in 1971. Image Daily News (Sydney), 31 December 1938, p 2.

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A 3D scan of the same rock engravings today. Under ‘Mosel’ is a swastika that has been altered to appear more like the British Union Jack. This, and the map of Australia at lower left, were probably added after the camp had closed.

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Craig Delaney (left) from the Office of Veterans Affairs with volunteer veterans from Operation Digger.

All images Stirling Smith unless otherwise noted

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Alan Toner, President of the Mosman RSL Sub-branch, recording a swastika that has been recut to resemble a British Union Jack.

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Associate Professor James Flexner (left), from the Department of Archaeology at Sydney University, instructs volunteer Craig Delaney in the use of a GPS mapping system.

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SS Stassfurt escaped from Australian waters to the Netherlands East Indies just before the start of World War II. In 1940, after the German invasion of the Netherlands, it was seized by the Netherlands East Indies authorities.

Preliminary research into the ships whose names are engraved into the rocks has shown that most were lost in combat operations during the war

Over a two-day period, veterans surveyed the site and identified the remains of two cottages associated with the camp. One was built by Rudolph Duerkop in 1938 and used to store tents and cooking equipment, and the other was used as a caretaker’s cottage by English-born John Newnham. The remains of the cottages’ chimneys, footings and surrounding garden beds were recorded and mapped. The survey also located a number of sandstone outcrops that were engraved during the DAF camp’s operation. The engravings were recorded using 3D scanning and photogrammetry. Thirteen German ship names were identified, plus two German eagles and five swastikas, three of which had been recut to resemble a British Union Jack. Also recorded were an engraving of a map of Australia and a hammer and sickle symbol. These were probably added after the camp was closed in 1939.

Preliminary research into the ships whose names are engraved into the rocks has shown that most were lost in combat operations during the war. Several ships were interned at the outbreak of war and repurposed by the Allies, only to be later sunk by Germany.

The preliminary archaeological survey report containing the result of the work undertaken by Operation Digger veterans has now been forwarded

to the Northern Beaches Council. This information will help the council with potential future management and interpretation of the site and enable the updating of its Local Environmental Plan.

Although the Deep Creek camp’s association with Nazi Germany symbolises a confronting period in world history, the Operation Digger survey has provided insight into Australian and German relations prior to the outbreak of World War ll. As one of the veterans involved in the survey commented: ‘It is somehow fitting that recording remains associated with such a dark period of history is now helping veterans’ recovery’.

The author would like to thank the veterans who were involved with this survey project, as well as Associate Professor James Flexner and Isabel Parnell from the Archaeology Department at the University of Sydney, who assisted in the survey and trained veterans in archaeological survey techniques. Thanks are also due to the Mosman RSL Sub-branch and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs for their support, along with staff and volunteers at the Australian National Maritime Museum’s Vaughan Evans Library for their assistance with historical research.

For further information about Operation Digger and upcoming field projects, contact Stirling Smith at operationdigger@gmail.com

Archaeologist and heritage specialist Stirling Smith is a contract curator currently looking at the management and interpretation of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s naval vessel collection. He established Operation Digger in 2021 as the first program of its kind in Australia.

Endeavour heads to sea

A new sailing program for 2024

With the pandemic behind us and the Endeavour replica in excellent order, the museum is planning two voyages in February. Richard Wesley previews these oceanic adventures.

01 Handling sails aloft is one of the skills voyage crew can learn on a trip aboard Endeavour

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A regular routine aboard Endeavour is ‘happy hour’, a chance to tidy up the ship.

Endeavour voyage crew will experience traditional blue-water sailing and participate in citizen science opportunities

ENDEAVOUR OFFERS A CHANCE to escape 21st-century routines for a taste of life at sea, 18th-century style. Each of the two voyages planned for 2024 has 30 places for voyage (paying) crew. Under the supervision of the ship’s 16 professional crew, voyage crew will stand watch (‘hand, reef, and steer’), perform lookout duties, climb the rigging to handle sails, contribute to the vessel’s daily routine and learn traditional sailing techniques. If time and weather allow, there may also be an introductory lecture on celestial navigation.

In addition to paying crew, four ‘supernumeraries’, or nonworking passengers, can also join the ship. Each will have their own cabin and can contribute as much or as little as they wish to daily operations on board.

The first voyage, from 5–9 February, has no set route, but will simply follow the wind to take best advantage of the conditions at the time. The second voyage, from 15 to 29 February, offers an extended sail and the chance to experience the wonderful nature and environment of Lord Howe Island. This unique island, some 420 nautical miles from Sydney (a five- or six-day sail), was located in February 1788 by Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball of the armed tender Supply

Two hundred and thirty-five years later, Endeavour voyage crew and supernumeraries will be able to experience traditional blue-water sailing, participate in citizen science opportunities, and observe the modern-day plotting of wind, sea, and weather conditions to and from the island.

Lord Howe Island was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1982, and is home to both flora and fauna found nowhere else.

As the island has no deep-water port, Endeavour will anchor offshore, with crew being transferred to shore by small boat. Local tour operators will then facilitate hiking, bird watching, snorkelling and offshore boating opportunities.

To learn more, please see the museum’s website at sea.museum. At the time of writing the February program was fully subscribed, but future voyages are being planned and expressions of interest are always welcome.

Sponsored places are available aboard the Lord Howe Island voyage for young people aged 18–24 to experience sailing on Endeavour For more information, please see the article overleaf.

Richard Wesley is the museum’s Assistant Director, Collections and Fleet.

Sponsor the experience of a lifetime

Support our Endeavour youth sailing program

IN FEBRUARY 2023, Endeavour will undertake a 15-day voyage to Lord Howe Island, offering an unforgettable experience of blue-water sailing in this replica of an 18th-century bark. We are keen to invite young people to join the voyage and learn traditional sailing skills. To make it possible for more young people to participate, we are inviting our members and supporters to make a financial donation to help offset the cost of the journey. You can enable young people to join the adventure through contributing to our end-of-calendar-year campaign.

Endeavour ’s highly experienced professional crew will give daily talks and practical training in all aspects of traditional sailing, including sail handling, manoeuvring, maintenance and navigating by the stars. A scientist will be on board, conducting experiments on water quality and levels of plastic pollution and providing opportunities to learn about marine fauna and oceanography. As well as a unique opportunity to learn to sail and to develop an understanding of our oceans, participants will gain life skills such as teamwork and communication, decision-making, flexibility and resilience.

Participation will be open to young Australians aged between 18 and 24 on 1 February 2024, via an expression of interest in which each explains why they want to join the voyage. Every $5,000 raised will fund a place for a young person, with at least five places offered. If more funds are raised than available places, they will be applied to the same program on a future Endeavour voyage. Please give generously!

You can donate:

• online at sea.museum/donate

• by direct deposit: BSB 062 000, account number 1619309. Please include your name as the reference

• by sending a cheque made out to the Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation and addressed to the Foundation, 58 Pirrama Road, Pyrmont 2009 or

• by phone on 02 9298 3777, asking to speak to Matt Lee.

All donations are tax deductible. Thank you for your support.

Participants in the youth sailing program will receive practical training in all aspects of traditional sailing, including sail handling, manoeuvring, ship maintenance and celestial navigation. Image Eden AlleyPorter/ANMM

Every $5,000 raised will fund a place for a young person, with at least five places offered

Beneath the surface

Free online talks for summer

THIS SEASON, our free monthly online series, Beneath the Surface, gives insights into an upcoming exhibition, shares the amazing story of an unusual honeymoon and offers an in-depth look at a unique watercolour of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Our talks and tours will take a break in January, then resume from February.

December – Blueback: sharing the secrets

Join the creators of our upcoming summer exhibition, which focuses on the beloved Tim Winton novel Blueback. The exhibition tells how the recent Blueback movie was created, from novel to storyboard to film. This online talk reveals how our museum team worked together with talented external contractors to produce an interactive exhibition.

The first two pages of Heinz and Gisela Bernhard’s photo album, beginning with their wedding day (‘Mr & Mrs Bernhard leaving the Registrar’s office, where a rude official reluctantly passed the ceremony’).

ANMM 00013885

February – A honeymoon to freedom

In this online talk, Curator of Post-War Immigration, Dr Roland Leikauf, will tell you the incredible story of newlyweds Heinz and Gisela Bernhard and their honeymoon escape to Australia – although the context of this escape was not the usual holiday. The Jewish couple embarked on a long journey from the Netherlands, travelling through London, Canada and New Zealand before finally arriving in Australia. They were escaping the looming threat of Nazi occupation that was then spreading through Europe. Roland will discuss the contents of a recently donated diary and photo album, which detail their journey on two important ocean liners, RMS Niagara and RMS Empress of Australia, and their experience of settling into a new life here.

