Signals 148

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Bearings

From the Director

WELCOME TO THE SPRING EDITION of Signals

It’s been a busy winter, with the launch of the spectacular Wildlife Photographer of the Year, winter school holiday programming for our younger exhibition visitors, the wonderful Guruwin – Sharks of Sydney Harbour by Erth and the ongoing works taking place on our foreshore. Our new harbour boardwalk is racing toward completion for summer. The result will give us greater accessibility and a greener environment (lots of plants!). So come and visit us in summer.

In the meantime, we have much to entice you to visit –our new exhibition, Inundated, features the magnificent work of Northern Rivers photographer Natalie Grono as she explored the 2022 floods in Lismore and surrounding areas. Recently acquired for the National Maritime Collection, Grono’s images document the aftermath of the historic eastern Australian floods in February and March 2022 and the challenges left behind once the waters receded. The pictured image, Peter takes a moment, was awarded the Nikon Walkley Photo of the Year Award in 2022.

And if you haven’t yet been to Wildlife Photographer of the Year, another must-see experience, you have until the end of November to catch it. Once again, this magnificent collection from the Natural History Museum in London showcases the best of nature photography from around the world. This will be followed by the next Ocean Photographer of the Year exhibition in conjunction with Oceanographic magazine.

The highlight for spring is Challenging the Deep, which has spent several years touring the world. The exhibition, which displays the work of James Cameron, comes back to the museum updated with new objects from Cameron’s many adventures, which we’ll share in an upcoming Signals (so stay tuned).

This edition of Signals is rich with stories that shape our maritime narratives and add to our understanding of our island nation shaped by sea. The article marking the 25th anniversary of our Welcome Wall, the National Monument to Migration, will be of great interest, I’m sure. It is a joy to welcome families to the museum twice each year when we unveil new names on the panels.

As always, I would be delighted to hear from the museum family about what matters to you, so please, if you have any ideas, drop me a line at 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.

Wardell resident Peter with a discarded pile of his life’s possessions outside his home. Image © Natalie Grono, 2022. ANMM Collection 00056551

Contents

Spring 2024

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.

Cover A graphic novel image that features in the new exhibition

A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck depicts South Australian ’s captain JBT MacFarlane contemplating an approaching gale that ultimately results in the loss of his ship. See story on page 16. Artwork by Holger Deuter

2 Return to an island of wrecks

King Island and the Cataraqui tragedy of 1845

10 Through Valerie’s lens

Fear and fascination: how Valerie Taylor helped shape our view of sharks

16 Confined comic collaborators

COVID-19 lockdown inspires a creative partnership

22 Pride of the fleet

Strategic alliances, fleet reviews and sovereign shipbuilding in 1924

30 Remembering Operation Rimau

80 years since the tragic sequel to Operation Jaywick

34 Moana Oceania

Commonwealth Association of Museums triennial conference 2024

40 A mystery of submarine AE2

What was its last pennant number?

44 Into the deep

An extract from Deep Water by James Bradley

50 Wreck spotting on Planespotting Beach

A mysterious dugout canoe washes ashore at Botany Bay

53 Thank you to our supporters

Foundation news

54 Maritime heritage in miniature

Sydney Heritage Fleet’s model ship building workshop

58 Pride and passion

A model of ‘the Duchess’, Herzogin Cecilie

60 Members news and events

Talks and tours this spring

64 Exhibitions

What’s on show this season

68 National Monument to Migration

Celebrating a quarter century of our Welcome Wall

70 Settlement Services International

SSI’s Yamamah Agha speaks of her migration experience

72 Readings

The Melbourne–Voyager collision; William Dawes; humpback whales

78 Currents

EXPO 2024; NAIDOC celebrations; vale Adrian Horridge; vale Hugh Edwards

King Island lies right on the 19th-century shipping route between Europe and the eastern colonies of Australia

Return to an island of wrecks

King Island and Cataraqui 1845

King Island, in Bass Strait, is infamous for the many shipwrecks in its waters. Among them is the Cataraqui, an emigrant barque that wrecked on the island’s west coast in 1845 with the loss of more than 400 lives.

Earlier this year, Kieran Hosty, Irini Malliaros and Julia Sumerling visited the site of Australia’s worst civil maritime disaster.

Just inshore from where Cataraqui was wrecked lie thin bands of razor-sharp schist. Victims of Cataraqui, dragged to and fro over the schist, were rapidly cut to pieces in the pounding seas. Kieran Hosty (ANMM) and Irini Malliaros (I AM Archaeology, Habitat and Heritage) stand just above the scene of the wreck. Image Julia Sumerling

IN JANUARY 1993, while surveying shipwrecks of King Island for the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service, maritime archaeologist Kieran Hosty was given the rare opportunity to dive the site of the Cataraqui wreck. This year, an opportunity presented itself to revisit the site, with colleagues Irini Malliaros and Julia Sumerling, and record the wreck’s impact on the local King Island community for a potential television documentary.

Bass Strait – threading the needle

King Island guards the western entrance to Bass Strait, and lies right on the 19th-century shipping route between Europe and the eastern colonies of Australia. At 64 kilometres in length and 24 kilometres wide, it presented a formidable obstacle to the mariners of the day, who described navigating the passage between Tasmania and Victoria as ‘threading the eye of a needle’.

King Island is noted for its rough and rapidly changing seas. Being low-lying, it was often not seen until the very last moment, and more than 100 ships are known to have been wrecked along its coastline. They include Neva in 1835, with the loss of 244 lives, and in 1845, the barque Cataraqui, which resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people.

The wrecking of Cataraqui (pronounced ‘Ca-TARRAkee’) resounded throughout the Australian colonies in the 1840s and still resonates today among King Islanders, who consider themselves guardians of the wreck, its relics and the mass graves of those who were lost. They continue to commemorate the wrecking event of Cataraqui, along with those of Neva and British Admiral (1874), through place names, school sports houses, memorials, museum exhibitions, maritime trails, booklets and publications.

Coming to Australia

In the early 19th century, spurred on by cheap land and a booming agricultural sector, the economies of both Victoria and New South Wales grew rapidly, increasing the demand for skilled and unskilled labour. In response, the colonies sought more workers from the United Kingdom (which, after 1801, included Ireland) to address the labour shortage. Among these were the passengers of the Cataraqui.

The ship sailed from Liverpool, England, for the Port Phillip District on 20 April 1845 under the command of Captain Christopher Finlay. It had a mixed cargo of coal, slate, timber, rum and nails and a complement of 369 (some sources state 367) passengers and 46 crew. Boarding the ship were 61 families, some with as many as nine children, along with 50 single women and men. Nearly half of the passengers were under the age of 14; 22 of them were infants under 12 months. The emigrants were mainly English, with some from Ireland.

After a relatively uneventful voyage the barque was beset by a series of heavy gales as it approached the Australian coast in late July and early August, preventing Captain Finlay from taking accurate navigational sightings. Unsure of his position but aware that the barque was fast approaching Bass Strait, Finlay ordered the ship to ‘heave to’, turning it into the wind and arranging the sails to prevent any real progress.

In peril at sea

The gale eased on the evening of 3 August 1845. Believing that Cataraqui was close to Portland on the southeastern coast of the mainland, when in fact it was 60 to 70 nautical miles further south and dangerously close to the western shore of King Island, Finlay gave the order to proceed.

Mariners of the day described navigating Bass Strait as ‘threading the eye of a needle’

Cape Wickham Lighthouse –Australia’s tallest, at 48 metres – was built at the northern tip of King Island in 1861, in response to the Cataraqui disaster. Image Julia Sumerling

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In 1993, maritime archaeologists Kieran Hosty and Mike Nash managed to dive the site of Cataraqui. Its wooden and iron capstan was the largest artefact observed on site. Image Mike Nash, Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service

There is only one direct eyewitness account of what followed. Chief Mate Thomas Guthrie (sometimes spelt Guthrey or Guthery) was on deck at 4.30 am when the vessel struck a reef while travelling at around 7 knots. Subsequent strikes followed, the hold quickly filled with water and the vessel heeled over onto its port side. The seas began breaking over the deck, sweeping dozens of passengers and crew into the sea. Finlay ordered the masts to be cut away and the ship’s boats launched.

Dawn revealed that the 200 or so remaining passengers and crew on board were only 100 metres or so offshore at the northern end of what is now Fitzmaurice Bay. They had run aground on a particularly hazardous section of coast separated from safe land by bands of hard, jagged, razor-sharp schist (a metamorphic rock known for splitting into thin plates or sheets): 1

By daybreak numerous dead bodies were floating around the ship and hanging from the exposed rocks.

Over the next 24 hours, pounded constantly by the sea, the vessel broke up. First it split in two, throwing between 70 and 100 people into the water, and then it parted again, this time near the foremast, leaving some 30 survivors sheltering in the bow. On the morning of 5 August, Captain Finlay attempted to swim a line ashore but was forced back by the sea and currents. All other attempts at floating lines ashore on barrels and wreckage failed.

Eventually nine men – emigrant Samuel Brown, Chief Mate Thomas Guthrie and seven crew –staggered ashore on the uninhabited island. These, the only survivors, were found by David Howie, a former convict who, after being emancipated, became a fur trader. He was on the island hunting seals and wallabies for their skins. Howie gave the survivors food and shelter but, as his own vessel had also been wrecked, the group remained on the island for five weeks before being rescued on 7 September 1845. During that time, Howie and the Cataraqui survivors collected and buried 342 bodies that had washed ashore. They created six mass graves, one of which held more than 200 victims.

The location left our team with a strong sense of horror at what took place that night in 1845, in raging seas. It is hard to imagine a more brutal place for a ship to meet its end. ‘Poor souls, they perished.’ 2

Memorials and mementoes

When the news reached Melbourne, the loss of 400 lives, the arrival of the survivors and Howie’s accounts created a huge sensation. Public events were quickly arranged to assist the survivors and reward the rescuers. A memorial to the tragedy, a large iron plaque in the shape of a tombstone, was erected on King Island just inshore of the wreck in 1846. This eventually corroded away due to constant blasting by sea spray, sand and wind, and was replaced by a more robust stone cairn in 1960.

For several years after the event, Howie acted as an informal guide, taking visitors to the island. Bishop Francis Nixon, the first bishop of Van Diemens Land, wrote of his visit in November 1854: 3

The strand was a melancholy sight: signs of wreck and desolation, meeting us at every step. Huge timbers were lying amongst the rocks, doors, planks, spars, casks, were scattered on every side, relics, as Howie told us of the unfortunate Cataraqui … ‘Yonder’, he said pointing to the rocks, ‘I dragged on shore the bodies of eighteen poor girls; some locked in each’s other arms, others bent and twisted with the most distorted forms’

A stone cairn was erected in 1960 to replace the original memorial to the tragedy, an iron plaque. Image Julia Sumerling

Irini Malliaros (left) and Julia Sumerling undertake detailed photographic recording of an anchor and iron knee installed in the centre of the main roundabout in Currie to commemorate the wreck of Cataraqui. Image Kieran Hosty

More than 100 ships are known to have been wrecked along the coastline of King Island

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Luke Agati, president of the King Island Historical Society and a noted authority on the history of the island and the wreck of Cataraqui. An integral part of the 2024 survey work was to interview long-time residents on King Island and record what sort of impact shipwrecks had on the local community.

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During the 2024 survey work, memorials that contained shipwreck artefacts such as anchors, iron knees and ballast were recorded for conservation and archaeological research purposes. Here, Irini Malliaros and Kieran Hosty record a pre-1850 anchor. A later-era anchor can be partially seen at far left.

Images Julia Sumerling

While the island was not permanently inhabited at the time of the wreck, and the site was not visible from the shoreline, the wreck lived on in the memories of the survivors, their rescuer Howie and their descendants. It became part of the psyche of the King Islanders, some of whom, in the mid-1950s, dived the wreck and began recovering items for public display and commemoration. These artefacts, including cannon, anchors, and iron knees, are now displayed at various locations around the island, including the King Island Museum; on the main street of Currie, the principal town; and at Fitzmaurice Bay. The memorial that stands at the bay, in sight of but further inshore from the point of wrecking and the commemorative cairn, states that it marks the site of one of the mass graves. These locations have become the focus of regular commemoration events.

Our team filmed and documented these and other key locations around the island associated with the wreck. Notably the most poignant aspect of the Fitzmaurice Bay memorial is the plaque affixed to one of its sides, listing the name and age of every single person on board Cataraqui who was lost to the sea.

The two anchors installed as outdoor memorials on the main street of Currie and the cannon kept outdoors at the King Island Museum were measured and photographed for 3D digital reconstruction purposes. These, as well as the iron knee on the museum grounds, were also archaeologically recorded. These tasks were particularly important given the objects’ exposure to the elements and the potential loss of information over time.

In addition to these larger objects dotted around the island, an impressive collection of artefacts resides within the collection of the King Island Historical Society. There, diverse items have been carefully curated, interpreted and placed on display: ship’s fastenings, pump fittings, the valve from a patent water closet (toilet), pulley sheaves, copper sheathing, a ship’s chronometer, furniture fittings, a copper-alloy gudgeon, candlesticks, iron nails (from the cargo), ceramic jars and jugs, and glass bottles. These artefacts are tangible reminders of the lives of the many emigrants and crew who died in 1845.