March – Sydney Harbour Bridge watercolour

March 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of signing the contract to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. To acknowledge this momentous occasion, the Australian National Maritime Museum will display one of our recent major acquisitions – a very special painting of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In this online talk, Dr Peter Hobbins will explain the significance of this beautiful artwork, and provide context to its maritime setting, describing how imperial and naval politics shaped the design and the choice of contractor for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

A reminder that all our online talks are recorded and available on the museum’s website. Simply type ‘Beneath the Surface’ into the search bar.

Message to members

Welcome to summer

THE MEMBERS TEAM has had an amazing year delivering a wide variety of events for our members over the past 12 months. It’s been so good to get our members events program back up to speed after the last couple of years, and it’s been wonderful to see so many of you attending the various talks and tours we’ve held.

We’ve also been broadening the range of our events, and it’s been great to see so many new members join the museum as a result. We’ve been trying to offer something for everyone and have started to hold more events on the weekend and after hours, to fit into more people’s schedules.

In 2024, we will continue to bring you a packed calendar of events, including great speaker talks, book launches from some of Australia’s favourite authors, and tours to a wide range of places of interest – including naval bases, historic sites and buildings, lesser-known museums and galleries and even a temple. And our cruising program will be back, with plenty of opportunities to get out on our magnificent harbour in new and historic vessels.

In January, we are delighted to bring back our exclusive Members Australia Day Cruise, when members and their families can absorb the colour and spectacle of the annual harbour parade, including the famous Ferrython and Tall Ships Race. Relax and enjoy morning tea and lunch, complete with Aussie essentials such as lamingtons and pavlova for dessert.

You will find some of the upcoming events on the following pages. New events are being confirmed and added to the calendar all the time, so keep checking our members events page on our website at sea.museum/support/members/ members-events or scan the QR code on page 55.

All our events are managed through Eventbrite, so remember to click ‘Follow’ on our Eventbrite page to ensure you are kept informed each time we confirm new events.

Thank you all for your continued support throughout the year. It really has been lovely getting to know so many of you at our events throughout 2023.

As always, we welcome your feedback. If you have any suggestions about your membership or the museum, please let us know. You can call us on 02 9298 3777 or email members@sea.museum

On behalf of everyone at the museum, I would like to wish you and your families a safe and happy festive season and all the best for 2024. We hope to see you at the museum soon.

Matt Lee, Manager – VIP Relations & Membership

Australia Day Ferrython on Sydney Harbour. Image Shutterstock

Behind the scenes

White Gloves tours

10.30 am–12.45 pm alternate Tuesday and Thursdays

Our new White Gloves Behind the Scenes VIP tours are an opportunity to study and hear about objects that are rarely seen by the public.

The tours run for about two and a quarter hours, and finish with a cup of tea or coffee in our Members Lounge.

For more information, see page 56.

Members $30; non-members $40. Check Eventbrite for dates and bookings

Speakers

talk

William Dampier

2–3.30 pm Tuesday 30 January

This presentation highlights the contributions William Dampier made to navigation and science. He wrote two books that became best sellers, was the first person to circumnavigate the world three times, and has been described as Australia‘s first natural historian. His observations and analysis of natural history helped Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin to develop their scientific theories.

Presented by Terry Lancaster from the museum’s Speakers Group.

Free for Members; enter code MEMBER. Non-members $10

Author talk

Like a Wicked Noah’s Ark

2–3.30 pm Tuesday 13 February

Join Sarah Luke to step back in time to 1860s Sydney, when many children were poor and neglected. In 1867 a solution to this problem saw prisons drained of their young inmates, who were herded together on board the Nautical School Ship Tingira

A Wicked Noah’s Ark is the history of this ground-breaking experiment in juvenile reformation, which operated until 1911.

Copies of the book will be available for sale and author signing.

Free for all attendees

Image NSW State Archives

On the water

Australia Day cruise

10.30 am–3 pm Friday 26 January

Get out in the summer sun and absorb the colour and spectacle of the annual Australia Day Parade, including the famous Ferrython and Tall Ships Race. Experience the fun of the best-value catered four-hour Australia Day cruise on Sydney Harbour. Spending Australia Day on the water doesn’t get any better!

Members $130/non-members $149, children $120, member family (2 adults/2 kids) $470

Adventurers talk

Bonnie Hancock: The girl who touched the stars

2–3.30 pm Saturday 10 February

Bonnie Hancock broke numerous records on her fastest-ever circumnavigation by paddle around Australia. Over 254 days, she faced sea sickness, sharks, crocodiles and more than 12,000 kilometres of ocean. Testing the limits of her mental and physical toughness, she learned what it means to overcome adversity and how important teamwork and perspective truly are.

Join Bonnie at this special event and hear her talk about her amazing adventures.

Free for all attendees

Image courtesy Bonnie Hancock

Naval tour

Visit HMAS Waterhen

Dates and details to be confirmed

This exclusive tour for museum members will include a presentation from staff of the Maritime Deployable Robotics Experimental Unit (MDREU), who will talk about uncrewed surface vessels.

Australian Clearance Diving Team 1 will discuss equipment being used by clearance divers in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), such as explosive ordnance. We will then tour HMAS Gascoyne, one of the RAN’s four Mine Hunter Coastal (MHC) ships in service. The ship’s company will walk us through the vessel and demonstrate day-to-day operations.

Image Stephen D Gard/Shutterstock

Author talk

Slipstream – 10 Pound Poms

2–3.30 pm Saturday 16 March

Catherine Cole was born to migrant parents who left their close-knit Yorkshire community to start afresh in Australia. Her childhood was filled with the contrasting worlds of a small mining village in northern England and the Australian heat, beaches and cicadas. In Slipstream, she explores the humorous and poignant mix of these two worlds, documenting the journey of many British migrants as they left their homes for a very different place.

Copies of the book will be available for sale and author signing.

Free for all attendees

Author talk

Australian Code Breakers

2–3.30 pm Saturday 23 March

On 11 August 1914, Australian Captain JT Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne’s Port Phillip and seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian navy had a chance to change the course of the war – but first they needed to break the code.

Author James Phelps reveals how a former Australian headmaster and his mostly female team cracked one of Germany’s most complex codes, paving the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I. Copies of the book will be available for sale and author signing.

Free for all attendees

Speakers talk

The unknown serviceman of HMAS Sydney

2–3.30 pm Wednesday 27 March

Australia’s worst naval tragedy of World War II was the loss of HMAS Sydney (II) and its entire complement of 645 men. Three months later, in February 1942, a body in a life raft was found floating off Christmas Island. He was hurriedly buried, and records of his grave later lost or destroyed. Who was this man, and was he from Sydney?

This talk will discuss the battle between Sydney and Kormoran and how detective work, science and persistence helped to find the long-lost grave and enabled the man to be identified in 2021 as Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark.

Presented by Gillian Lewis from the museum’s Speakers Group.

Free for Members; enter code MEMBER.

Non-members $10

Image Wikimedia Commons

Unless otherwise noted, talks are free for members and one guest. Book launches are free for all guests. Bookings are essential. To book members events, email memberevents @sea.museum and tell us which event you wish to attend, and who is coming. Alternatively, book through Eventbrite, phone us on 02 9298 3777, or scan the QR code below.

For all other events, please see sea.museum/whats-on/events for further details and how to book.

For children’s and family programs, please check sea.museum or sea.museum/kids .

White Gloves tours enable visitors to see areas of the museum normally off limits to the public, and to handle some of our artefacts. Image ANMM

History in your hands

The museum’s new White Gloves Tours

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED where the museum keeps its artefacts when they’re not on display? The museum holds over 160,000 items in its collection, of all shapes and sizes – from small coins to large wooden yachts. Only a tiny fraction can be displayed at any one time, so the rest are kept in various object storage areas under specially controlled temperature and lighting conditions. We have recently introduced a special visitor experience called the White Gloves Behind the Scenes VIP Tour. It’s an opportunity to study and hear about objects that are rarely seen by the public.

The tour visits some of our object storage areas, and includes hidden gems from the collection covering a broad range of interest areas – such as sport, adventure, exploration, defence, immigration and First Nations cultures.

Some artefacts were recovered from shipwrecks from the age of sail – including the legendary Batavia, Endeavour and Dunbar. Others include ship models, delicate hand embroidery and scrimshaw. Guests also have the chance to don white cotton gloves and handle a selection of objects – holding hundreds of years of history in their hands.

The tour also visits the museum’s Conservation Laboratory, where you can see the work that takes place in conserving and restoring items in the collection.

This exciting new experience has been developed and designed by a special group of our dedicated volunteers, along with our Conservation and Registration teams. We ran a pilot program last year and received great feedback, and launched the tours earlier this year.

The tours run for about two and a quarter hours, and finish with a cup of tea or coffee in our Members Lounge. The tours are run weekly, and each is limited to six people.

The cost is $30 for Members and $40 for the general public.

You can find out more about these tours and how to book by scanning the QR code or checking out the events page on the museum’s website sea.museum. We look forward to seeing you at one of the tours.

Dive into the remarkable world of an Australian marine pioneer

sea.museum/valerie-taylor

Sail Duyfken

Join the captain and crew for a spectacular sail on Sydney Harbour.

Spring sailing season Fridays and Saturdays 2.30 – 5.30pm sea.museum/sail-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.

ANMM Collection © Ron and Valerie Taylor.

Summer wonders

Cool off with the kids at Wonderwater these holidays

Water – irresistible, ever-changing and mysterious – is the inspiration for our summer program, Wonderwater, which opens on 22 December. By guest curator Holly Williams .

OUR HOLIDAY PROGRAM Wonderwater forges deep connections with the ocean – through awe-inspiring images and films, stories of powerful changemakers and playful ways to discover our incredible sea life and marine heritage.

Offering a departure from recent summer programs, which have focused on a single exhibition (such as the hugely popular Brickwrecks), Wonderwater presents multiple, diverse experiences across the whole site –akin to discovering different rockpools at the beach. As our visitor numbers continue to increase, we want to activate even more areas, reduce wait times and create

a fun, stress-free day out that encourages repeat visits over the season. There is much to see across six feature exhibitions, film screenings, a First Nations video program, multiple hands-on activity areas, fleet activations, and opportunities to play and discover what is in, on and around the water.

Three of our most important reef systems feature: Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef, Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef and the Great Southern Reef, which covers a breathtaking 71,000 square kilometres around the bottom of Australia. Cornerstone exhibitions fill our main galleries: Ocean Photographer of the Year, Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life and Octopus Garden, an immersive digital playspace that lets younger audience members experience a day in the life of the extraordinary octopus. On the Ben Lexcen Terrace, a specially commissioned LEGO® build zone has been developed with the incredible team of The Brickman and the Great Southern Reef Foundation. Connecting creativity and conservation, you can build your own weedy seadragon or pyjama squid and add it to the shared central reef.

Or put yourself in the story via the greenscreen in Blueback: Sharing the secrets in our Theatrette, part of the standout free elements in Wonderwater

One of our most charismatic vessels, the lightship Carpentaria, gets a starring role in Sydney Festival’s free opera Il Tabarro across four evenings in January. Outstanding performances are also on offer at the New Beginnings Festival and in a brief season by Indonesian–Australian artist Jumaadi with his magical shadow play, The Sea is Still a Mystery

Wonderwater revitalises areas of the museum’s site that have not been in use recently, such as the ramp between the North and Lighthouse Galleries, which is transformed into Rainbow, Mermaid, Fireworks. This installation by local artists Rosie Deacon and Emily Crockford is also an opportunity to dress up and meet a mermaid each week on ‘Mermaid Mondays’. Then head to the Octopus Garden, which features artwork by local artist and passionate ocean-lover InkHunter, who recently completed the dramatic perspective mural at the museum’s entrance.

And don’t miss seeing the mural’s giant octopus spring into life from vantage points on Pyrmont Bridge. Or be one of the first to set foot on our newly replaced Heritage Pontoon.

Beyond creating an exciting and eclectic program, the museum team has been working throughout the year laying the groundwork for what promises to be a hot and busy summer. Improving site appearance and amenity have been key, with new artistic commissions, enhanced wayfinding, more seating, increased shade and plantings, and refreshing water misting installed to help keep the site cool, relaxing and filled with delight for our visitors.

Beat the heat with a fun-filled family day out at Wonderwater, from 22 December until 5 February.

Artist’s impression of the interactive

experience Octopus Garden by Junior Major, featuring artwork by InkHunter. Image courtesy Junior Major

Ocean Photographer of the Year 2023

Now showing

The museum is delighted to host the premiere of a new international exhibition, which features more than 100 beautiful and thought-provoking images from some of the world’s best ocean photographers.

OCEAN PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR is an annual competition organised by Oceanographic magazine. The competition attracts amateur and professional entrants from across the world.

The photographs, across nine categories, reveal the full spectrum of ocean life both on and under the water, including imagery of wildlife encounters, seascapes and beautiful interpretations of the human–ocean connection. This exhibition is the first time that all the competition’s winners and finalists have been shown together.

For more information, see the article on page 10.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/oceanphotographer

Off Alor, Indonesia, local children play in the water wearing homemade wooden goggles held together by fishing line. Image © Peter Marshall

Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life Now showing

At a time when oceans are under more threat than ever, Valerie Taylor AM has been a key changemaker, breaking the mould, pushing boundaries, and capturing an underwater world that – in some places – no longer exists. She shows the impact one person can have and embodies the urgency to act now.

Over 60 years in the ocean, Valerie Taylor has captured the underwater world and shared her knowledge with the public, encouraging greater protection of species and their habitats. In 2018, she donated a vast archive of photographs, objects and stories to the National Maritime Collection. Featuring objects and more than 1,400 images, Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life is not just one woman’s incredible story, it is a call to action for all the potential ocean changemakers out there – to inspire all of us to advocate for the oceans in our own way.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ valerie-taylor

Valerie Taylor. Image ANMM

Blueback: sharing the secrets Now showing

Blueback: sharing the secrets shows family audiences how the magic of puppetry transformed a powerful book into a beautiful film about how we live with our natural world.

Based on Tim Winton’s novella, Robert Connolly’s film Blueback tells the story of Abby, who grows up in the ocean and makes friends with a huge old groper she names Blueback. As years go by, she takes action to protect her home waters and eventually becomes a noted marine biologist. It is a story of the beauty and fragility of the Australian underwater environment, of love and connection to the ocean and its creatures, and the power of one person to make a difference.

Blueback: sharing the secrets combines key objects and props from the film, including the life-sized Blueback puppet, with behind-the-scenes footage to reveal how it was brought to life, and interactives that allow visitors to put themselves in the picture.

For more information about the creation of the film and the exhibition, see the articles on pages 26 and 30.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ blueback

Show us the Keel Now showing

This small display celebrates the success of Australia’s 1983 America’s Cup win. It presents the story of the masterminds behind the innovative engineering and avant-garde design of Australia II, the passion and dedication required by the Australian team, and the fallout after Australia won the cup from the Americans, for the first time in the race’s 132-year history.

On show in the foyer of the museum’s Wharf 7 Maritime Heritage Building from 9 am to 5 pm on weekdays.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ show-us-the-keel

The winged keel under construction. ANMM Collection Gift from Bruce Stannard

Octopus Garden

From 22 December

Dive into the mesmerising world of one of the ocean’s most enigmatic creatures! Play, hunt and hide in the Octopus Garden. Developed in collaboration with Junior Major and featuring artwork by InkHunter, this new immersive space gives visitors of all ages the chance to experience the extraordinary behaviours of the elusive octopus. From their impressive camouflage skills to their incredible shapeshifting abilities, discover the ways in which they thrive in the depths of the ocean.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ octopus-garden

Mäna and Bäru: The Sea Country of Guykuda Munuŋgurr

Now showing

An installation of 19 sculptures of fish and other marine creatures by Guykuda Munuŋgurr, representing species found in his Garrthalala homeland in northern Australia. He crafts his shapes out of the bush timber that surrounds his remote homeland. Many of the species represented in these works are depicted in the museum’s internationally significant Saltwater Bark paintings. Protecting Sea Country is an important message aligned with the museum’s commitment to the United Nations Ocean Decade.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ mana-and-baru

Fish carving Djembirri by Guykuda Munuŋgurr. ANMM Collection 00055933

HMB Endeavour cannon

Now showing

A small display of artefacts associated with Lieutenant James Cook’s famous HM Bark Endeavour. In June 1770, 48 tonnes of material, including six iron cannons, were jettisoned from Endeavour in a successful attempt to save the ship after it ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. One of the cannons is on display, along with some of the ballast.