Two anchors from Cataraqui are installed as outdoor memorials on the main street of Currie, the island’s principal town

As for the wreck site itself, when Kieran Hosty first visited in 1993, it was still notably marked by the presence of an iron-bound timber capstan lying in one of the shallow gullies running up towards the inshore reefs, along with the remains of iron anchor chain and copper sheathing. While diving was not possible in 2024, we did find, scattered among the rock pools and reef flats inshore of the wreck, numerous pieces of coal (remnants of Cataraqui ’s 500-ton coal cargo) and fragments of iron concretion, either from the remains of the vessel’s iron knees and riders or possible fragments from the former iron memorial on the site.

The team also took advantage of the non-diving conditions to talk with and interview key members of the local community on their experience of King Island, particularly relating to the story and wreck of Cataraqui The importance of capturing the words and sentiments coming from the community quickly became apparent and was stark evidence of how the wrecking event permeates King Island today.

Given its position, exposed to the Southern Ocean swell and the winds of the Roaring Forties, diving on the site is rarely possible. Thanks, however, to the passion of the King Islanders in remembering their maritime stories, and in their role as guardians and protectors of the site, the story of Cataraqui and those who died on it continues, never to be forgotten on this island of wrecks.

1 Henderson, G, 2016. Swallowed by the sea – The story of Australia’s shipwrecks . National Library of Australia, Canberra, page 126.

2 Lemon, A and M Morgan, 1986. Poor souls, they perished. The Cataraqui Australia’s worst shipwreck. Hargreen Publishing, North Melbourne.

3 Nixon, FR, 1857. The cruise of the Beacon: A narrative of a visit to the islands of Bass’s Straits . Bell & Daldy, London, pp 99–100.

The authors and filming team would like to thank Luke Agati, President, King Island Historical Society; Evelyn Caro, King Island Tourism Inc; Kevin Grave, fifth-generation King Islander; Jill Munro, King Island Historical Society; Mike Nash, State Maritime Archaeologist, National Parks and Wildlife Service, Tasmania; David Reed, David and Toni Reed Plumbing Contractors, King Island; and King Island Car Rental.

Kieran Hosty is the Manager, Maritime Archaeology at the museum; Irini Malliaros is Director of I AM Archaeology, Habitat and Heritage; and Julia Sumerling is a photographer, videographer and dive instructor.

It is often quite difficult to get sharks to attack –even when you’re trying very hard

Blue Water, White Death: a close encounter with a great white shark, off Durban, South Africa, 1969–70. Image ANMS 1457 [202]

Through Valerie’s lens

How we see sharks

Over more than 60 years as a diver, photographer and film-maker, Valerie Taylor has helped to shape and change our view of sharks. By Emily Jateff, Curator of Ocean Science and Technology.

WHENEVER I HUMBLEBRAG that I know Valerie Taylor AO, the usual response is, ‘The shark lady!’ She’s also an awardwinning photographer, conservationist and storyteller, with vast knowledge of the marine environment and its inhabitants, but yes … in the hive mind, she is the woman who connects us to sharks.

Ron and Valerie Taylor sold their first feature, Playing with Sharks , to Movietone News in 1962. Valerie, while an excellent photographer, was more often in front of the lens, providing scale and appeal, as well as an almost inhuman ability to bond with marine species. Playing with Sharks was quickly followed by Shark Hunter (1963) with Ben Cropp, Slaughter at Saumarez (1964) and Revenge of a Shark Victim (1965). In these early years, the Taylors, keen to get their projects selected and seen by a wide audience, shot and titled films designed to titillate and elicit terror.

Their first global film shoot, Blue Water, White Death (1971), is an exercise in anticipation, given that you don’t see a great white shark until the final moments. Directed by Peter Gimbel, the film starred the Taylors and noted diver and cinematographer Stan Waterman. It follows our protagonists as they chase great white sharks throughout 1969 and 1970 in the waters off Durban, South Africa; Dangerous Reef, South Australia; and in the Indian Ocean. The divers eschewed cages to swim freely among whales and chum in search of the perfect shot. It was a revelation in underwater film-making.

While rare, shark attacks do happen. In 2023, there were 69 attacks globally, with 15 unprovoked incidents in Australia.1 The Australian Shark Incident Database –which includes all known attacks in our waters since 1791 – mentions four for 2024, including one fatality.

Yet most of the blame for how we feel about sharks is placed on Jaws, the 1975 Hollywood blockbuster based on the 1974 book by Peter Benchley. Director Steven Spielberg purchased the rights to the film before the book was published, seeing in it a chance to replicate his success with the psychological thriller Duel, but this time with a man-eating shark.

Spielberg was concerned about authentically replicating great white sharks through puppetry alone, but he had seen the real great whites featured in Blue Water, White Death and Ron and Valerie Taylor’s Inner Space (a 1973 television series). So, in mid-1973, the studio hired Ron and Valerie Taylor – for a sum that enabled them to finally move out of a house that Valerie hated.

Over the following months, the Taylors and their team took a series of trips to Dangerous Reef in South Australia – known as one of the best spots in the world for great whites. For days the sharks wouldn’t play along, just swimming curiously around their boat Trade Winds, uninterested in the bait. In February 1974, it all changed, when a curious shark became entangled in the cage, putting on a heck of a show as it tried to get loose:2

A curious shark became entangled in the cage, putting on a heck of a show as it tried to get loose

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Jaws : a light-hearted moment on set. Valerie reading Jaws while peeking out of a cage in full dive gear, off Martha’s Vineyard, USA, 1973–74. Image ANMS 1463 [318]

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Jaws : a great white shark gets tangled in the cage attached to the stunt boat Skippy, Dangerous Reef, South Australia, February 1974. Image ANMS 1463 [326]

I ran for the movie camera. Came out filming. The shark had his head and the top half of his body in the boat … I raced back with the 16mm Bolex … The shark was still thrashing around, geysers of spray obliterated Skippy [the stunt boat]. The noise was incredible, splitting wood, cage against boat, shark against boat.

The shark eventually broke loose and escaped, but the footage captured by the Taylors that day was so good that Spielberg changed the script to include it.

Jaws was a phenomenal success, the highest grossing film of its time, and it accelerated the Taylors’ transition from documentary heroes to worldwide celebrities. Yet the spectre of the bloodthirsty animatronic shark ‘Bruce’ haunted moviegoers, who turned to killing sharks for sport. Valerie was horrified. Supported by the studio, she went on a ‘sharks redemption tour.’ Beaming into living rooms across America, she separated fact from fiction in an attempt to stop the slaughter.

As the examples above show, it is often quite difficult to get sharks to attack – even when you’re trying very hard. Valerie has spent the time since Jaws trying to help us understand this. Many of the Taylors’ later films and series focused on quelling fear through features about working safely with sharks, such as Operation Shark Bite (1979), which tested the feasibility of their famous stainless-steel mesh dive suit, and the award-winning 1997 television movie Shark Pod Among many other conservation triumphs, in 1984, Valerie’s tireless efforts helped to secure protection for grey nurse sharks in New South Wales waters.

In the hive mind, Valerie Taylor is the woman who connects us to sharks

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Wildlife documentary film-maker and producer Bettina Dalton first met her ‘childhood superhero’ when directing the 1999 series Shadow of a Shark Bettina and Valerie became fast friends; Bettina was later executive producer of a documentary about Valerie’s life, Playing with Sharks, which was an official selection for the Sundance Festival (2021). A clip from this film is screening in our exhibition Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life.

Bettina and Valerie are now hard at work on the major impact campaign ‘String of Pearls’. This includes outreach and engagement with First Nations, community science and marine tourism, and through the Spot a Shark program. 3 Bettina says:

A lasting friendship and working relationship [mean we can] partner in conservation and impact work for marine life, culminating in our current campaign ‘String of Pearls’ with the ambition to have a string of no-take zones established from the New South Wales south coast to southeastern Queensland to protect grey nurse shark aggregation sites.

This impact campaign includes an accompanying film, How to Save a Shark: featuring Valerie Taylor, starring three generations of Australian women led by one fearless octogenarian warrior.

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Ron and Valerie untangle and free a shark caught in the cage while filming Ron and Valerie Taylor’s Inner Space, television series, 1973, location unknown. Image ANMS 1467 [156]

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Blue Water, White Death: Valerie Taylor on the deck of Terrier VIII preparing for her next dive, off Durban, South Africa, 1969–70. Image ANMS 1458 [189]

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Valerie with Taylor Ladd-Hudson, 15, her co-star in How to Save a Shark: featuring Valerie Taylor, a documentary being produced by WildBear Entertainment. Image Daniel Ladd-Hudson

Over the last 60-plus years, Valerie Taylor’s underwater adventures have helped shape the public perception of sharks. She has always seen sharks as a subject worthy of attention, and through her conservation and protection work, as a valued part of a stable marine ecosystem. While she is more than just a ‘shark lady’, there is no question that we owe much of our collective understanding of sharks to Valerie. When she speaks of saving them now, perhaps we should listen.

1 Florida Museum of Natural History International Shark Attack File 2023 Shark Attack Report.

2 Quote from Valerie Taylor’s personal diaries 1969–75, graciously provided by Valerie Taylor for research purposes.

3 Spot a Shark is a citizen science program that uses photos of grey nurse sharks, provided by divers, to identify individual animals through AI to track health, location and population trends. Upload your photos now: www.spotashark.com

Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life is on show at the museum until 30 September 2024. The Valerie Taylor Image Collection is available online through the National Maritime Collection portal: collections.sea.museum

All images in this article, except for 03 above, are © Valerie Taylor Australian National Maritime Museum Collection Reproduced courtesy of the Ron and Valerie Taylor Collection.

Full-page illustration from the graphic novel South Australian: The Story of a Ship(wreck), showing South Australian struggling in heavy seas after losing one of its bower anchors. All images Holger Deuter/ University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserslautern, Germany

The exhibition features South Australian’s original logbooks, a selection of artefacts recovered from the wreck site and an innovative virtual reality experience

Confined comic collaborators

How a chance introduction (and COVID-19) led to a new exhibition

For several years, a research team has been exploring and documenting a 19th-century wreck that is now the subject of a graphic novel and a new exhibition. Dr James Hunter discusses the rewarding collaborative relationship that spurred their creation.

A NEW EXHIBITION, A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck, premiered recently at the museum. It tells the story of South Australian, a British barque wrecked near modern-day Victor Harbor, South Australia, in December 1837 and investigated between 2018 and 2022 by a collaborative research team that included museum maritime archaeologists (see Signals 130 and 142).

The exhibition features both of South Australian ’s original logbooks, a selection of artefacts recovered from the shipwreck site, and plenty of information in the form of label text, images, graphics, three short films and an innovative virtual reality experience (VRE) that enables museum visitors to virtually ‘dive’ South Australian ’s wreck site, as well as ‘stand’ on the weather deck of the re-created barque before it sank.

The many elements of A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck are thematically linked by vivid comic book artwork created by Holger Deuter

The many elements of A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck are thematically linked by vivid comic book artwork created by Holger Deuter, a professor of virtual design at the University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserslautern (Germany). That artwork is derived from a graphic novel about South Australian ’s loss that Holger and I created while we were sequestered in our respective homes during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Holger and I already knew each other, and indeed had collaborated well before the first lockdowns commenced.

In March 2019, the museum’s former director, Kevin Sumption, invited me to a meeting with faculty and staff from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) to discuss the prospect of integrating shipwreck imagery into digital artwork. While the idea was intriguing, I was more interested in discussing the prospect of developing a headset-based VRE that would enable users to learn about a shipwreck by way of a fully immersive and interactive ‘dive’. Holger was a visiting researcher and digital artist at UTS and, fortuitously, attended the meeting as well. The two of us quickly hit it off and before long had agreed to work together to develop a shipwreck VRE about the paddle steamer Herald, which sank at Sydney Harbour’s entrance in 1884, and was the subject of 3D photogrammetric surveys in 2016 and 2019 (see Signals 117 and 128). Under Holger’s direction, seven master’s students successfully created the PS Herald VRE as a semester research project. Unfortunately, the first cases of COVID began to emerge just as their efforts neared completion and the VRE – along with all other exhibition components that could potentially facilitate transmission of the virus – was shelved for the foreseeable future.

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South Australian ’s captain, John Boyd Thorburn MacFarlane, yells orders to his First Officer, JG Harper, in a panel from the graphic novel.

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Holger Deuter’s dynamic artwork captures dramatic moments recorded in South Australian ’s logbook, including transfer of the stream anchor from the barque’s weather deck into one of the whaleboats.

As the pandemic took hold and lockdowns were enforced, Holger and I found ourselves stuck at home and catching up via occasional Zoom meetings. One day we discussed what we might collaborate on next, and I mentioned my long-held desire to develop a graphic novel about a shipwreck based on historical and archaeological research. I grew up reading comic books and graphic novels, and remain a voracious consumer of both, but until then had never seen a historic shipwreck account represented in either medium. Holger went quiet, and a contemplative look crossed his face. He then stated he had been a comic book illustrator at the beginning of his career and was keen to return to his ‘first artistic love’. At that point we realised we had a shared goal and agreed to devote as much of our attention to it as possible when time permitted. Holger would illustrate the volume, I would be responsible for relevant historical and archaeological research, and the two of us would work together to develop the narrative.

Over the next three-and-a-half years, our combined efforts resulted in the first of a planned five-issue graphic novel series entitled South Australian: The Story of a Ship(wreck). The first issue, The Loss, details South Australian ’s wrecking event and is based on historical

and archaeological information, including the first-hand account recorded in the barque’s logbook. For me, the appeal of creating a graphic novel about a historic shipwreck event is that it provides a means of visually depicting the circumstances surrounding the loss and its aftermath when archival forms of visual media – such as paintings, sketches or photographs – are absent. It also permitted us to present a ‘best guess’ representation of South Australian ’s appearance, and of the look and sound of the men who crewed the vessel. Only one crude sketch of the barque is known to exist and there are no known depictions of its officers and ratings, so their representations in the graphic novel were developed from comprehensive research that covered topics ranging from early iron anchor chain design and construction to vernacular spoken by English whalers during the 1830s.

The pandemic inadvertently influenced A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck in yet another way. Due to lockdowns and associated travel restrictions throughout 2020 and 2021, the museum’s maritime archaeologists were unable to conduct planned follow-up 3D photogrammetric surveys of the Lady Darling shipwreck site near Narooma on the south coast of New South Wales (see Signals 117).

However, as COVID restrictions eased in Germany and Holger and his students returned to university, the need suddenly arose for data and imagery to develop a new shipwreck VRE. South Australian was an obvious choice, given that archaeological and archival data, as well as still, video and 3D imagery associated with the site, were already available. During 2022 and 2023, I worked with Holger and a new group of his postgraduate students to create the South Australian VRE that features in the exhibition.

Looking back five years later, it’s hard to believe that a chance meeting with Holger – and an unforeseen global emergency – could have resulted in mere thought bubbles becoming tangible outcomes, and that those outcomes would be further developed to vividly share South Australian ’s story with the public.

A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck is now on at the museum. For more information on shipwrecks and research into them, see Deep Dive, the museum’s centre for maritime archaeology: https://www.sea.museum/explore/maritime-archaeology/deep-dive sea.museum/2020/09/09/the-ps-herald-vr-exprience-seven-studentsone-virtual-dive

A headset-based virtual reality experience would enable users to learn about a shipwreck by way of a fully immersive and interactive ‘dive’

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Holger Deuter’s Digital Design postgraduate students generated a ‘best guess’ re-creation of South Australian ’s 1837 appearance from a variety of historical sources.

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Part of the virtual reality experience allows users to navigate South Australian ’s weather deck as it appeared before the vessel’s loss in December 1837.

Pride of the fleet

HMAS Australia, HMS Hood and

SS Dorlonco

Australia’s maritime defence environment in 2024 shares surprising similarities with the decisions faced a century ago. Dr Peter Hobbins reconsiders strategic alliances, fleet reviews and sovereign shipbuilding in 1924.

ON 20 FEBRUARY 2024, Australia’s Ministers for Defence and Defence Industry jointly asserted that our ‘modern society and economy rely on access to the high seas: trade routes for our imports and exports, and the submarine cables for the data which enables our connection to the international economy’.1 Their announcement heralded a major boost in the nation’s surface combatant fleet, underpinned by substantial investment in sovereign shipbuilding capabilities aligned with the Australia-UK-USA (AUKUS) Treaty.

Yet this ministerial statement could equally have applied to Australia’s maritime defence environment in 1924. As historian Frank Broeze insists, our ‘island nation’ was economically dependent upon worldwide maritime trade and underwater telegraph cables.2 While global commerce had been profoundly disrupted by World War I and the subsequent ‘Spanish’ influenza pandemic, by the mid-1920s Australia’s economy was booming. Key sectors supporting the goal of industrial selfsufficiency were steel production and shipbuilding, delivering both commercial vessels and warships. Australia’s naval aspirations were, nevertheless, inextricably tied to both the UK and USA via the 1922 Washington Treaty, a five-nation pact that limited the size and composition of post-war navies. 3

The battlecruiser HMAS Australia (I) was a national symbol – and a handy way to advertise ‘navy cut’ cigarettes. Image ANMM Collection 00046754

The British Empire’s concordance with the Washington Treaty impelled Australia to scrap our flagship, HMAS Australia (I)

This was a pivotal moment for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). The recent conflict ‘had been a long, dispiriting war’, suggest naval historians Ross Gillett and Colin Graham. ‘Only HMAS Sydney, in her [1914] victory over the Emden, captured the imagination of the Australian people’.4 By 1923 just 13 ships remained in commission. Moreover, the British Empire’s concordance with the Washington Treaty impelled Australia to scrap our flagship, HMAS Australia (I). This 17,055-ton battlecruiser had been the pride of the fleet upon arrival in 1913, but was now superseded by wartime developments such as the 45,000-ton battlecruiser HMS Hood, showpiece of Britain’s Royal Navy (RN).

Spilt ink and target practice

‘A lot of Australian sentiment has been expressed, a lot of ink spilt, as to the scrapping of the “Australia”’, wrote Vice Admiral Allan Everett, Chief of the Naval Staff, to Prime Minister Stanley Bruce in November 1923. 5 Some suggested that the paid-off warship should be repurposed as a breakwater at Coffs Harbour or, alternatively, a floating war museum akin to the RN’s HMS Victory. However, the treaty’s stringent terms precluded most fates other than sinking Australia in deep water.

Scuttling was the expected solution, but Vice Admiral Everett floated an alternative: ‘the opportunity should be seized while the Special Service Squadron is at Sydney for the “Australia” to be towed to sea and then sunk by the combined gun and torpedo fire of the RN and RAN’.6 While there was a pragmatic logic to sacrificing Australia’s redundant flagship in a spectacular target practice display, this proposal missed the mark. Everett’s reference to the RN’s Special Service Squadron, however, suggested a more astute course.

Departing Devonport in southern England in November 1923, the squadron represented Britain’s commitment to its centuries-old maritime empire. Headed by the behemoth Hood, it also comprised fellow battlecruiser HMS Repulse and five light cruisers: Danae, Dauntless, Delhi, Dragon and Dunedin. These seven warships spent a year calling at ports throughout the British Empire. They included Sierra Leone on the west African coast, Cape Town in South Africa and Zanzibar off east Africa, followed by Trincomalee in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Penang’s Port Swettenham in Malaya (now Malaysia), before arriving in Singapore on 10 February 1924.

Britain was investing extraordinary sums to develop an unparalleled fleet base on this island at the entrance to the South China Sea. As the only location to escape the Washington Treaty’s prohibition on fortifying new bases in the Pacific Ocean, the Singapore program sparked parliamentary controversies in Westminster, provoked diplomatic tensions with India, New Zealand and Australia, and affronted Japan.7 ‘During the period of our stay the base-controversy was at its height’, remarked Lieutenant Charles Benstead aboard Hood. ‘So the visit of the squadron possessed a significance deeper than usual’.8 Since the treaty also constrained Japanese warship tonnage to just three-fifths that of either Britain or the USA, building the Singapore citadel was yet another snub that estranged the three wartime allies.9

Sydney had witnessed no spectacle so grand since the American ‘Great White Fleet’ called in 1908

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The 1924 visit of the British fleet generated numerous social events but fewer commemorative items than that of the 1908 Great White Fleet. Image Australian War Memorial REL47436

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The arrival of the Special Service Squadron was linked in popular culture with the announcement of the contract to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Image Sydney Mail, 5 March 1924. State Library of NSW F624.35/2A1

Departing Devonport in southern England in November 1923, the squadron represented Britain’s commitment to its centuries-old maritime empire

Regional rivalries

Driving home these emerging regional rivalries, three Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) cruisers had visited Singapore in December 1923 for a ‘goodwill’ tour. His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Ships (HIJMS) Asama, Iwate and Yakumo then voyaged to Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Netherlands East Indies, followed by Fremantle, Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney, reached on 24 January 1924. When the IJN cruisers delivered a 21-gun salute upon entering Sydney Harbour, an ‘equivalent number of guns was returned’ from the Georges Heights battery.10 Although ostensibly amicable gestures, these artillery exchanges also established competing offensive and defensive capabilities. The IJN trio then called at Wellington and Auckland in New Zealand, Noumea in French New Caledonia and Rabaul in the new Australian protectorate of New Britain, before anchoring at Truk Atoll (now Chuuk).11 This former German colonial outpost had been seized by Japan in 1914 and was destined to become a substantial forward fleet base.

Meanwhile, reinforcing Singapore’s strategic importance for Britain’s bluewater force projection, the Special Service Squadron steamed to Fremantle in just nine days. It arrived on 27 February to a rapturous welcome by Western Australians. ‘The Squadron seemed to overawe them’, suggested a patronising British travel writer billeted on Hood. ‘It was the first time in their lives that anything so great as these ships had been seen in their harbour’.12 Visits to Albany, Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart and Jervis Bay followed, before the warships slid through the Sydney Heads on 9 April.13

The city had witnessed no spectacle so grand since the American ‘Great White Fleet’ visited in 1908.

An estimated 500,000 residents lined every shore, while biplanes droned overhead and the water was thick with pleasure craft. Ferries teetered with sightseers as the squadron moored off Farm Cove and Kirribilli, facing the two headlands selected for the pylons of the planned Sydney Harbour Bridge. In fact, just weeks earlier, the English firm of Dorman Long and Company had been awarded the £4.2 million contract for this national landmark.14

A magnificent promotional painting of the bridge by architectural perspectivists Cyril Farey and Graham Dawbarn depicted Sydney’s imagined industrial and commercial future.15 This work also affirmed the engineering and naval ties of Empire, with HMS Hood standing sentinel before Australia’s largest metropolis. More mundanely, in 1924 Dorman Long commissioned three locally built 400-ton steam lighters from the State Government Dockyard at Walsh Island, near Newcastle’s new BHP steelworks. The first, named SS Dorlonco after its owners, served the Sydney Harbour Bridge project for five years. During World War II it joined the RAN as minesweeper HMAS Tolga, before being scuttled off New Guinea in 1946.

Bitterness in naval hearts

But in 1924, with the pride of the Royal Navy filling Sydney Harbour, the time had come for HMAS Australia ’s last bow. On 12 April the stripped hulk was hauled past the heads and, after the sea cocks were opened, it capsized and blew a defiant plume of spray before disappearing. There was bitterness in naval hearts that day. A souvenir album from the squadron’s world cruise includes a photograph captioned ‘Pride of Australia’s fleet, HMAS Australia being towed to her doom. Washington conference’.16

Not all was negativity, however. When the squadron weighed anchor for New Zealand on 20 April, it boasted a new member. The light cruiser HMAS Adelaide (I), launched by the Australian Commonwealth Naval Yard in October 1922, was the first substantial warship built by local industry. It was now joining the Special Service Squadron all the way to Britain. ‘I trust that you will do much to promote closer empire relations and a better understanding of Australia’s problems’, wrote Minister for Defence, Eric Bowden, to Adelaide ’s Captain John Stevenson.17

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A solitary Sydneysider ponders HIJMS Asama in Port Jackson, January 1924. Image Samuel J Hood Studio, ANMM Collection 00035975

02 HMAS Australia (I) capsizing just moments before sinking forever, 12 April 1924. Image ANMM Collection 00034970

In 1924, with the pride of the Royal Navy filling Sydney Harbour, the time had come for HMAS Australia’s last bow

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HMAS Australia (II) sailed under the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the day that the last concrete was poured on the completed structure.

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The last concrete pour on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 25 January 1932.

Images Museums of History NSW NRS-12685-1-[4 8733]-4 8733-66

Key sectors supporting the goal of industrial selfsufficiency were steel production and shipbuilding

February 2025.

1 Hon Richard Marles MP and Hon Pat Conroy MP, ‘Navy’s enhanced lethality surface combatant fleet’, media release, 20 February 2024, https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/media-releases/2024-02-20/ navys-enhanced-lethality-surface-combatant-fleet

2 Frank Broeze, Island Nation: A History of Australians and the Sea St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1998, pp 97–106.

3 ‘Conference on the Limitation of Armament, Washington, November 12, 1921–February 6, 1922. Treaty Between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, Signed at Washington, February 6, 1922’. In Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States , Volume 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1922, pp 247–66.

4 Ross Gillett and Colin Graham. Warships of Australia. Adelaide: Rigby, 1977, p 57.

5 AH Everett to SM Bruce, 29 November 1923. National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), Series A3934 Control SC15/47.

Although the squadron split into two forces for the return voyage via the Americas and the Caribbean Sea, British and Australian crews reinforced their shared procedures and service cultures.18 Indeed, in the fiscally buoyant climate of 1924, Bruce’s government ordered two new heavy cruisers from Britain, HMAS Canberra (I) and HMAS Australia (II). Both were compliant with the terms of the Washington Treaty and retained full interoperability with RN fleet units.19 These 10,000-ton cruisers were chosen for speed and endurance, acknowledging that they would be the Empire’s Pacific vanguard until larger British forces could reach Singapore and sally forth.20

But when that call came in December 1941, HMS Hood was a mournful memory, having been obliterated by the German battleship Bismarck on 24 May. After Japanese forces assaulted Australian, British, Dutch and American installations around the Pacific rim, HMS Repulse steamed out of Singapore in company with the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. On 10 December both capital ships were sunk by overwhelming aerial strikes, just days after the US fleet was devastated at its Pearl Harbor base in Hawai’i. Having supported RN operations off Africa and the North Sea over 1939–41, HMAS Australia (II) spent the remainder of the conflict on Indian and Pacific Ocean deployments, until a series of Japanese kamikaze attacks in 1945 forced Australia’s flagship to seek extensive repairs – in Britain.

Dr Peter Hobbins is the museum’s Head of Knowledge.

6 Ibid

7 John C Mitcham, ‘The 1924 Empire Cruise and the Imagining of an Imperial Community’. Britain and the World 12, no 1 (2019), pp 71–2.