Cannon on loan to the museum courtesy of NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service. sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ endeavour-cannon

Sydney Punchbowls

Now showing

On display in the Sydney Harbour Gallery are two splendid Chinese porcelain punchbowls painted with two different views of Sydney from the time of Governor Lachlan Macquarie (1810–1821). One has the view from Dawes Point looking east, and was donated to the museum in 2006. The other has the view from east Sydney Cove looking west, and was donated by Mrs Alison Carr in 2022. This donation is an exacting replica of an original held at the State Library of New South Wales.

The exhibit explores the mystery of who commissioned them in the early 1800s and why, the bowls’ travels thereafter and how they ended up in two different collections in Sydney.

The Wharfies’ Mural

Now showing

For the first time since it was donated in 1997, the entire Wharfies’ Mural is on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum in the Tasman Light Gallery.

The mural, painted from 1953 to 1965, expresses the history and political philosophy of the Waterside Workers Federation and other maritime trade unions. Its subjects include the struggle for the eight-hour day, anti-conscription, a general strike and the fight against Fascism.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ wharfies-mural

Travelling exhibitions

Voyage to the Deep – Underwater adventures

Reading Public Museum, PA, USA

Until 7 January 2024

Based on French author Jules Verne’s 1870 classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas , the exhibition brings to life the adventures of Captain Nemo and his fantastical Nautilus submarine. Kids can venture through the world below the waves, including the octopus’s garden, a giant squid to slide down and a maze of seaweed to wander through in the kelp forest.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ voyage-to-the-deep

Sea Monsters – Prehistoric ocean predators

Museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville

Until 28 January 2024

Yarrila Arts & Museum, Coffs Harbour, NSW

From 29 February 2024

Earth’s oceans were once home to some of the largest, fiercest and most successful predators ever. What can their fossilised bones tell us about how they lived, and how do these monsters of the deep compare to today’s top ocean predators?

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/seamonsters-travelling

James Cameron – Challenging the Deep Science World, Vancouver, Canada

Until 31 January 2024

Western Australian Maritime Museum, Fremantle From 15 March 2024

Encounter the deep-ocean discoveries, technical innovations and scientific and creative achievements of underwater explorer James Cameron.

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

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ james-cameron-travelling

Cats & Dogs All at Sea Port of Echuca Discovery Centre From February 2024

In a seafaring life from which families and children are usually missing, and are often very much missed, pets provide a focus for emotions and affection. Sydney photographer Sam Hood went aboard countless ships between 1900 and the 1950s. He took hundreds of photographs of crew members as souvenirs of their visit or to send home to families. This selection of images shows how much pets meant to many seafarers.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ cats-and-dogs-all-at-sea

Uniformed ship’s officers, with a pet dog and two kittens, aboard SS Strathgarry, c 1910.

ANMM Collection Samuel J Hood Studio 00020185

Bidhiinja – Restoring our oyster reefs

Touring regional New South Wales

Oyster reefs were once abundant along our coastlines, but today only 1 per cent of reefs remain around Australia.

This unique exhibition combines First Nations knowledge and Western science and is a collaboration between the NSW Department of Primary Industries –Fisheries (DPI) and the museum. It explains the forgotten history, benefits and First Nations relationships with oyster reefs in Australia – and why NSW DPI wants to bring them back.

Partner: NSW Department of Primary Industries – Fisheries

Mun.gal (detail), Frances Belle Parker (Yaegl), 2023. © Frances Belle Parker

Brickwrecks – sunken ships in LEGO ® bricks

Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden From 8 February 2024

Featuring large-scale LEGO® models, interactives and audiovisuals, Brickwrecks explores some of the world’s most famous shipwrecks, including Vasa, Batavia, Titanic, Terror and Erebus

Developed and designed by the Western Australian Museum in partnership with the Australian National Maritime Museum and Ryan McNaught.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ brickwrecks

Capturing

the Home Front

Orange Regional Museum, Orange, NSW

Until 11 February 2024

An exhibition that shines a light on life at home in World War II, as captured by famous American photojournalist Dorothea Lange and Australian photographers Samuel Hood, William Cranstone, Hedley Keith Cullen and Jim Fitzpatrick.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ capturing-the-home-front-travelling Dorothea Lange at work in the 1930s. Reproduced courtesy Library of Congress 8b27245a

Mariw Minaral (Spiritual Patterns)

Townsville City Galleries, Townsville, QLD

Until 3 March 2024

An exhibition of some of the finest works by Torres Strait Islander artist Alick Tipoti. It features his unique and intricate linocut prints, contemporary masks, film and award-winning sculpture.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ mariw-minaral-travelling

For more than 25 years, John Lamzies has donned wigs, make-up and costumes to perform a vast array of characters

John Lamzies in character as popular pirate Grognose Johnny. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

From plankton to pirates

Meet the museum educator team

The museum’s Education team delivers a curriculum-based learning program to thousands of school students each year. Central to the program are the talented and knowledgeable museum educators who deliver a wide range of workshops and tours. Anna Gregory profiles three of them.

EVERY YEAR THE MUSEUM WELCOMES about 10,000 students from primary and secondary schools across Australia and around the world. Students participate in a range of tours and workshops that address curriculum points in history, science, geography, and design and technology. During a school excursion, students can climb aboard the Endeavour replica and learn about life on a traditional sailing ship. Students can collect plankton samples from the harbour and discover the diversity and attributes of these creatures under the microscope. In hands-on maritime archaeology workshops, students use objects and maps to uncover the location of historic shipwrecks. All of these programs (and many more) are ably and enthusiastically delivered by our team of 20 casual museum educators. The MEs, as they are more affectionately known, do a magnificent job. They ensure student safety and enjoyment. They nimbly weave their way through mobs of museum visitors and into cramped corners of the vessels. They are captivating storytellers. They exemplify efficiency and are willing to go the extra mile.

The dedicated ME team comprises people from all walks of life: teachers, actors, university students, librarians, former healthcare workers and police officers, early-career museum professionals, musicians, archaeologists and more.

John Lamzies

Bedecked in a pirate’s frock coat with a tricorn hat atop his head, with make-up scars on his face and a harmonica in his mouth, humming sea shanties with a gaggle of kindy kids in tow. This is how you will often find our bold and fearsome pirate, Grognose Johnny, aka museum educator John Lamzies.

John Lamzies is a dedicated and engaging educator who has worked at the museum for more than 25 years. During that time, he has donned wigs, make-up and costumes to perform a vast array of characters. From Stu’ Aroma (an 18th-century ship’s cook) to Professor Pufferfish (a scientist and environmentalist), John Lamzies’ acting is underpinned by meticulous characterisation with an emphasis on student learning and enjoyment. Before joining the museum, John worked as an actor, musician, art teacher and museum educator. There are two aspects of the museum educator role that John really enjoys. First, he relishes the moment when the audience makes the ‘head-and-heart connection during a program’. He describes it as ‘evoking the tangible’ when the audience learns about history through objects and events, overlaid with empathy. John models his teaching style on Benjamin Franklin’s adage, ‘Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.’

He also truly values the support and camaraderie of his ME colleagues. In turn, John is universally respected and admired by his co-workers. Another ME says that John is ‘firm, fair, friendly and forgiving … [He] epitomises the notion of “a team player”.’

John loves his work at the museum and says that ‘the greatest compliment any person (especially a child – the harshest critic!) can give me after a tour, workshop or performance is, “Are you a real pirate?”.’

01 Peter Drogitis has recently begun working with the museum’s Registration and Fleet teams. Image Judy Kim/ANMM

02

Formerly a librarian, Judithe Hall is a committed museum educator and avid sailor. Image M Hall

03

Museum educators and staff at a pub trivia night. From left: Mathew Sloane, John Lamzies, Peter Drogitis, Megan Baehnisch, Alison Babbage, Dianne Hodge, Sue Grunstein, Jo Henwood and Ken Langford. Image Anna Gregory/ANMM

Judithe Hall

‘A behind-the scenes stalwart and efficient as anything’ is how another museum educator has aptly described Judithe Hall. Judithe is hard-working and flexible, with an intimate knowledge of the museum’s Education Collection – an array of historic objects that are used in hands-on workshops for students. In her ME role, Judithe has combined her love of boats, collection management and the community.

Judithe has always loved boats, especially sailing boats. She loves being on the water, breathing the fresh air and feeling the wind whip through the sails. In 1995, Judithe, her husband, Mark, and their two children (aged 4 and 10) embarked on a seven-month voyage to the Whitsundays in a 35-foot yacht. Judithe’s favourite object at the museum is Kay Cottee’s sailing boat, Blackmores First Lady. In 1988, Cottee became the first woman to circumnavigate the world solo, non-stop and unassisted. Judithe describes meeting Kay Cottee as one of the highlights of her time at the museum.

As a former teacher–librarian, Judithe was well placed to accession and catalogue the 800 objects in the Education Collection. Over many years, Judithe has diligently ordered the Education Collection, while always ensuring its purpose is maintained – to provide handson, object-based learning opportunities for students.

Judithe is an experienced and knowledgeable ME in diverse subject areas, from Pompeii to Wild Oats II She has developed and delivered programs for students and visitors of all ages. As highlights of being an ME, Judithe nominates delivering education programs to primary students with additional support needs and facilitating reminiscence sessions for people with dementia and their carers. In these roles, Judithe’s caring, gentle and warm nature clearly shines through.

In her museum educator role, Judithe Hall combines her love of boats, collection management and the community

Peter Drogitis

Peter Drogitis is an upcoming museum professional and a dedicated employee of the Australian National Maritime Museum. Peter studied a Bachelor of Ancient History and Masters of Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of Sydney. He worked at Kmart and as a puppet performer, before joining the museum in 2022.

Peter is passionate about the museum and its stories. Peter’s favourite objects are HMAS Vampire and HMAS Onslow. His love of these vessels is spurred by a personal connection. In the 1980s, Peter’s dad (also called Peter) worked on Vampire and Onslow as an apprentice fitter and turner in the Defence Department.

Peter is a natural storyteller. He deftly weaves personal stories into his tours, while satisfying curriculum requirements and teaching students about empathy. Peter captivates the students with fun facts about Vampire and Onslow that he learnt from his father. He demonstrates the importance of empathy when he shares the story of his grandfather, Orestis Drogitis, who made the difficult decision to migrate to Australia from war-torn Greece in 1961 to seek a better life for his family.

Peter has gone from strength to strength during his time at the museum. He is reliable, humble and takes initiative. His conscientious work ethic led him to begin volunteer work in the museum’s Registration department in November 2022. The Education team was delighted for Peter when he was offered a temporary appointment as a registrar at the museum in 2023, a fitting reward for his hard work, diligence and initiative. When reflecting on his time as a museum educator, Peter says he ‘always left in a good mood’.

The work of the MEs is vital for sharing the museum’s mission with students and inspiring the next generation of museum visitors. We thank all the museum educators for their dedication and expertise.

Anna Gregory is the museum’s Lifelong Learning Officer.

New names unveiled Honouring

Australia’s diverse migrant culture

Guests point out newly inscribed family names on the National Monument

to Migration.

Image Scott Cameron

IN TWO CEREMONIES in November, 1040 names, representing 46 countries, were added to the National Monument to Migration. More than 2,500 community members attended the unveilings.

The first ceremony featured representatives from the embassies and consulates of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Malta and India, and guests from Multicultural NSW, the Fathering Project and the Indonesia Diaspora Network NSW.

SBS presenter Petra Toak opened proceedings and thanked the museum for its continued recognition of migration in Australia and the moving family stories that it has helped to share. Petra, herself a migrant, told her own story of journeying by ship from Lebanon to Australia as a child.

Other migrants also related stories of bravery in the face of adversity. Dodzi Kpodi enthralled the audience with his account of coming to Australia via Ghana as a refugee after fleeing his homeland of Togo. Dr Thi Hai Land Phan spoke about her pregnant mother’s journey from Vietnam through Thailand, where Land Phan was born, and Michael Gulyas told a thrilling tale of his late father’s escape from Soviet Hungary in winter by swimming across the Danube River at night.

At the second ceremony, a panel dedicated to the Italian community was unveiled – a first for the monument. Pyrmont Plaza and Wharf 7 were transformed into a ‘Little Italy’, with performances by Italian–Australian singer Cosima Devito and guitarist Umberto DeBellis.

The museum worked closely with community partner Co.As.It for more than 18 months on this special initiative, with the support of media sponsor, the Italian Media Corporation, which includes Il Globo, La Fiamma and Rete Italia. The ceremony was opened by Co.As.It General Manager Thomas Camporeale. Uncle Michael West, from the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, gave a rousing welcome to country.

The museum’s Deputy Director Michael Baldwin then thanked the audience and stakeholders for their support and emphasised the museum’s commitment in helping to tell the unique migration stories that are part of our collective history.

Italian Consul General of Sydney, Andrea De Felip, spoke about the special connection between Italy and Australia forged through the many migrants who have made this country home.

Then followed moving personal histories of Italian migration from three speakers. Paola Coluzzi told of how her father, Luigi, came to Sydney with a love of food and people that would lead to his café, Bar Coluzzi, becoming a Sydney institution. Romano Di Donatto recounted tales of migrant communal life in Sydney in the 1960s. His carpenter father had applied to migrate to both Canada and Australia and was the only one out of 75 fellow paesanos (compatriots) selected to make the journey. Deborah Byrne spoke of her late father, Carlo, who came Australia with only 10 pounds in his pocket to learn a new language and make a new life for himself and his family. He initially cut sugar cane in Queensland and moonlighted as a taxi driver. His hard work paid off, and he later retired on his own cane farm. For the ceremony, Deborah wore the same scarf that her father had worn 72 years earlier as a hopeful young migrant. The museum is now accepting names for the next panel on the monument, which is to be unveiled in May 2024. Registration for this panel close on 31 January.

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SBS presenter Petra Toak, herself a migrant from Lebanon, was a guest speaker at the first ceremony. Image Scott Cameron

02 Guests at the second ceremony, at which a panel dedicated to the Italian community was unveiled. Image Carlos Velasco

02 The museum worked closely with community partner Co.As.It for more than 18 months on this special initiative

If you wish to be included on the next panel of names on the National Monument to Migration, visit sea.museum/ nationalmonument or call 02 8241 8337.

The Welcome Program

Bridging cultures and fostering belonging

For newly arrived refugees, creating a life in a new country can be both exciting and overwhelming. Jordan Wood, of Settlement Services International (SSI), profiles a program designed to connect newcomers with locals to build a welcoming community.

AUSTRALIA HAS LONG been a welcoming destination for newcomers, although changing countries and cultures has its challenges. To ease this transition, the SSI Welcome Program connects humanitarian visa holders with local community members to make them feel safe and welcome in their new home.

The program, which runs activities across Metropolitan Sydney and Coffs Harbour, has encouraged cross-cultural relationships in Australian communities since 2018.

Volunteer Welcome Ambassadors and newly arrived refugees participate in group activities based on shared interests

Creating connections through common interests

The heart of the Welcome Program lies in its people –volunteer Welcome Ambassadors and newly arrived refugees who come together to participate in group activities based on shared interests. Whether it’s exploring iconic landmarks, such as the Opera House or Sydney’s many museums or libraries, enjoying a picnic at a scenic spot or attending a sports game — these activities serve as bridges between cultures and help newcomers feel a sense of community.

One of the Welcome Program’s most recent activities was a group outing to the Australian National Maritime Museum. A group of seven clients, who recently came to Australia from Afghanistan and Ukraine, were joined by three Welcome Ambassadors for a day exploring Sydney, learning and, most importantly, building meaningful connections.

Touring the Endeavour replica was a highlight for the participants, who were eager to learn about Australian history.

Seti Hart, one of the Welcome Ambassadors leading the activity, says these structured social activities are an important opportunity for newly arrived refugees to feel at ease and have fun in a relaxed setting: They also provide an opportunity for clients to learn more about the history and culture of their new country and become more acquainted with their new surroundings, which can help with feeling more settled and at home. I have been lucky enough to see how the program really can empower the clients to become more independent and confident and help with expanding their connections within their local community.

Refugee participants are not the only ones who benefit from the cross-cultural connections built at activities, according to Seti, who herself comes from a migrant background:

Engaging with the attendees provides an opportunity for all of us volunteers to connect with people from different backgrounds with diverse life experiences, which can broaden your perspectives. Meeting and connecting with

the new clients and having the wonderful opportunity to get to know them and their families throughout the duration of the activity has been the highlight of my experience so far.

The Welcome Program is a real-life demonstration of the important role connection and community play in creating a more welcoming and inclusive society.

By connecting newcomers with everyday Australians, the program facilitates a sense of belonging, encourages friendships and helps migrants find their place in their new homeland.