8 CR Benstead, Round the World with the Battle Cruisers London: Hurst and Blackett, 1925, p 124.

9 Neville Meaney, Australia and World Crisis, 1914–1923 Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2009, pp 492–9.

10 Commanding Officer, 1st CA Brigade to Headquarters, 2nd District, 24 January 1924, Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM), AWM61 542/1/14.

11 NAA, MP138/1 603/203/38.

12 VC Scott O’Connor, The Empire Cruise. London: Printed privately for the author by Riddle, Smith & Duffus, 1925, pp 123–4.

13 Rohan Goyne, ‘“The Booze Cruise”: An Episode in the Peacetime History of the Royal Navy 1923–1924’. Sabretache 51, no 2 (2010): 25.

14 Sydney Harbour Bridge: Report on Tenders . Sydney: Government Printer, 1924, p 36.

15 Dennis Wardleworth, ‘The RIBA Gold Medal of 1923 and London Architecture Medal of 1934: John Burnet and Thomas Tait, Early British Modernism, and the Pylons of Sydney Harbour Bridge’. In Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, edited by AnnMarie Brennan and Philip Goad. Melbourne: Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, 2016, pp 703–7.

16 Souvenir Photograph Album Produced of the World Cruise of the British Special Service Squadron, November 1923–September 1924, AWM, P10564.

17 Wireless message, 20 April 1924, MP1049/3 603/209/675.

18 Peter Hobbins, ‘Farewell to HMAS Australia ’. Traces , no 26 (2024), pp 19–21.

19 Outline of Australian Naval History. Melbourne: RAN Education Service, 1949, pp 21–2.

20 Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. 1. The Period of Anglo-American Antagonism, 1919–1929. London: Collins, 1968, p 404.

The story of HMAS Australia, HMS Hood and the Sydney Harbour Bridge is explored in the museum’s Bridge to the Future exhibit, open until

Remembering Operation Rimau

The tragic sequel to Operation Jaywick

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Operation Rimau, the commando raid that was designed to consolidate the successes of Operation Jaywick, but instead went horribly wrong. By Stirling Smith.

OPERATION JAYWICK IS CONSIDERED by many military historians to be one of the most ambitious and daring special forces operations of World War II. The highly secretive mission involved 14 members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Royal Australian Navy, more commonly known as Z Special Unit, taking a captured Japanese fishing boat renamed Krait almost 4,000 kilometres behind enemy lines to attack Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour. Krait deployed six operatives in three ‘folboats’, or folding kayaks (the military referred to them as canoes), to infiltrate the harbour defences and place magnetic limpet mines on enemy shipping. The raid successfully sank or damaged six enemy ships, but even more remarkably, the raiders were able to escape and safely sail all the way back to Australia on Krait completely undetected and with no casualties.

While Jaywick was well planned and expertly executed, it is also true to say that the raiders enjoyed a certain amount of good luck. Unfortunately, the follow-up raid, Operation Rimau, was the exact opposite. With this raid everything seemed to go wrong.

The success of Jaywick was not only a military victory but a potential source of propaganda. It was originally planned that the details of Jaywick would be released, embarrassing the Japanese and showing how the Allies could successfully attack thousands of kilometres behind the front lines. However, as it became clear that the raid had been even more successful than anticipated and the Japanese had no idea who carried out the raid or how they did it, it was decided that nothing should be said, so a follow-up raid could be mounted.

This raid was codenamed Operation Rimau, a Malay word for ‘tiger’. It was once again planned and led by the commanding officer of Operation Jaywick, Major Ivan Lyon (subsequently promoted to Lieutenant Colonel), who chose the codename because he had a large tiger tattoo on his chest.

Operation Rimau was to be a much larger operation than Jaywick, with 23 operatives using, instead of folboats, new top-secret motorised submersible canoes nicknamed ‘Sleeping Beauties’ (SBs).

The SBs, constructed of mild steel, were 3.8 metres long and driven by a 5-horsepower electric motor. A single crew member could operate the SB on the surface by either using the motor or paddling. When nearing the target the operator, who was wearing underwater breathing apparatus, could flood the craft, submerge to a maximum depth of 15 metres and use the electric motor to approach the target in complete silence. It was planned that the Rimau raid would use 15 SBs to infiltrate Singapore Harbour and attach limpet mines to as many ships as possible. Once they had escaped the harbour, the Sleeping Beauties would be scuttled, and the men would then make their escape in folboats.

The size and complexity of the operation concerned some in the military; others thought that returning to Singapore to do the same thing again was unwise. However, six of the original Jaywick members decided to join Rimau: Lyon, Lieutenant Commander Donald Davidson RNVR, Captain Robert Page and Australian able seamen Walter Falls, Frederick Marsh and Andrew Huston.

The raid’s commanding officer Ivan Lyon chose the codename ‘rimau’ because he had a large tiger tattoo on his chest

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of Ivan Lyon showing the large tiger (rimau in Malay) tattooed on his chest. Image Australian War Memorial 045422

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Layout of motorised submersible canoe (‘Sleeping Beauty’), from Popular Science magazine, March 1947. Public domain

Photo

On 11 September 1944, the 23 members of the Rimau team departed Fremantle, Western Australia, on the British submarine HMS Porpoise. The submarine arrived at Merapas Island, Indonesia, which was to be used as the forward operating base. The next stage of the plan was to capture a local junk that was to be used to transport the operatives and their SBs close to Singapore. On 28 September Porpoise stopped and boarded an Indonesian fishing junk, Mustika

Mustika was not the ideal choice. It was in poor condition, difficult to sail and had no motor – an issue that would ultimately be their undoing. However, as there were no other options available and Porpoise needed to depart soon, it was decided that Mustika would have to do. After being persuaded to give basic instruction on how to sail the vessel, the Malay crew were transferred to Porpoise to be taken back to Australia, where they would spend the duration of the war in internment camps. By 1 October, the Rimau operatives had transferred their stores and SBs to the junk and said their farewells to the Porpoise crew. The plan was for a submarine to return to Merapas on or around 8 November to recover the Rimau operatives and take them home. Unfortunately, none of the men of Rimau would make the rendezvous.

The fate of the 23 Rimau operatives was not finally established until the end of the war. They had made their way to the islands just off Singapore. On 6 October, only six hours before the raid was due to be launched, Mustika was travelling between the islands of Kasu and Batam when it became becalmed. Without a motor, those aboard were not able to move it. From Kasu, Mustika caught the attention of the local police, who were under the control of the Japanese Kempeitai (military police). Deciding to investigate, they approached the vessel in a launch. The exact details are not known, but it appears that one of the Rimau members panicked and prematurely opened fire, killing several of the police but allowing one to get away. He then alerted the Japanese authorities. Lyon, realising their cover was blown, ordered his men to take to their folboats and make their way back to Merapas Island. Lyon then scuttled Mustika, blowing up the vessel and sending the top-secret Sleeping Beauties to the bottom.

The men then split into four groups. Three groups paddled for Merapas, while Lyon and a group of six paddled into Singapore to attack enemy ships with limpet mines. While the details are sketchy, it is believed they successfully sank or damaged three ships. 01

The Japanese were, however, now on high alert, and a force of some 100 men pursued the Rimau operatives as they island-hopped in an attempt to escape. Several of the crew had made their way back to Merapas in the hope that the returning submarine would pick them up. Unfortunately, the submarine HMS Tantalus , tasked with recovering the operatives, was more than two weeks late for the rendezvous, as the captain had prioritised hunting Japanese shipping rather than recovering the Rimau men. When Tantalus did arrive, its shore party found a deserted camp, which appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry by the Rimau men. Although originally ordered to stay in the area for a month, Tantalus left Merapas on 22 November 1944, never to return. The final fate of the Rimau men was now sealed.

Once it became clear that no rescue was coming, the men tried to evade capture and make their way to friendly territory. Over the next few weeks, several skirmishes took place with the Japanese, which resulted in 12 being killed, including Lyon, and 11 captured. Two members, Willersdorf and Pace, had travelled more than 3,000 kilometres, almost reaching East Timor. They managed to get within 500–600 kilometres of Australia before they were captured.

The next stage of the plan was to capture a local junk to transport the operatives close to Singapore

01 Fishing junk Mustika seen from HMS Porpoise. Image National Archives of Australia NAA: A3269,Q11/58(B)

02 A Sleeping Beauty being transferred from HMS Porpoise to Mustika Image National Archives of Australia NAA: A3269, Q11/59(A)

Of the 11 taken prisoner, Frederick Marsh died from malaria, with the remainder being held at the Outram Road Prison in Singapore. On 3 July 1945, the surviving 10 Rimau operatives were put on trial. As they were not wearing uniforms and had intelligence relating to Japanese military installations, they were found guilty of espionage and beheaded on 7 July, barely a month before the end of the war.

Operation Rimau was one of the most audacious, but ultimately costly, special forces raids of the war. After 80 years, few tangible reminders of it remain. However, the Australian National Maritime Museum is fortunate to have MV Krait on public display. While the vessel was involved in Operation Jaywick rather than Operation Rimau, it provides a direct link to Australian special forces operations during World War II, particularly the six operatives who were involved in both raids. When next visiting the museum, you can view Krait and reflect on the daring and success of Operation Jaywick and the sacrifice and loss of its follow-up raid, Operation Rimau.

Stirling Smith is a curatorial consultant, archaeologist and heritage specialist.

Moana Oceania

Commonwealth Association of Museums Triennial conference

The triennial conference of the Commonwealth Association of Museums was held earlier this year in Auckland and Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. Matt Poll summarises some of the discussions around the diverse roles that museums play and their function as cultural educators.

IN MARCH THIS YEAR I attended the Commonwealth Association of Museums Triennial Conference in Aotearoa New Zealand. I found the experience an incredible insight into the diverse roles that museums play, how they shape global conversations about identity, and how they reflect their own role as cultural educators within their societies.

The Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) was founded in 1974 and represents some 54 nations spread across Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. The conference was held at Tāmaki Paenga Hira, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and at Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato in Hamilton. Across six days, it presented global perspectives of museum workers from countries as diverse as Botswana, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, Hawai’i and Canada. I found it truly an enriching experience to be among peers from across the world, and the Auckland Museum, with its world-class permanent galleries depicting the awe-inspiring worlds of Moana Oceania, was a fitting venue.

The installation Wharenui Harikoa is a full-scale crocheted meeting house made by Lissy and Rudi Robinson-Cole from 5,000 balls of wool. Pictured at Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato. All images reproduced with permission

Moana is a term common to numerous Pacific cultures and means ‘ocean, sea or expanse of water’

Museums across diverse nations face similar challenges of operating with limited resources, and there are increased demands to prove their relevance to audiences, who are more and more critical. But the list of delegates, representing more than 30 nations, shows that modern museums are trusted allies of the world’s First Nations peoples. Museums still hold strong appeal as ports of call for international visitors to see a country’s history as it has evolved, through accumulated objects, materials and stories.

The conference gave a rare opportunity for varied cultural groups aligned with museums to outline the changing nature of audience development and community engagement. Aotearoa New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati and Tonga delivered presentations about how to preserve tangible cultural heritage in the face of sometimes conflicting expectations – those of community in how their culture is represented, and those of the tourism industry seeking an authentic experience.

Around 23 island nations are represented in the Pacific Museums association, and Australia had, or still has, a role in facilitating maritime shipping among many of them. Yet the opportunity for deeper engagement between Australian museums and the Pacific has not been taken. It was noted how Australia has played a limited role in the Commonwealth Association of Museums over recent years, with Bianca Beetson, Director First Nations at Queensland Museum, and I being the only Indigenous Australian representatives this year.

An emerging trend among many island nations’ museums is young people increasingly accessing knowledge about their culture and heritage via the internet rather than via teaching from their elders. Waikato Museum curator Maree Mills cleverly challenged the idea of digital colonisation with her amusing description of ancestral intelligence as perhaps being far more useful for community engagement than artificial intelligence.

There is a universal need to crowdsource talent, as much as funding

01 Artists Lissy and Rudi Robinson-Cole speak at Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato.

02

Attendees at the University of Auckland’s Waipapa Marae.

Katrina Talei Igglesden gave a fascinating overview of the history of the Fiji National Museum and its work designing community access projects. Being one of the older ‘colonial’-era museums, founded in 1904, its collections are a remarkable snapshot of its island history.

Of particular concern among all island nation museums, and one which resonates with the Australian National Maritime Museum, were the challenges of preserving vessels and of exhibiting them in indoor spaces, while their interpretation and activation rely on those with specialist and practical knowledge of their use. There is a universal need to crowdsource talent, as much as funding, and to seek out and nurture those with the skills to repair and maintain such vessels and the ability to teach these skills to future generations.

It was a deep learning experience to observe how Māori representatives opened and closed each day’s proceedings. It doesn’t take long to recognise how the power of language reclamation shapes the modern Māori identity. One session gave rise to a fascinating discussion on the ways all languages across the South Pacific are connected – and how the colonisation of Pacific languages by European languages has deformed them into appearing distinct from each other. The way in which language can be distorted via translation, but also repaired by removing unnecessary categorisation, was one of the better explanations of practical decolonisation that I have ever encountered.

Modern museums are trusted allies of the world’s First Nations peoples

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Delegates attend a dinner at Tūrangawaewae Marae, a meeting house of Māori royalty.

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The Māori waka taua (war canoe) Te Winika at Waikato Museum.

While issues of decolonisation were raised by several speakers, it was fascinating to note that the academic conversations about the nature of colonisation seem quite localised with Britain itself. At the periphery of what we describe as the Commonwealth, real-world applications of food, fashion, art, craft, music and performance are shaping national identity in ways that do not rely on preserving collections of ethnographic objects. Instead, communities are using these old collections as inspiration when contributing their own new ideas and objects to a museum’s story.

Māori are deeply aware of their ancestral connections of Polynesian migrations from Hawai’i via Tahiti into Aotearoa, and it was very affecting to see the Māori elders speaking with Kawika Winter, the representative of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Kawika’s presentation on how Indigenous stewardship of land can inform Indigenous stewardship of collections, and on the making of new watercraft in Hawai’i, was particularly brilliant. He spoke of the nurturing of biocultural landscapes, in which trees marked for future use as watercraft are thought of as children yet to be born, rather than ancient forests of elders to be harvested for making vessels.

Offsite excursions included a day trip to Hamilton to see Te Winika, an impressive 200-year-old waka taua (Māori war canoe) that has been on display for over 50 years at Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato. The sheer scale of the intricately carved canoe is stunning to witness up close. For many years after the New Zealand land wars of the 1860s, the waka was dismantled and hidden from potential collectors before being reassembled in the 1930s, at the beginning of the modern Māori cultural revival.

That evening we were guests for a dinner hosted at Tūrangawaewae Marae, at Ngāruawāhia in the Waikato region. This marae (meeting place) is a house of Māori royalty, to which the late Queen Elizabeth II and some of her children have paid courtesy visits. Today it is still a meeting place between Polynesian royal families of the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga. I found it quite fascinating to think of these parallel commonwealths, British and Pacific, operating alongside each other.

On the last day of the conference, I joined a behindthe-scenes tour of the New Zealand Maritime Museum. Curator Jaqui Knowles guided us through the exhibition Always Song in the Water, featuring art inspired by Moana Oceania. Showcasing the work of more than 40 contemporary artists from Pacific island nations, Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, the exhibition beautifully represented the idea of the sea as a source of common heritage for all humanity. Auckland is home to people from all corners of the world, and the one thing that connects them is their journey to this place.

Overall, I returned home inspired and with a renewed understanding that the work we do at this museum does not exist in isolation, but is connected to all nations across our part of the world, Moana Oceania.

Matt Poll is the museum’s Manager of Indigenous Programs.

A mystery of submarine AE2

What was its last pennant number?

The pennant numbers of Australia’s first submarines, AE1 and AE2, were long thought to have been finalised and settled, but recent research by Darren Brown has discovered photographic evidence for an alternative number for AE2.

THE ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY’S first submarines, HMA Ships AE1 and AE2, were built in Barrow-in-Furness, England, between 1911 and 1913. They were E-class vessels, a type also used by the Royal Navy (RN); the Australian ships were given the prefix ‘A’, hence AE1 and AE2. Both were launched on 28 February 1914 and sailed on the surface – sometimes under tow from their escort vessel, HMS Eclipse (Portsmouth to Singapore) or HMAS Sydney (Singapore to Sydney) – to Australia, arriving on 24 May 1914. The 13,000-nautical-mile (24,000-kilometre) journey was, at the time, the longest submarine transit in history, and 60 of the 83 days of the voyage were spent at sea.

Traditionally, naval and other ships carried fabric pennants as forms of identification and communication. The system of numbering pennants had been adopted before the First World War to distinguish between ships with the same or similar names, to reduce the size of communications and improve their security, and to aid recognition when ships of the same class were together. Carrying pennants is, of course, not possible on a submarine, so their identifying numbers were painted on their conning towers.

All photographic evidence shows that between the trials and completion of AE1 and AE2 at Barrow-in-Furness, then during their passage to Portsmouth – where they were commissioned on 28 February 1914 and had gyros and wireless installed – the submarines had no pennant numbers. For the journey to Australia, the later pennant numbers of 80 ( AE1) and 81 ( AE2) were not employed; instead, a simple ‘1’ and ‘2’ were used. It is unclear why. One possible reason is that AE1 and AE2 were operating with the Royal Navy during the passage from Portsmouth to Singapore, under the escort of HMS Eclipse AE2 ’s pennant number of 81 was the same as that of British submarine E1, so it may be that the former was given the temporary pennant number of ‘2’ to avoid confusion.

AE2 departs Portsmouth, UK, in early March 1914, clearly carrying the temporary pennant number 2. On top of the main mast of each boat (not visible in this image) was represented Australia’s coat of arms; AE1 carried the kangaroo and AE2 the emu.

All images reproduced from original postcards from the author’s collection

The system of numbering pennants had been adopted before the First World War to distinguish between ships with the same or similar names

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1914 postcard of AE1 and AE2 tied up at Garden Island, Sydney, some time between May and August 1914. AE1, in the foreground, bears pennant number 80; behind is AE2, with pennant number 81.

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Detail from a postcard, clearly showing pennant number 86 on the conning tower and AE2 on the bow as the boat leaves Malta on 17 April 1915. A copy of this photo can be found on the Australian War Memorial website, but it is too dark to see the pennant number.

With the arrival of AE1 and AE2 in Singapore, they secured to HMAS Sydney (I), and HMS Eclipse effectively handed over escort duties to the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) on Tuesday 21 April 1914. It was at Singapore that the pennant numbers of 80 and 81 are believed to have been painted. Photos held by the Australian War Memorial clearly show the two submarines bearing these numbers while secured alongside HMAS Sydney at Cairns in May 1914 on their way to Sydney, where they arrived on Sunday 24 May 1914. There is also photographic evidence proving the pennant numbers of 80 ( AE1) and 81 ( AE2) were used the entire time they were in Sydney – a period of some four months.

With the start of World War I in August 1914 and the deployment of the two submarines, both had their pennant numbers painted over so they could not be identified by the enemy. AE1 was lost with all hands on 14 September 1914 off Rabaul, New Guinea. In December of that year, AE2 was redeployed to the Mediterranean theatre. This is where the history of the pennant numbers of Australia’s first submarines was, until now, thought to have ended.

While preparations were under way for the Dardanelles campaign, AE2 was once again operating under the Royal Navy’s command. When the vessel was returning from a Dardanelles patrol to Port Mudros on 10 March 1915, it ran aground and required significant repairs to the hull. These repairs were carried out in Malta, where AE2 arrived on 14 March 1915.

This is where the pennant number story gains a new life. An original postcard, found by the author, depicts AE2 leaving Malta on 17 April and clearly shows it had been painted with the pennant number of 86. There is potential confusion when one considers that the Royal Navy already had an E-Class submarine, E6, with the pennant number 86; however, at this time it was operating in the North Sea from Harwich with the Eighth Flotilla. It seems that AE2 had, strictly for identification reasons, been ordered to use a pennant number for the upcoming Dardanelles campaign. Of the Royal Navy submarines deployed to the Dardanelles, E11 used pennant number 91 during its first foray into the Sea of Marmara, while E14 and E15 used no pennant numbers.

The newly found evidence indicates that AE2 had a pennant number of 86 when it left Malta on 17 April. There was little time to paint out the number before AE2 ’s penetration of the Dardanelles on 24 April. Just a week later, the submarine was damaged by the Ottoman torpedo boat Sultanhisar and then deliberately scuttled by its commanding officer to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. The question that this research prompts is: Did AE2 operate, and sink, in the Sea of Marmara carrying pennant number 86?

No historical painting or depiction of the submarine shows this number, while an oil painting of AE2 on patrol in the Sea of Marmara, created by Charles Bean in 1925 and held by the Australian War Memorial, shows the inaccurate pennant number 82.

The wreck of AE2 was discovered and identified in 1998 and surveyed in subsequent years. Tim Smith OAM was Director of Maritime Archaeology for the group Operation Silent Anzac, which undertook the 2014 survey of the wreck. When asked if the conning tower area was in a condition to identify the pennant number, the answer was as follows:

Unfortunately, there was absolutely no opportunity to see any remnant pennant number – the fin and hull were completely covered in concretion and marine growth, with the rear fin also lost to fishing net impacts at the time of discovery.

We have no idea why the pennant number might have been changed, and no physical means of checking the wreck for confirmation – so the mystery of AE2 ’s final pennant number remains with the submarine itself, sunk in the Sea of Marmara.

For more information on the search for and discovery of HMAS AE1, see Signals numbers 113 (Summer 2015–16), 122 (Autumn 2018) and 124 (Spring 2019). For AE2, see Signals 108 (Spring 2014) and 113.

Darren Brown is a Brisbane-based aircraft engineer and submarine historian, with an extensive collection of material from the British archives and an important collection of submarine photographs and postcards. Darren’s great-grandfather served with the Royal Navy as a signalman in E-class submarines E18 and E4 in World War I, and came to Australia in 1928.

Into the deep

A descent through a liquid world

The ocean has shaped and sustained life on Earth from the beginning of time. Its vast waters are alive with meaning and connect every living thing on Earth. The latest book by James Bradley, Deep Water, combines history, science, nature writing and environmentalism in a hymn to the beauty, mystery and wonder of the ocean. The following extract from Chapter 8 takes readers on an imaginary journey from the sea’s surface to the deepest, darkest, least-explored places on the planet.

Bioluminescence is ubiquitous in the deep ocean, occurring in organisms ranging from bacteria up to the mysterious and elusive colossal squid

Bioluminescence – the ability to emit light – is used by many deep-ocean creatures for communication and camouflage. Image Valerie Taylor Collection ANMS1468[005]_001

Note: The images accompanying this extract do not appear in the book.

PICTURE YOURSELF inside a glass sphere floating in the ocean. Above the shimmering skin of the water’s surface is blue sky and air; below it a liquid world stretches away beneath you, seemingly without dimension.

Now imagine you have begun to sink. As the waves close over the top of the sphere, light and colour suffuse the water. Yet as you descend that changes. Even in the clearest water the amount of solar energy declines by almost half in the first metre or so; at 10 metres less than a sixth remains, at 100 metres only slightly more than 1 per cent. At first you might not notice this reduction, or only register it as a gradual dimming: the human ability to see across conditions ranging from near darkness to brightest day is only possible because our eyes compress gradations of light. Even if you were only half-aware of the drop in the light’s intensity, you would certainly notice colours beginning to fade, as longer wavelengths are absorbed by the water. Reds are the first to disappear, vanishing by about 10 metres below the surface, followed by oranges, and then yellows, until finally, at about 200 metres, where the amount of light drops to 1 per cent of what it is at the surface, only greens and blues remain.

If you are close to land it is possible you will have hit the bottom by now: on the continental shelves that fringe the major landmasses the sea floor is seldom more than 200 metres below the surface. Yet given these relatively shallow waters make up less than 10 per cent of the ocean’s total area, it is more likely you will continue to sink.

Although only the tiniest fraction of the Sun’s light penetrates below 200 metres it is not dark here, or not quite. On a bright day in clear water it might be closer to a deep dusk. But this boundary, where the layer of the ocean known as the epipelagic, photic or sunlight zone gives way to the mesopelagic or twilight zone, is also the boundary beyond which photosynthesis is no longer possible. Above it, in the sunlight zone, seaweed and phytoplankton thrive, converting the Sun’s rays into energy that is then consumed by other animals. Below it, life relies on energy from above. For many of the animals in the mesopelagic the solution is to join the diel migration and head upwards to feed in surface waters under the cover of darkness. Others pursue more opportunistic strategies, either feeding on the gentle rain of dead plankton and other detritus known as marine snow that drifts slowly down from above, or preying upon their neighbours.

The loss of the lifegiving potential of the Sun is not the only boundary you cross as you leave behind the light. As you have been descending the water has been growing slowly cooler. At around 200 metres the temperature begins to fall rapidly as you enter the transition zone between the Sun-warmed waters of the epipelagic and the colder, denser water below. Salinity also changes, especially in warmer regions, where evaporation rates are high, as the salty surface waters give way to less saline water.

Look up as you descend, and you will still see the faint glow of the daylight far above. But as you drop deeper into the gloaming of the mesopelagic the light suffusing the water around you grows ever weaker until finally, perhaps a kilometre down, it disappears entirely, and you enter the bathyal or midnight zone. Few mammals descend this far: you might glimpse the shadowy bulk of an elephant seal, whose specially adapted eyes allow it to see in near-darkness, or hear the shuddering creak of a sperm whale closing in on a squid, but otherwise the world of the warm-blooded now lies far overhead.

Yet while the Sun’s rays do not penetrate these waters, that does not mean they are lightless. The organisms that dwell here produce their own illumination, generating dancing flashes and clouds of bioluminescence that spark and glow in the darkness. These displays are sometimes associated with attracting prey: tiny anglerfish famously dangle a glowing lure in front of themselves in order to tempt unwary prey into range of the curving teeth that crowd their nightmarish mouths. More often they are defensive. Many species of copepods, tiny crustaceans a millimetre or so in length, startle predators by flashing brightly when threatened, or distract them by producing clouds of light. Other species use bioluminescence as camouflage, producing soft light on their undersides that allows them to disappear into the glow from above when seen from underneath. Still others use it to communicate: Humboldt squid, highly intelligent, fast-moving predators more than a metre in length that hunt in packs of 1000 or more, use the chromatophores in their skin to produce complex displays of red and white light that travel up and down their bodies. Researchers have identified at least twenty-eight distinct signals, and believe the displays are a form of communication, allowing the squid to hunt cooperatively and to interact with potential mates. These signals can be broken down and recombined in multiple patterns to form different messages, although the scientists who discovered the behaviour emphasise it is too early to say whether the squid are using language as we might understand it.