Volunteer Welcome Ambassadors and recent migrants tour the Endeavour replica. Image SSI

Few in their life will experience the hardship of sailing a replica 16th-century vessel around the world

Duyfken under sail for the first time in July 1999 in the waters of Gage Roads near Fremantle. Its hull, then varnished, is now oiled and has darkened to a deep blue-black.

Through Darkest Seas

By Graeme Cocks, published by Motoring Past, 2023. Hardcover, softcover, 548 pages, illustrations, glossary, index. ISBN 9780992507831 (hardcover), 9780992507817 (softcover), $60.50 / $45.00. Vaughan Evans Library 623.822 COC

Triumphant highs and tragic lows

Building and sailing the Duyfken replica

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has – Margaret Mead, anthropologist

IN THROUGH DARKEST SEAS, Graeme Cocks records the immense commitment, imagination, obsession and sheer tenacity required by a small team of Western Australians to replicate a Dutch sailing vessel dating to the late 1500s – and then sail it across the world. As he notes in the introduction:

This is not a book about the romance of sailing ships. No, this book is about the completely crazy adventure of building a ship and embarking on voyages into the unknown – and how it changed a lot of us.

On 26 February 1995, Fremantle was announced as the home of a second replica shipbuilding project – Duyfken The first, Endeavour, had completed its sea trials the previous year. A much smaller vessel than James Cook’s ship, Duyfken (‘Little Dove’) measured just 25.2 metres between beakhead and taffrail.

Duyfken undertook its first sail on 10 July 1999, after a remarkably short four-year construction period. The enthusiastic group who made up the Duyfken Foundation astutely formed a strong bond

with the Western Australian Maritime Museum at an early stage. Key museum personnel, Director Graeme Henderson and Head of Marine Archaeology Jeremy Green, supported other key historians and researchers, including nautical archaeologist Nick Burningham, in ensuring that the replica Duyfken was based on all internationally available documentation.

A great deal of knowledge concerning early Dutch vessels of exploration and trade was drawn from maritime archaeological expeditions conducted in the previous two decades, including Western Australia’s very own Batavia project, in the Houtman Abrolhos Islands. Other key sources included maritime art collections held in leading institutions, such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The author’s encyclopaedic storytelling canvasses global maritime history, contact history in the Australian context, traditional shipbuilding, the skills required to handle a historic sailing vessel and the enormous value of living history projects in public education. The book is rich in detail, from the nature of team disagreements to the amount of marine growth found on the hull when slipped. No detail is seen as unimportant, drawing in the reader and making them part of the journey.

A reimagining of the first contact between Duyfken ’s crew and the traditional custodians of the Pennefather River area of Cape York. Image Graeme Cocks

Through Darkest Seas faithfully seeks to acknowledge the many individuals who played a role in this oversized drama on Fremantle’s waterfront. There, politicians, businesspeople, sailing enthusiasts, shipwrights, marketers, historians, history lovers and educators joined forces to retell the history of the first Europeans to reach mainland Australia (Cape York Peninsula) in 1606 on board Duyfken. Whether it would be possible to re-create such a coalition with the same ambition today is debatable – which makes the author’s clear desire to recall the story of ‘Team Duyfken’ in the 1990s all the more important.

More than half of the book is devoted to documenting the many highs and lows associated with two major voyages. The first was the 330-day Chevron 2000 Duyfken Expedition, which sailed from Fremantle to Sydney between 8 April 2000 and 3 March 2001. This extraordinary voyage skirted the Western Australian coast, traversed the traditional territory of many voyages of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) through Kupang, Banda and Amamapare, then sailed onto Gove, across to Cape York and from there via Port Moresby to Sydney. Images at the rear of the publication bring these exotic locations to life and give substance to the author’s assertion that the crew were ‘doing

something meaningful’ with this expedition – never more so when they reimagined the arrival of Duyfken at Pennefather River, Cape York, nearly 400 years earlier.

Even more remarkably, in 2002, the ship retraced the VOC voyage, sailing from Sydney to Amsterdam. This trip produced similar tales of great seamanship, cultural encounters, crew and supporter conflicts, sickness and dangerous proximity to a financial precipice that could destroy the dream. This epic voyage of 364 days included stopovers in Jakarta, Galle, Mauritius, Cape Town, Walvis Bay, Saint Helena and the Azores –prominent destinations during the Age of Exploration.

Few in their life will experience the hardship of sailing a replica 16th-century vessel around the world. As well as a lasting record of a great adventure that united thousands of people who shared the same dream, Graeme Cocks has created a sometimes visceral insight into what it takes for an individual to place themselves in peril on the sea.

Duyfken is now part of the on-water fleet of the Australian National Maritime Museum. It can be visited for tours and regular day-sails; see our website sea.museum.

Reviewer Richard Wesley is the museum’s Assistant Director, Collections and Fleet.

Keeping safe in the surf

The most important book to read this summer

Dr Rip’s Essential Beach Book

By Rob Brander, published by NewSouth, Sydney, 2023. Softcover, 192 pages. Illustrations, index. ISBN 9781742238074 RRP $35.00. Vaughan Evans Library 797.32 BRA

THERE’S A BIT OF COMPLACENCY about beach safety in Australia. We all know to ‘swim between the flags’, and we don’t stretch out on the sand until after we ‘slip, slap, slop’. But only four per cent of Australian beaches have flags and lifeguards. There are, on average, 120 drownings and 10,000 rescues performed each year in Australia. Over the past decade, these numbers have barely budged.

Coastal geomorphologist and volunteer surf lifesaver Robert ‘Dr Rip’ Brander has made it his mission to break the pattern and save lives with knowledge. This isn’t a slight against the Australian Lifeguard Service; Dr Rip labels them ‘heroes’ and teared up when speaking about them at a recent talk at the museum. It is a personal quest: to help people understand the physical workings of the nearshore environment, and what you must do to have a safe day at the beach.

This book, first published in 2010 and reissued in 2023, is exactly as titled: an essential guide to ‘everything you need to know about surf, sand and rips’. Its six chapters cover how beaches are formed, how waves work (from tides to tsunamis), how to ride them, and how to survive everything from rip currents to sharks to getting bogged in the sand. Chapters are short and light-hearted for ease of consumption. Pop-out pages share quirky stories,

checklists and survival guides for topics as broad as ‘the biggest tides in the world’, ‘the art of bodyboarding’, ‘the beach safety checklist’, and ‘treating a jellyfish sting’.

I’ve spent most of my life in or near the water, and I have never had a rip current explained to me as clearly as by Dr Rip. One of the biggest issues is that people purposefully choose to swim in the rip thinking that it is the safest spot. Lulled by the smooth green water and worried about the white caps, they blithely leap into the heart of the rip current and are swept out to sea.

The recommendation is not to swim out after a person caught in a rip – most drowning victims die attempting to rescue someone else. To help you to remember where and when it is safe to swim, Dr Rip suggests other catchphrases for your beach safety portfolio: ‘white is nice, green is mean’, and ‘if in doubt, don’t go out.’

I loved this book. Immediately after reading, I contacted the manager of the museum’s store to suggest that she order in copies for sale. It is essential reading for summer and will help to save lives.

Reviewer Emily Jateff is the museum’s Curator of Ocean Science and Technology.

Recent additions to the Vaughan Evans Library

EACH MONTH WE ADD NEW WORKS to our library across a wide range of topics, including naval history, immigration, diverse local cultures, ocean science, river stories, Australian history, school textbooks and titles for kids. We also offer a variety of maritime, genealogical and general research databases. Check our library catalogue, schedule a visit and enjoy our wonderful new books. Visit sea.museum/collections/library

Kate Bagnall and Peter Prince

Subjects and aliens: Histories of nationality, law and belonging in Australia and New Zealand 323.6310993 SUB

Victor Briggs

Seafaring: Canoeing ancient songlines 398.20994 BRI

Peter Brune

Suffering, redemption and triumph: The first wave of postwar Australian immigrants 940.53145 BRU

Colin Burgess Sisters in captivity: Sister Betty Jeffrey OAM and the courageous story of Australian Army nurses in Sumatra, 1942–1945 940.547252 BUR

Pamela Buxton (ed) Metric handbook: Planning and design data 720.28 MET

Ian Byard and Bruce McBain with HW Dick The Agency: Macdonald, Hamilton & Co, AUSN, P&O and Inchcape in Australia, 1915–2015 387.50994 BYA

David W Cameron Gona’s gone: The battle for the beachhead New Guinea 1942 940.542653 CAM

WA Cawthorne

The Kangaroo Islanders: A story of South Australia before colonisation 1823 823.1 CAW