Most species of anglerfish are ambush predators, but the whipnose anglerfish swims upside down, using its lure like a fishing line to attract prey before attempting a kill. This specimen was filmed in Bremer Canyon, off Western Australia, in 2020.

Image © Schmidt Ocean Institute

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The organisms that dwell here produce their own illumination, generating dancing flashes and clouds of bioluminescence that spark and glow in the darkness

Deep Water is published by Hamish Hamilton.

ISBN 9780143776956, RRP $37.00

Look up as you descend, and you will still see the faint glow of the daylight far above

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Right beneath the ocean’s surface, all colours of the spectrum are visible, but as you go deeper, they begin to fade. Reds are the first to disappear, vanishing by about 10 metres below the surface.

Image Valerie Taylor Collection ANMS1469[780]_001

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Glass octopuses (Vitrelodonela richardii ) are almost transparent. They mostly live in the aphotic zone, deep waters where sunlight doesn’t reach, at around 1,000 metres. This specimen is illuminated by the lights of a remotely operated vehicle, but usually only their optic nerves, eyeballs and digestive tracts are visible. Filmed in the Phoenix Islands, central Pacific Ocean, 2021. Image © Schmidt Ocean Institute CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Although only the tiniest fraction of the Sun’s light penetrates below 200 metres it is not dark here, or not quite

In recent years it has become apparent bioluminescence is ubiquitous in the deep ocean, occurring in organisms ranging from bacteria up to the mysterious and elusive colossal squid. One researcher I spoke to described bioluminescence flowing over the top of their submersible as they ascended, like a waterfall of light. Others believe it may explain the mysterious flashes and flares of light sailors often report glimpsing far beneath the water, and that Micronesian and Polynesian navigators once used to find their way across the expanse of the Pacific. Known as te lapa by the people of the Santa Cruz Islands and ulo a’e tahi – ‘to burst forth with light’ – in Tonga, it is possible this underwater lightning is caused by bioluminescent plankton reacting to the waves that move along the boundaries between the ocean’s layers, or by the movement of large creatures such as whales through clouds of plankton far below the surface.

As you descend the temperature continues to decline until, somewhere between 2000 and 4000 metres below the surface, it tips below 4 degrees, heralding the boundary of the abyssal, 4000 metres down. Cold and lightless, the abyssal takes its name from the Greek word abyssos, meaning unfathomable or bottomless. It is not bottomless, of course – indeed it is likely that at some point around here it is possible you might strike the ocean floor. That could mean fetching up on one of the mid-ocean ridges that snake their way through the ocean basins like giant sutures. These submarine mountain ranges, which can rise up to 3 kilometres from the surrounding sea floor, form where the tectonic plates are gradually pulling away from each other, causing molten rock to bubble forth from the Earth’s interior. Although often referred to individually they are really part of a single system, an enormous mountain range more than 65,000 kilometres long that wends its way around the planet’s surface. Or perhaps you might fetch up on the side of one of the seamounts that rise from the ocean floor here and there.

But it is more likely you will come to rest somewhere upon the abyssal plain, the vast, sparsely populated expanse of ocean floor that stretches from the base of the mid-ocean ridges to the continental shelves and accounts for 70 per cent of the ocean floor and almost half the surface of the entire planet. With only the slow rain of nutrient from far above to sustain it, life moves slowly here. Look closely, however, and you will find fish, octopus, brittle stars and starfish picking their way across the sea floor, while complex communities of worms, crustaceans and other invertebrates cling to the few pieces of solid substrate or lurk beneath the largely featureless sediment.

Yet while you have already travelled many kilometres downwards, there is still further to go. Criss-crossing the ocean floor is a system of trenches. These trenches trace out the fault lines where the tectonic plates collide: as one plate dives under the other they form subduction zones, essentially giant canyons where the abyssal floor falls away thousands of metres into the darkness.

Known as the hadal zone – the name refers to Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, and translates roughly as ‘the unseen’, or ‘abode of the dead’ – these trenches are among the most extreme environments on the planet. Immense geological forces ripple through these fissures in the Earth’s crust, causing earthquakes and sediment slides, and the pressure can be more than 1000 times that at the surface – the equivalent of a small car pressing on your fingertip – and temperatures a mere degree above zero. As a result the diversity of life declines as you descend: hard-shelled creatures disappear by about 5000 metres, the chemical processes needed to make their shells no longer possible; and although you might glimpse ghostly snailfish and cusk eels at 8300 metres or slightly more, even they cannot survive much deeper than that – the cells of hadal fish are filled with a compound known as trimethyl-amine oxide, or TMAO (also, incidentally, the chemical responsible for the distinctive and extremely unpleasant smell produced by rotting fish), which helps keep the proteins in their bodies stable, yet below about 8500 metres the concentrations of TMAO required are so high their cells begin to lose integrity. Despite that, there is life even here, and as you reach the bottom of the deepest trench, almost 11,000 metres below the surface, you will see pale amphipods and other creatures moving here and there.

James Bradley’s books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade and Ghost Species; a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus; and The Penguin Book of the Ocean. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia’s Critic of the Year, and he has been shortlisted twice for the Bragg Prize for Science Writing and nominated for a Walkley Award. Deep Water, his first book of non-fiction, was published this year. He lives in Sydney.

Wreck spotting on Planespotting Beach

A rare dugout canoe washes ashore

On a small beach in Botany Bay, a nondescript piece of timber was recently found by a local resident, who thought it might be part of a vessel. Her discovery set off an investigation that identified the item as a rare dugout canoe, potentially of international origins.

TUCKED AWAY IN A CORNER right next to Sydney Airport is ‘The Beach’, a place that’s popular with locals and planespotters, but little known to anyone else. When Viv Polyblank, an avid beachcomber, found an 8.5-metre-long timber in February this year, she had no idea that she had located a potentially significant archaeological site Maritime archaeologist Brad Duncan, of Heritage NSW, aided by Wreckspotters Greg Jackson and Pam Forbes, later inspected the site and identified the item as the remains of a dugout canoe, based on the shape of the lower section and possible athwart seat supports. It had clearly been in the water for some time, with only the lower section of its hull and bottom surviving.

Dugout canoes are an ancient type of craft, once common internationally and still used extensively throughout Asia and the Pacific. They are created by hollowing out a felled log using fire and chiselling out the interior using stone or modern tools. Consultation with dugout experts confirmed that the wreck was likely to be a dugout canoe. However, small rectangular inserts on the bottom interior of the log (possibly used to waterproof the craft by removing a knot hole) indicated the use of historical-period woodworking tools. The vessel was unlikely to have been made by Aboriginal people during pre-settlement times, as there is no known dugout canoe tradition on the New South Wales coast.

The canoe had clearly been in the water for some time, with only the lower section of its hull and bottom surviving

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Surveying the wreck of the dugout canoe (clockwise from bottom left): archaeologists Pam Forbes (in red jacket) and Greg Jackson (crouching), and finder Viv Polyblank, in purple top.

Image Brad Duncan

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The canoe as discovered, floating in the water. Image Viv Polyblank

A timber sample was analysed to help identify the probable source of the log. Surprisingly, the wood was identified as light red meranti (Shorea species), a timber from Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.

How the craft came to be on this beach is a mystery. Several possibilities are being considered. It might have been imported by a collector from overseas or been made locally out of an imported log, before having been abandoned or swept away in a local river and eventually washing into Botany Bay. Alternatively, it might have washed down along the Australian coastline from Southeast Asia. It then appears to have been buried under the seabed after it sank, before being scoured out by a recent storm and washing ashore on the beach. Its degradation and the level of teredo worms (shipworm) in its upper sections indicate that it was on or under the seabed for a very long time, leading the vessel to be included on the NSW Historic Shipwrecks Register as a protected wreck.

Similar dugout canoes have been found and investigated by Heritage NSW at Sydney’s Taren Point (in association with an oyster lease, and possibly used for work around the farm) and two other locations in the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney. These discoveries demonstrate that such craft might have been used in historical times for various purposes, such as river crossings, fishing or support craft for water-based industrial activities. Dugout canoes were also used at Berrima, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, by World War I German internees as recreational craft on the Wingecarribee River. Further investigations are under way to try to determine the builder and possible uses of this historic vessel.

How the dugout came to be on this beach is a mystery

On a beach right next to the runways of Sydney Airport, locals fish, swim, exercise their dogs and occasionally find rare objects, such as the wreck of a dugout canoe. Image Sunnypicsoz/Shutterstock

The discovery of such an ancient type of craft so close to an advanced technological hub like Sydney Airport proves that many interesting maritime heritage sites still remain to be found, even in densely populated areas. So keep an eye out on your local beach; wrecks can pop up in the most unexpected places and unusual forms.

Dr Brad Duncan (Senior Maritime Archaeologist at Heritage NSW), and Pam Forbes and Greg Jackson (archaeologists and Wreckspotters).

The Wreckspotter scheme is an avocational citizen science program run through Heritage NSW, which trains people how to recognise and record wrecks and other maritime sites in their areas. An article on the program will appear in a future issue of Signals

Supporters now have the chance

Thank you to our supporters Foundation news

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM Foundation would like to thank all our members who supported the 2024 end-of-financial-year campaign. Your generosity will make a major difference to our capacity to significantly improve our Learning Centre. Object-based storytelling will be at its core, giving users access to some 900 objects from the Education Collection. Its spaces will be more flexible, and digital screens and interactives will showcase Australia’s rich maritime history as well as the scientific and environmental challenges we face today.

We have been pleased to have the chance to share some of our achievements with supporters in a series of events at the museum. An exciting initiative has been the opportunity to join volunteers on their regular weekday sails on Sydney Harbour on the 1940s gaffrigged ketch Kathleen Gillett . In June, members of the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club were given a curator-led tour of exhibitions and vessels. In July, David Turner spoke to us about his analysis of Australian merchant shipping using a database of 13,000 wrecks of sailing vessels and steamers.

Also in July, major donors had the chance to join a tour of First Nations exhibitions led by our Manager of Indigenous Programs, Matt Poll, and to enjoy canapés prepared by Nornie Bero, the founder and CEO of Melbourne-based Mabu Mabu. With a mission to put Indigenous ingredients in kitchens across Australia, the business employs more than 80 people in retail, catering and dining.

On 9 November, the museum will hold a ceremony to unveil further names on the National Monument to Migration. Registrations will close on 15 September. This is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate your family’s history of migration to Australia. Further information can be found on the museum’s website, www.sea.museum, or by contacting the National Monument team on 02 6298 3777 or at nationalmonument@sea.museum

to sail aboard Kathleen Gillett with volunteer crew from the museum. ANMM image

Maritime heritage in miniature

Keeping alive an ancient craft

With skills, expertise, patience and persistence, a small team of volunteers at the Sydney Heritage Fleet is keeping alive the craft of traditional model ship building. Two of the modellers talk to Jane Dargaville.

SYDNEY HERITAGE FLEET (SHF) operates Australia’s largest collection of publicly accessible working historic maritime vessels and is run entirely by volunteers. Among its members are those who build, repair and restore model ships and boats of all kinds, from sailing dinghies to ocean liners, for the Fleet’s museum collection and for public and institutional commissions. The model ship building workshop was set up more than four decades ago as a recreational outlet for members but has become a national centre of excellence for the craft and an important generator of income for the self-funded Fleet.

The model ship building workshop has become a national centre of excellence for the craft Museum staff (from left) Anupa Shah, Alayne Alvis, Jeff Fox, Cameron Mclean, Jordan Aarsen and Peter Drogitis with the Orion model. Image Rhondda Orchard/ ANMM

What began as a distraction from the stresses of a demanding job became a passion for Stephen Black, who joined the model ship building workshop a decade ago. With an eye for precision honed by his career in architecture, Stephen is valued for his attention to detail. Lex Wilson started building ship models at home in the 1980s and joined the Fleet modelling workshop about 12 years ago, for the camaraderie it offered for a pastime that is ‘exacting, painstaking and time consuming’.

Each model produced is the result of a combined effort and, when asked how many the workshop has made over the years, Lex and Stephen agree that for model ship builders, quality of craftsmanship is more important than output.

‘We don’t count the hours, but it can take up to 12 months to make a model,’ says Lex, who volunteers two days a week and has spent most of this year working on a model of King Billy, a 38-foot (11.6-metre) yacht that competed in several Sydney to Hobart races.

‘I like the concentration, zoning out and really being able to focus on the detail’
Stephen Black

03

Another recent commission came from members of the Sydney Flying Squadron for three individual models of the 18-foot skiff Yendys (Sydney spelt backwards), an emblem of the romance and thrill of the early days of competitive small-boat sailing on Sydney Harbour. The original Yendys, built in 1924, was donated to the Fleet and is on display in the foyer of the Australian National Maritime Museum building at Wharf 7 in Pyrmont.

Lex says that sometimes the request for a model will come with plans, although often with nothing more than basic drawings. The workshop has built several models from just a photograph, as was the case with a model of the paddle steamer Maitland, commissioned by Gosford City Council to commemorate the centenary of the ship’s sinking, with lives lost, in Broken Bay in 1898.

All kinds of materials are used, says Stephen:

… solid timber, composite timber, cardboard, paper, plastic, plastic sheeting, polystyrene, wire, electrical wire, bits of brass shims, bits of brass tubing, aluminium sheeting, aluminium tubing, zinc sheet, you name it, whatever seems appropriate for what we’re doing.

The workshop suffered a blow in July 2023 when one of its most enthusiastic and skilled members, Peter Hughes, died tragically. Peter had been introducing the making of 3D-printed component parts and was a competent user of DELFTship design software.