Craig Collie

Where the flaming hell are we?: The story of young Australians and New Zealanders fighting the Nazis in Greece and Crete 940.5421 COL

John Couper-Smartt

Port Adelaide: The history of a ‘commodious harbour’ 994.231 COU

Gillian Dooley

Matthew Flinders: The man behind the map 994.020924 FLI

John A Fish

The Bounty and beyond: A textual and bibliographical investigation of William Bligh’s journals of the first breadfruit expedition 910.091823 FIS

Tim Flannery and Emma Flannery

Big Meg: The story of the largest and most mysterious predator that ever lived 597.3 FLA

Jean Fornasiero and John West-Sooby Roaming freely throughout the universe: Nicolas Baudin’s voyage to Australia and the pursuit of science 919.4042 ROA

Kate Fullagar

Bennelong & Phillip: A history unravelled 994.4020924 FUL

Ghassan Hage

The racial politics of Australian multiculturalism: White nation, against paranoid nationalism & later writings 305.8000994 HAG

Max Dulumunmun

Harrison

Gurawul the whale: An ancient story for our time 305.89915 HAR

Freda Hodge

Survival and sanctuary: Testimonies of the Holocaust and life beyond 940.53185 SUR

Rohan Lloyd

Saving the reef: The human story behind one of Australia’s greatest environmental treasures 577.789 LLO

David Marr

Killing for country: A family story 994.02 MAR

Andrew McConville

In search of the last continent: Australia and early Antarctic exploration 919.89 MCC

W Motyka

People of Ukrainian ancestry and the Hunter region, NSW: Post-WWII displaced persons migrants 304.8940477 PEO

Iskander Mydin and Rachel Eng Changi Chapel and Museum: Remembering the internees and legacies of Changi 940.547252 CHA

Brendan O’Shannassy Superyacht captain: Life and leadership in the world’s most incredible industry 387.5092 OSH

Alli Parker

At the foot of the cherry tree 823.4 PAR

David Pearson

Speaking volumes: Books with histories 002 PEA

Reneé Pettitt-Schipp

The archipelago of us: A search for our identity in Australia’s most remote territories 994.8 PET

Adrian Howkins and Peder Roberts (eds)

The Cambridge history of the polar regions 919.89 POL

Alan Powell Bold & lucky: Australia’s colonial navy, 1824–1831 359.00994 POW

PJ Smith

The lost ship SS Waratah: Searching for the Titanic of the south 910.4530968 SMI

Marguerita Stephens with Fay Stewart-Muir

The years of terror: Banbu-deen: Kulin and colonists at Port Phillip 1835–1851 994.5102 STE

TS Stevens and HW Dick Scottish house: A history of McIlwraith, McEacharn, shipowners, merchants and miners 1875–1993 387.50994 STE

These handpicked, resilient, bright and above all tough men have left a legacy of significance and sacrifice

A unique mission

Remembering Operation Jaywick, 80 years on

This September marked the 80th anniversary of one of the most successful and daring military raids in history – World War II’s Operation Jaywick. The museum recently paid tribute to those who participated. By Stirling Smith and Neridah Wyatt-Spratt .

Once away from Australian waters, they flew a fake Japanese flag and disguised themselves as Malay fishermen. Leading Telegraphist Horrie Young recalled:

One of the least pleasant parts of the operation was the requirement to stain our bodies completely with a particularly obnoxious dark brown dye and don sarongs, so that from a distance we looked like Malayan fishermen.

Able Seaman Mostyn Berryman said, ‘We had to recoat ourselves every few days and I won’t mention painting parts that you could not do yourself.’

THE MEN OF OPERATION JAYWICK were remembered in a ceremony at the museum on 26 September. The mission’s dangers, trials and triumphs were evoked through extracts from the men’s journal entries, read by museum staff, and excerpts from recorded interviews.

None of the Jaywick operatives are still alive, but present to honour them were relatives, veterans, service personnel and others who wished to celebrate their memory.

Operation Jaywick was conducted from 1 September to 19 October 1943 and involved a clandestine attack by a group of six Allied operatives against Japanese shipping at Singapore.

After a month of gruelling training, the mission proper began in Exmouth in Western Australia, with 14 commandos sailing north towards Indonesia aboard a captured Japanese fishing boat, renamed MV Krait

Strict security measures were put in place by mission commander Captain Ivan Lyon, Horrie Young recorded:

Positively nothing was to be allowed to go over the side, such as matches, cigarette butts, toilet paper or food scraps, unless in a perforated metal container – anything that might indicate the presence of Europeans in the area to enemy patrol boats or submarines.

Krait might have been a ‘horrible looking craft’, according to Berryman, but the former Japanese fishing boat was unremarkable in these waters, and remained undetected. At Panjang Island, six operatives and three folboats (folding canoes) disembarked from Krait . The reserve team and the six crew members remained onboard and headed back towards Borneo to await the completion of the mission.

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On board MV Krait en route to the Singapore area during Operation Jaywick. Back row: Able Seaman (AB) Walter Falls; Acting Leading Seaman Kevin Cain; Major Ivan Lyon; Lieutenant (Lt) Hubert Carse; Leading Stoker James McDowell. Front row: AB Andrew Huston; AB Mostyn Berryman; Leading Telegraphist Horace Young. Image Australian War Memorial P000986.001

02

Group portrait after the completion of Operation Jaywick (names marked with an asterisk denote a Krait crew member who subsequently joined Operation Rimau). Back row: ABs Mostyn Berryman, Frederick Marsh*, Arthur Jones and Andrew Huston* Centre row: Corporal (Cpl) Andrew Crilly; Acting Leading Seaman Kevin Cain; Leading Stoker James McDowell; Leading Telegraphist Horace Young; AB Walter Gordon Falls*; Cpl Ron Morris. Front row: Lt Hubert Edward Carse; Lt Donald Davidson*; Major (Maj) Ivan Lyon ; Maj Herbert Alan Campbell (did not accompany the expedition); Lt Robert Page Image Australian War Memorial P045424

Operation Jaywick remains one of the most successful clandestine operations in military history

01

02

After several nights of island-hopping through the archipelago and hiding in the mangroves during the day, the folboat teams reached their destination. On 26 September, they paddled into Singapore and placed limpet mines on seven Japanese ships.

Able Seaman Arthur ‘Arty’ Jones remembered:

The noise of the magnets on the holdfast of the limpets clanging on the ship’s side sounded like you were belting it with a hammer. We then turned our backs and headed back out – probably the scariest part of the trip because you were not facing the danger but had your back to it, hoping there would not be a shot fired at you.

The men back on Krait had a tense time of it, not knowing if the mission had been a success.

Navigator Ted Carse wrote in his journal on 1 October: ‘Everyone is anxiously awaiting news of the party. Another 12 hours now should be the finish or allay our fears.’ The next day, at the appointed rendezvous location, one of the canoes was waiting for them. Two days later, Horrie Young noted: ‘Last night was a very momentous occasion, the other two canoes had arrived. We picked them up amongst much excitement and a lot of back slapping.’ Krait and all crew made it back safely to Exmouth.

Operation Jaywick remains one of the most successful clandestine operations in military history. Six of the limpet mines laid by the folboat crews had detonated, destroying or damaging some 26,000 tons of Japanese shipping. The Japanese did not consider that the Allies had the ability or audacity to attack their shipping 4,000 kilometres behind their lines and concluded that it must have been an internal operation, carried out by local Chinese guerrillas and masterminded by British civilian internees held in Changi Prison. In what became known as the ‘Double Tenth’ massacre, the Kempeitai (Japanese Military Police) arrested and tortured scores of civilians and more than 40 civilian internees on suspicion of their involvement. Many were beheaded on suspicion or died during the interrogations. Of course, none of those who suffered these reprisals had participated in the raid, nor had any knowledge of it.

Following the success of Operation Jaywick, on 11 September 1944 a party of 23 joined another mission, Operation Rimau, in the South China Sea. Among them were six Jaywick veterans. The mission, as planned, had to be abandoned when the party was discovered, but a small group carried out a reduced attack using folboats, which resulted in three enemy vessels being sunk. Four operatives, on the run after the attack, lost their lives and one was captured. After regrouping at a rear base, the survivors split into smaller groups to try to reach Australia in small boats. Most were killed in intermittent fighting on the way south. Others were captured. Ten of those captured were taken to Singapore and beheaded on 7 July 1945, five weeks before the end of the war. The surviving crew of MV Krait, and their wives, mothers and girlfriends, kept in touch with the relatives of the Rimau operatives in the aftermath of the mission, expressing their deep affection for those who died and those left behind.