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Lex Wilson (left) and Stephen Black, with a model of former Sydney ferry Kanangra

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Stephen Black at work on a model of the museum’s Vietnamese refugee boat Tu� Do.

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The late Peter Hughes with a model he made of a famous Canadian fishing and racing schooner named Bluenose. The model was sold to raise funds for the Fleet.

Images Sydney Heritage Fleet

The model ship building workshop welcomes new members.

Contact them at modelshop@shf.org.au

Lex and Stephen agree that for model ship builders, quality of craftsmanship is more important than output

Peter employed DELFTship to create the lines for the lifeboats of a large-scale model of the passenger liner Orion (see image on page 55), a recent major restoration project for the workshop. Orion brought thousands of immigrants to Australia in the mid-20th century. Its model is owned by the Fleet but has been lent to the Australian National Maritime Museum for display. It was built in the 1930s by the Orient shipping company to show prospective passengers the ship’s modern features.

The Australian National Maritime Museum also commissioned the workshop to build a model of Tu� Do, one of the fishing boats that brought Vietnamese refugees to Australia in the late 1970s. Tu� Do is owned by the museum and the model will be part of a display of the original vessel.

‘There’s immense satisfaction in getting the detail right,’ says Stephen:

Model ship builders talk about the need for patience, but it also requires a lot of perseverance. I like the concentration, zoning out and really being able to focus on the detail of, for example, a winch on a tug, a piece that might be only millimetres in size. Getting it right gives you a sense of fulfilment.

Jane Dargaville is a volunteer with Sydney Heritage Fleet.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Peter Hughes.

Pride and passion

Herzogin Cecilie in miniature

Museum visitors have recently noted a new presence at the top of the main ramp. A large sailing ship model is being completed, to the delight of those passing by, writes John Laing.

THE FOUR-MASTED BARQUE Herzogin Cecilie was built in 1902 at Bremerhaven, Germany. A cadet ship for the prestigious Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping company, it was a floating showpiece for the German Second Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II. It was named for Herzogin (Duchess) Cecilie Auguste Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who later married the Kaiser’s eldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm.

The career of the ‘Duchess’

The ‘Duchess’, as the ship was affectionately known, met with great excitement wherever it went. Prior to World War I, its primary outward cargoes from Germany were salt, timber or coke. It usually returned from the Americas with wheat or nitrate.

The outbreak of hostilities in 1914 saw Herzogin Cecilie isolated in Coquimbo, Chile. To avoid being captured, the vessel remained there until June 1920. However, as soon as it returned to Europe, the ageing barque was claimed for war reparations and handed over to France.

Although sailing vessels were out of favour, in 1921 Gustaf Erikson purchased Herzogin Cecilie. Based in the Åland Islands between Sweden and Finland, Erikson saw a niche for large sailing ships carrying non-urgent cargos on long sea routes.

Erickson sent the Duchess to Australia for wheat, which could be loaded cheaply in the small gulf ports of South Australia. Just as importantly, it could survive the slow voyage back to Europe.

Herzogin Cecilie completed 12 Australian voyages. In between, it also made several nitrate trips to South America. Into the 1930s, the Duchess regularly won the so-called ‘grain races’, logging the fastest passage home.

On 28 January 1936, the vessel cleared Port Lincoln in South Australia, arriving at Falmouth, England, on 23 April. Two days later, in heavy fog, it struck the Ham Stone off Devon.

Several attempts were made to raise the barque. On 19 June it was finally refloated and towed to Starehole Bay. Tragically, on 19 July, Captain Sven Eriksson wrote to Gustaf Erikson that the ship’s back was broken. The beautiful Herzogin Cecilie was now a total loss.

The rusted remains of the Duchess can still be seen at Starehole Bay today.

A long-term labour – completing the model

Our 1:96 scale model of Herzogin Cecilie was commenced by Malcolm Grainger in South Africa. He continued work on it after his family migrated to Australia in 1978. When Malcolm died in 2008, his widow, Vera, gave the incomplete model to the museum.

Work has since been continued by volunteer modelmakers George Bambagiotti and Col Gibson, with contributions by Janos Nemeth and John Laing. When completed, it is intended that ‘the Duchess’ will be displayed in the museum’s galleries.

Work on the model is a public event thanks to a bespoke display and storage cabinet designed by another modelmaker, David Muir. A former architect, David consulted his ‘clients’ on the modelling team and drew up the design, ready for construction by the museum’s preparators.

Next time you visit the museum, come and admire the craft and detail that have gone into the Herzogin Cecilie model. We modellers always welcome a chat, too!

John Laing is one of the museum’s volunteer modelmakers.

When completed, it is intended that the model of the ‘Duchess’ will be displayed in the museum’s galleries

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Herzogin Cecilie presented an unforgettable spectacle when under full sail, as shown in this undated photograph.

Image Allan C Green, State Library of Victoria H91.108/2852

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John Laing (left) and David Muir with the Herzogin Cecilie model. David designed its ingenious housing, which comprises a desk that can be wheeled out when the model is being worked on, then locked in the cabinet for security. Image Jasmine Poole/ ANMM

Message to members

Our spring program

The Members team has put together a wide-ranging series of events for members over spring as the weather gets warmer.

WE HOPE YOU CAN JOIN US for some of our talks, book launches and other events this quarter. Remember that new events are regularly added to our program, so make sure you are receiving our monthly email, and also follow us on Eventbrite to be informed of new events as they are added. Contact the Members Office if you are not receiving the updates.

Recently the museum’s theatre has had a technology upgrade. Soon we will be able to show some of our member talks online, so that people will be able to attend virtually as well as in person. This will be great for our out-of-port members and others who can’t get to the museum easily. You will be able to click on a link that we send you and watch a talk from anywhere in the world. We will let you know as soon as this exciting addition to our membership offer commences.

And remember to mark in your diaries Saturday 30 November, the date for this year’s Members Anniversary Lunch. It’s always a great event – a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones, while enjoying great food and listening to stories from our guest speaker. This year we’ll be hearing from popular science presenter Dr Karl Kruszelnicki.

We look forward to seeing you at the museum again soon.

All the best, Matt, Merryn and the Members team

In July, members enjoyed a special tour of the operations of Smit Lamnalco Port Botany base and a guided visit around one of its tugboats. Image Matt Lee/ANMM

Book launch

Warra Warra Wai

2 pm Thursday 12 September

Join Darren Rix and Craig Cormick as they talk about their new book Warra Warra Wai – How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook & what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People

We know the European story from diaries, journals and letters. But here, for the first time, the First Nations story of Cook’s arrival is told. This account is what Indigenous Australians want everyone to know about the coming of Europeans.

Free for all attendees

Speakers talk

The story of the Krait

2 pm Thursday 26 September

The Krait is a vessel of legend, famous for a raid on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour in 1943 by a group of Allied commandos who demonstrated extraordinary bravery, resilience and ingenuity.

Terry Lancaster, from the museum’s Speakers Group, will discuss the training, the raid, the aftermath and the legacy of this former Japanese fishing boat, which is now on display at the museum.

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

Author talk

The Golden Gang

2 pm Wednesday 25 September

Join Ian W Shaw as he talks about his new book, the first comprehensive biography of the godfather of Australian bushranging, Frank Gardiner – mastermind of the largest gold heist in Australian history.

In a tough country and among a group of tough men, Gardiner was the toughest of them all, and a natural leader. This is the story of his extraordinary life, the full telling of which is long overdue.

Free for all attendees

Image of Ian W Shaw courtesy Ian W Shaw

Author talk

Terra Nova – Ambition, jealousy and rivalry in the Antarctic

6 pm Wednesday 16 October

Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910 attempt to reach the South Pole was placed in jeopardy when Edward Evans joined as his second-in-command. Their clash of personalities almost prevented the Terra Nova from sailing, but they forged ahead, conscious of competing expeditions racing to the pole. Harrison Christian’s new book Terra Nova reveals a story of betrayal that has been left out of official narratives.

Free for all attendees

Edward Evans standing next to a sledging theodolite. Photographer Herbert Ponting. ANMM Collection 00053978

Author talk

No one knows their destiny –Inside the Dunera story

5.30 pm Friday 25 October

This moving portrait of two ‘Dunera Boys’ traces them from Kristallnacht in Vienna to VE Day in Melbourne and complicates the traditional story of the Dunera Popular culture has mythologised the Dunera Boys – but who were the real people who sailed on the infamous ship, and how did the voyage transform their lives?

Art historian Tonia Eckfeld talks about her new book No One Knows Their Destiny, in which she draws on a deeply personal history to tell the story of her father and her uncle, Jewish refugees whose lives were shaped indelibly by their wartime experiences and internment – with a very different outcome for each.

Also includes an in-conversation session with Dr Roland Leikauf, the museum’s Curator of Post-war Immigration.

Free for all attendees

Author talk

The Attenborough effect –Shaping our relationship with animals

2 pm Saturday 26 October

Thirty years ago, trips to Africa and Antarctica profoundly changed Satyajit Das’s life. Ecotourism – watching wildlife in nature – became his gravitational centre. Wild Quests: Journeys into ecotourism and the future of animals is a literal and metaphorical record of these travels.

Over time, during his encounters with remarkable wild animals across the world, he came to question the underlying preoccupations and tensions in humans’ complex and troubled relationship with nature. What lies at the heart of our fascination with wild animals and our attempts to pursue an ‘experience’? During a time of ecological emergency and habitat destruction, what responsibility does the ecotourist have to the natural world?

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

Speakers talk

A history of Sydney ferries

2 pm Wednesday 30 October

One of the iconic things to do in Sydney is travel on a ferry. But what do we really know about our ferries? From the age of oars and sail, to steam, diesel power and the batteries of the future, we will trace how Sydney’s beloved ferry system developed, profile its vessels and describe some of its tragedies and triumphs. Presented by Arthur Pearce from the Museum Speakers Group.

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

The Manly Ferry, 1963. © Department of Education Curriculum Directorate. ANMM Collection 00047683 Gift from Lesley Cherry

Evening editions Ghost ships

6 pm Thursday 31 October

Join us for a spooky evening of tales about ghostly and tragic ships from history. Move around the museum and its vessels while listening to stories of the Mary Celeste, Flying Dutchman, Dunbar and other ships, plus accounts from the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. Presented by Pam Forbes and Greg Jackson from the Museum Speakers Group. Includes drinks and nibbles. Members $30. Non-members $40

Author talk

Helen Ennis – Max Dupain: A portrait

2–3.30 pm Monday 18 November

From multi-award-winning writer Helen Ennis comes the first-ever biography of Max Dupain, the most influential Australian photographer of the 20th century.

Max Dupain (1911–1992) was at the forefront of Australian visual arts for more than 50 years, producing a number of images now regarded as iconic (Sunbaker, Meat Queue, Form at Bondi, At Newport). He championed modern photography and a distinctive Australian approach.

Examining the sources of his creativity –literature, art, music – alongside his approach to masculinity, love, the body, war and nature, Max Dupain: A Portrait reveals a driven artist, one whose relationship to his work has been described as ‘ferocious’ and ‘painful to watch’. Photographer David Moore, a long-term friend, said he ‘needed to photograph like he needed to breathe. It was part of him. It gave him his drive and force in life.’

Free for all attendees

History talk

The Fleurieu Chart – why dozens of French names dot Australia’s coastline

2 pm Tuesday 19 November

Join special guest speaker Patrick Llewellyn, director of the Nicolas Baudin Research Institute, in a world-first talk, as he unveils details of an unpublished map linking France with Australia.

The maps of southern and western Australia were drawn by the French during the d’Entrecasteaux (1791–94) and Baudin (1800–04) expeditions. After the French defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, many place names given by the French were replaced by those of the English Flinders Expedition (1801–03).

However, in 1911, Alphonse de Fleurieu, a descendant of the organiser of the Lapérouse, d’Entrecasteaux and Baudin expeditions, travelled to Australia with a map he had corrected. He asked for many French names to be restored. And he got his way.

This map is the final episode in 140 years of adventures and links between France and Australia.

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

Detail of map of Australia made during the Baudin expedition, from Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes ANMM Collection 00050333

Evening editions

The battle for longitude

6 pm Tuesday 19 November

From 1714 until the Napoleonic wars, France and England fought to find a way to accurately calculate longitude. On display together, for the first time ever, will be two marine chronometers that have played a crucial role in Australia’s history, from the Baudin and Flinders expeditions. This lecture is a world first.

Members $30 – enter code MEMBER. Non-members $40

Replica H1 chronometer made by Norman Banham, on display in our galleries. Australian National Maritime Museum Collection 00056183

Gift from Mr Norman Banham

Speakers talk

The story of the Shenandoah

2 pm Wednesday 27 November

The American Civil War came to Australia in 1865 with the arrival of the Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah, causing both excitement and controversy. Shenandoah had been bought illicitly and refitted for war. The ship was heading to prey on the Union whaling fleet in the north Pacific when it stopped in Melbourne for repairs and provisions. With it when it sailed away were some intrepid Australian recruits. Free for Members – enter code MEMBER. Non-members $10

Annual event

Members Anniversary Lunch

11.30–2.30 Saturday 30 November

Join the museum’s Director, Daryl Karp AM, for pre-lunch drinks and canapés followed by a three-course meal by award-winning caterers Sydney Restaurant Group on our stunning Ben Lexcen Terrace. You will enjoy the company of fellow members and friends of the museum and hear from our special guest, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki. Dr Karl will speak about his new memoir, detailing his life as a Polish migrant of WW2 survivor parents. He’ll also tell us science stories relating to the oceans. We hope you can join us for this special event. See our website for more details.