These handpicked, resilient, bright and above all tough men have left a legacy of significance and sacrifice. The last Jaywick operative, Mostyn Berryman, died three years ago, aged 96. His daughter, Margaret Arnold, said:

In his later years, as he embraced his own mortality, his reflections turned to the consequences that faced the residents of Singapore and to the loss of crew members, particularly Andrew Huston.

I know he would want the legacy of the Krait to be focused on the brave crew of both missions and their place in Australia’s military history.

Even at the end, the Krait , the crew, and the mission were still very much in his thoughts.

Stirling Smith is a contract curator at the museum. Neridah Wyatt-Spratt is the Manager, Events and Activations.

The editor wishes to thank Lynette Silver AM MBE for kindly reviewing this article.

Some of those who attended the commemorative event at the museum, in front of MV Krait ANMM image

Study for Australian commandos attacking Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour, September 1943 by Dennis Adams, 1969. Australian War Memorial ART 28538

Remembering the Black Armada

Standing strong for Indonesian independence

IN AN EVENT ORGANISED by the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), a plaque was recently unveiled at the museum, dedicated to the wharf labourers and seafarers who defied Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia in the late 1940s.

For decades, the Netherlands exercised colonial rule over the Dutch East Indies, before ceding control to Japan during World War II. After the war ended, the Dutch East Indies declared its independence –and a new name, Indonesia – in August 1945.

The Dutch still sought to re-establish their control throughout the Indonesian archipelago, but Indonesian leaders resisted all imperial or colonial rule.

Indonesian troops who had been employed by the Dutch in Australia during the wartime Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia refused orders to fight their comrades in the new Indonesian Republic.

Paddy Crumlin (second from right) with Mick Doleman, retired National Deputy Secretary MUA; Mathias Thambing, President of KPI (Kesatuan Pelaut Indonesia/ Indonesian Seafarers’ Union); Vedi Kurnia Buana, Indonesian Consul General; and I Dewa Nyoman Budiasa, General Secretary of KPI. Image courtesy MUA

Soon afterward, Indonesian seafarers walked off ships, refusing to carry troops, munitions and supplies against their own people. The first Indonesian crew strike occurred in Melbourne, and the Sydney branch of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) was the first to declare black bans on Dutch arms ships.

Eventually, some 31 Australian unions and four Asian seafarer unions in Australia (Indonesian, Chinese, Indian and Malay) also boycotted Dutch ships.

The Australian Government, led by Ben Chifley, directed employers of stevedoring workers to refuse to provide services to Dutch ships, effectively joining the Commonwealth Government to the bans.

In all, some 559 vessels were black banned by unions between 1945 and 1949. The bans spread to become truly international, with 15 nations worldwide – including China, India, and the USA – joining in. By late 1949, the Dutch Government ceded to the newly independent Indonesia.

A commemorative plaque was unveiled at the Australian National Maritime Museum on 13 October, in the presence of maritime workers and members of the Indonesian community. Paddy Crumlin, MUA National Secretary and museum councillor, commended the bonds of solidarity and internationalism at the heart of the Black Armada bans:

The Maritime Union of Australia is proud of the Black Armada union boycott against Dutch arms shipments, and we are proud of our shared struggle against the colonists’ attempt to crush Indonesian Independence … Neither Australia nor Indonesia would be the countries we are today, or the friends we are today, without this shared history of struggle, solidarity and commitment to justice.

Compiled from materials supplied by the Maritime Union of Australia.

An exceptional contribution

Volunteers awarded for care of HMAS Kara Kara’s engine

THE MUSEUM’S VOLUNTEERS bring their skills, knowledge and commitment to many of our operations. In November, two of them were recognised for their exceptional contribution to the conservation of the National Maritime Collection.

The Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM) is the professional body for conservators who work to preserve the cultural heritage held by museums, art galleries, libraries and archives across the country. It presents numerous annual awards that recognise excellence in this sector. In November, at a ceremony held in Canberra at the National Gallery of Australia, museum volunteers Eric Deshon and Peter Baldridge were named as winners of the prestigious Outstanding Conservation Volunteer Award for 2023.

Since 2009 and 2011 respectively, Eric and Peter have played an active role in conserving vessels and large technology objects in the museum’s collection. Most notable has been their commitment to the care of the HMAS Kara Kara steam engine over the past decade, and it was for this that they were honoured.

In their professional lives, Eric and Peter each pursued careers in the petroleum industry. Consequently, their technical skills have made an invaluable contribution to preserving the triple-expansion marine reciprocating steam engine from the Sydney Harbour ferry, and later Royal Australian Navy (RAN) boom defence vessel, HMAS Kara Kara. Eric and Peter have an intimate knowledge of this object and what is required for its ongoing operation. Their persistent efforts have maintained the engine in a condition that preserves its ability to function.

Eric and Peter relish the opportunity to share their passion for HMAS Kara Kara ’s engine with conservation students, who help with weekly maintenance tasks while interning at the museum. Eric and Peter also participate in regular ‘Conservation on Display’ events, at which the public can see the engine being maintained, while hearing about its history and significance.

Eric and Peter have both served in the RAN Reserve. This experience is directly relevant to their role as museum volunteers in the Fleet Services team, as most of their duties relate to the conservation of ex-RAN vessels, including patrol boat HMAS Advance, destroyer HMAS Vampire and submarine HMAS Onslow

The museum wishes to congratulate Eric and Peter for this well-deserved recognition of work that takes place, often unnoticed, behind the scenes.

Nick Flood, Senior Conservator – Special Projects

Museum volunteers Peter Baldridge (left) and Eric Deshon with conservation intern Belle Williams. Image Nick Flood/ANMM

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

Peter Dexter AM

John Mullen AM

Valerie Taylor AM

Ambassadors

Norman Banham

Christine Sadler

Dr David and Jennie Sutherland

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The Sid Faithfull and Christine Sadler

Acquisition Program

David & Jennie Sutherland Foundation

Honorary Research Associates

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John Dikkenberg

Dr Nigel Erskine

Dr Ian MacLeod

Jeffrey Mellefont

David Payne

Lindsey Shaw

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Margaret Cusack

Basil Jenkins

Dr Keith Jones

RADM Andrew Robertson AO DSC RN

Geoff and Beryl Winter

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Dr Kathy Abbass

Robert Albert AO RFD RD

Bob Allan

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Maria Bentley

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Marcus Blackmore AM

John Blanchfield

Alexander Books

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Robert Clifford AO

Helen Clift

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Kay Cottee AO

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Stephen Crane

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Laurie Dilks

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John Farrell

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Bernard Flack

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Sally Fletcher

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John Gibbins

Anthony Gibbs

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Paul Gorrick

Lee Graham

Macklan Gridley

VADM Mark Hammond AM

RADM Simon Harrington AM

Jane Harris

Christopher Harry

Gaye Hart AM

Janita Hercus

Robyn Holt

William Hopkins OAM

Julia Horne

Kieran Hosty

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Marilyn Jenner

John Jeremy AM

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Hon Dr Tricia Kavanagh

John Keelty

Richard Keyes

Kris Klugman OAM

Judy Lee

Matt Lee

David Leigh

Keith Leleu OAM

Andrew Lishmund

James Litten

Hugo Llorens

Tim Lloyd Ian Mackinder

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Will Mather

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Lyn McHale

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Alwyn Murray

Martin Nakata

David O’Connor

Gary Paquet

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Prof John Penrose AM

Neville Perry

Hon Justice Anthe Philippides

Peter Pigott AM

Len Price

Eda Ritchie AM

John Rothwell AO

Peter Rout

Kay Saunders AM

Kevin Scarce AC CSC RAN

David Scott-Smith

Sergio Sergi

Ann Sherry AO

Ken Sherwell

Shane Simpson AM

Peter John Sinclair AM CSC

Peter R Sinclair AC KStJ (RADM)

John Singleton AM

Brian Skingsley

Eva Skira AM

Bruce Stannard AM

J J Stephens OAM

Michael Stevens

Neville Stevens AO

Frank Talbot AM

Mitchell Turner

Adam Watson

Ian Watt AC

Jeanette Wheildon

Hon Margaret White AO

Mary-Louise Williams AM

Nerolie Withnall

Cecilia Woolford (née Caffrey)

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Gundomar Eibegger of Radio Austria interviewing a migrant child prior to the family taking the train from Salzburg to Genoa to board the ICEM chartered Aurelia to Australia. ANMM Collection Gift from Barbara Alysen

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ANMM Council

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Ms Daryl Karp AM

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