Members $130. Non-members $150

Image Steve Baccon

Unless otherwise noted, talks are free for members and one guest. Book launches are free for all guests. Bookings are essential.

Email memberevents@sea.museum and tell us which event you wish to attend, and who is coming. Or book through Eventbrite, phone us on 02 9298 3777, or scan the QR code above.

For all other events, please see sea.museum/whats-on/events or sea.museum/kids

nursery by

For over two years Mike has been visiting the hippos in Kosi Bay, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa. He spent just 20 seconds under water with them – enough time to get this image from a safe distance and to avoid alarming the mother. © Mike Korostelev, Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Now showing

From the Natural History Museum in London, this exhibition features 100 exceptional images that capture the breathtaking diversity of the natural world.

IN ITS 59TH EDITION, Wildlife Photographer of the Year drew over 49,000 entries from photographers around the world, of all experience levels and ages. The exhibition showcases images across 18 categories, including Animals in their Environment, Underwater and Photojournalism, judged by an international panel of industry experts. The exhibition uses photography’s emotive power to advance scientific knowledge, spread awareness of important issues and nurture a global love of nature. It features the winners from the 2023 competition.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/wildlifephotographer

Hippo
Mike Korostelev (Russia).

James Cameron: Challenging the Deep

Opens 28 September

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

Cameron has had a lifelong fascination with the deep oceans. He has led eight major deep-sea expeditions and many submersible dives, setting world firsts including the first solo dive to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the first exploration of the interior of the wreck of RMS Titanic, and the first seafloor-to-surface live broadcast.

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

Props from the blockbuster film Titanic Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

Valerie Taylor: An Underwater Life Until 13 October

At a time when oceans are under more threat than ever, Valerie Taylor AM has been a key change-maker, 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 stands as encouragement to act now.

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 change-makers out there –to inspire all of us to advocate for the oceans in our own way.

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

Bridge to the Future Now showing

In March 1924, the New South Wales government signed a contract with English firm Dorman Long & Co to build a steel arch bridge across Sydney Harbour. At the same time, a Special Service Squadron headed by the pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, steamed into Sydney Harbour (see story on page 22). This exhibit showcases a beautiful architectural painting commissioned by Dorman Long, capturing the winning design for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is the first time the work has been exhibited in Australia.

Inundated: Photos of the Lismore Floods by Natalie Grono Now showing

When Lismore and other towns in the New South Wales Northern Rivers district were swept away during the worst floods seen in decades, photographer Natalie Grono captured the extent of how this catastrophe affected the community and its people.

Many Australians only experienced the floods through the news, from a macro perspective, far removed from the waters. Natalie Grono’s photos were taken on ‘ground zero’, recording the personal anguish the waters caused and the forces of nature at play.

Image © Natalie Grono. ANMM Collection 00056528

Chains of Empire: Australian Legacies of British Slavery Now showing

This exhibit explores what happened when former slave owners across the British Empire were compensated to free their enslaved workers. What were the financial, cultural and human consequences when former slave owners arrived in the Australian colonies?

The exhibit opened on the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition – a day intended to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of all peoples.

A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck: Rediscovering

the South Australian

Now showing

Australian maritime archaeologists have partnered with virtual design experts in Germany to re-create the 1837 shipwreck of the English barque South Australian as a stunning graphic novel and an immersive diving experience.

These powerful depictions, plus actual artefacts from the shipwreck site, allow visitors to virtually explore South Australian and reveal the historical and archaeological detective work that uncovered its story.

Artwork by Professor Holger Deuter (University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserlautern, Germany) brings to life the terrifying tale of South Australian ’s loss. sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ south-australian

Artwork by Holger Deuter, University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserslautern

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.

Guykuda 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

Darrapa (bludger trevally), Guykuda Munuŋgurr, 2018. © Guykuda Munuŋgurr. ANMM Collection 00055926

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

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. 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

Brickwrecks – Sunken ships in LEGO ® bricks

Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden

Now showing

Large-scale LEGO® models, interactives and audiovisuals explore 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 ANMM and Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught.

sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions/ brickwrecks

Cats

& Dogs All at Sea Cairns Museum

Opens 24 November

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.

Mariw Minaral (Spiritual Patterns) Wanneroo Library and Culture Centre, Western Australia

Until 28 September

This beautiful exhibition brings together some of the finest examples of Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait Islands) artist Alick Tipoti’s unique and intricate linocut printmaking practice. The exhibition also features his award-winning sculptural works, contemporary masks and film.

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

Kisay Dhangal, © Alick Tipoti. ANMM Collection 00054952 Purchased with funds from the Sid Faithful and Christine Sadler program supporting contemporary Indigenous maritime heritage in Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands through the ANMM Foundation. Reproduced courtesy of Alick Tipoti. Image Marinco Kojdanovski/©ANMM

Bidhiinja – Restoring our oyster reefs

Touring regional New South Wales Oyster reefs were once abundant along our coastlines, but today only one per cent of reefs remain around Australia. This unique exhibition combines First Nations knowledge and Western science to explain the forgotten history, benefits and First Nations relationships with oyster reefs in Australia – and why we need to bring them back.

Partner: NSW Department of Primary Industries – Fisheries

lab.sea.museum/en/bidhiinja

Construction of a native flat oyster reef at Wagonga Inlet, NSW. Image Jay Maartensz/ M + J Marine

Capturing the Home Front

Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo

Until 17 November

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

A remarkable quarter century A lasting monument to Australia’s migrants

THIS YEAR MARKS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY of the National Monument to Migration.

This installation, although never envisaged in the original plans for the museum, is now an integral feature of our site. It emphasises migration as one of the museum’s major themes and serves as a landmark to honour migrants and all that they have contributed to our nation.

Several years after the museum opened in 1991, a boundary wall became necessary when construction commenced on the nearby ferry wharf. The wall was the first thing that anyone arriving by ferry would see and, at 80 metres in length, it had great potential to showcase the museum to passing traffic.

It was decided to turn this vital but prosaic piece of infrastructure into a celebration of Australian migration. The idea came from New York’s Ellis Island, where immigrants to the USA were once processed, and which has a similar memorial on which migrant names are inscribed. Those at Ellis Island appear in alphabetical order, however, making it impossible to add new names once Z has been reached. We decided to inscribe names as received and let the Welcome Wall grow, with the random nature of the listings reflecting the richness of multicultural Australia.

In November 1997, the Welcome Wall project was formally announced. Registrations soon began to flow in, and on Sunday 24 January 1999 the first 3,000 names from 90 countries were unveiled before some 3,500 people.

On 11 May this year, at the latest of many ceremonies, community members gathered to see their own or their families’ names unveiled. The museum was privileged to have SBS presenter Petra Taok as the MC of this emotional occasion, which was filled with joy and reflection.

Gadigal elder Mike West began with a meaningful Welcome to Country, before Olivia Fox sang ‘Advance Australia Fair’. Director and CEO of the museum, Daryl Karp AM, then took to the stage to say:

These 686 names are from 47 different countries and add to our large collection of migrant stories here at the museum. The monument marks the long history of migrants who have shaped modern Australia [and] we celebrate the success of our multicultural nation. We constantly need to remind ourselves of this success. It is at the heart of our social cohesion.

The day after the ceremony was Mother’s Day, and the speakers – all female – told their individual migration stories, all with overarching themes of love of family and the sacrifices made in the hope of a better life.

Alana Woods recounted her family’s migration journey as ‘10-pound Poms’, and her fears of the Australian bush and its outdoor dunnies and accompanying huntsman spiders.

Dr Tran Nguyen spoke of her family’s perilous sea journey aboard an overcrowded boat as refugees fleeing postwar Vietnam to Indonesia. From there they were later accepted into Australia to start their new lives.

Yamamah Agha, from Settlement Services International Limited (SSI), championed newly arriving immigrants to Australia and the contribution they make. (Her story appears on page 70.)

Rebecca Khair attended with her son Lachlan. Born in Australia of Lebanese parents, Rebecca spoke of the sacrifice, pain and joy that her mother Souhaila (Sally) endured on her journey from Lebanon to a new life in Australia. Souhaila was in the crowd and looked on with much emotion as she sat with her husband of 57 years, Abraham Elias, whose name is already on the monument.

When the formal ceremony concluded, many of the guests, VIPS, volunteers and staff moved across to the monument to find their names and witness their own piece of our country’s multicultural history.

Robert Heaney, Community Engagement Officer

family: Abraham Elias,

and her

The ceremony that they attended in May added another 2,900 names from 47 countries to the monument.

Images Scott Cameron

01
Dr Tran Nguyen (second from right) and family members at the May ceremony. 02
The Khair
Souhaila Khair, Rebecca Khair
son Lachlan.

A tapestry of migration experiences

Celebrating those who have shaped our nation

Museum partner SSI recently made a donation to allow two names to be added to the National Monument to Migration. They, and hundreds of others, were unveiled at a ceremony in May. The following is an edited version of an address made by SSI’s general manager, Yamamah Agha, at the event.

MODERN AUSTRALIA is built off the back of the millions of migrants who have journeyed to our shores, melding with our First Nations past and peoples to form the vibrant and successful multicultural nation we are today.

Earlier this year, I had the honour of joining the Australian National Maritime Museum to unveil 600 names of Australians from migrant backgrounds on the National Monument to Migration.

Over the past 25 years, more than 34,000 names have been inscribed on this important monument. Behind them are stories of resilience, determination and hope, like those of former refugees Fawwaz and Bahara Sadiqi, who recently settled in Australia after being forcibly displaced from their homes.

As a migrant myself, seeing the National Monument to Migration and celebrating the names inscribed upon it hold deeply personal and professional significance.

Growing up in Lebanon, I developed a profound belief in social justice and equality. My experience living in a country without a robust welfare system gave me a unique appreciation for the support available here in Australia. When I migrated, my background in teaching and sociology propelled me to volunteer with migrant resource centres and led me to use my skills to influence systems and services for those starting a new life in a foreign land.

The challenges I faced in finding my place in this wonderful country only deepened my resolve to ensure that every individual, regardless of their background, had access to the appropriate support and resources.

Each name on the monument acknowledges our past struggles and triumphs, and celebrates our ongoing journey

01

02

Director and CEO,

This dedication is at the core of our work at SSI, where we connect more than 50,000 people each year, many from migrant, refugee or culturally diverse backgrounds, with the support and resources they need to thrive.

Migration is about more than moving from one place to another; it is about the exchange of ideas, skills and cultures that enrich our society in countless ways. Australia’s success as a multicultural nation is evident. Economically, the impact of migration is substantial, with new residents contributing $330 billion to the Australian GDP annually. Beyond economics, migrants bring a wealth of knowledge, skills and perspectives that drive innovation and creativity. Their entrepreneurial spirit is evident; they start businesses at twice the rate of the wider Australian population, demonstrating their determination to succeed.

More importantly, migrants enrich the cultural fabric of our society. They introduce new beliefs, customs, and traditions, fostering understanding and tolerance within our communities. Reflecting on the names added to the monument is an opportunity to honour the remarkable contributions and resilience of those who have made Australia their home. Each name on the monument acknowledges our past struggles and triumphs, and celebrates our ongoing journey and the integral role migrants play in the nation’s fabric. It is a powerful reminder that our stories, efforts and dreams are woven into the very essence of what it means to be Australian.

At the ceremony in May: Lachlan Khair, Rebecca Khair, Dr Tran Nguyen, Alana Woods, Yamamah Agha, Daryl Karp AM , Petra Taok, Mike West.
Museum
Daryl Karp AM , with Yamamah Agha at the May ceremony that unveiled the latest names added to the National Monument to Migration.

A disaster re-examined

The Melbourne–Voyager collision

AUTHOR ELIZABETH MCCARTHY shares the view of her father, former federal MP John Jess, that the tragic collision between the destroyer HMAS Voyager (II) and aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne (II) in 1964 involved the worst cover-up in Australian naval history.

McCarthy presents compelling evidence in her book Abide with Me that the history of the disaster should be rewritten to exonerate the crews of both ships, who, she claims, were unfairly implicated and have had to live with the stigma for 60 years.

The collision occurred on the evening of 10 February 1964, while the two ships were on exercises in Jervis Bay, New South Wales. The impact cut Voyager in two; its bow section sank in minutes, trapping numerous men inside. Eighty-two of the Voyager crew, including its captain, Duncan Stevens, went down with the ship. Rescuers saved 243 people from the sea.

The title of the book honours one of the heroes of the disaster, Welsh-born Chief Petty Officer Coxswain Jonathan Rogers GC DSM , who did not survive. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross for outstanding gallantry and devotion to duty.

He organised the escape of as many as possible, before encouraging those who unable to escape to die alongside him with dignity and honour. He was heard to say, ‘Keep calm, lads, there is no sense in panic’.

He then led the doomed men in singing the hymn ‘Abide with Me’.

Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced the first Royal Commission into the disaster, which began sitting on 25 February 1964. A second, in 1967, was ordered to investigate evidence from a senior naval officer, which had been withheld from the first Commission.

Despite the two Royal Commissions, the official recorded history, based on the findings of the first enquiry, still doesn’t fully explain why and how the collision occurred.

McCarthy’s father, John Jess MHR , fought to have the second Royal Commission into the disaster and to have the original findings reviewed. He and others believed this was because those assisting the Royal Commissioners were more intent on apportioning guilt and finding scapegoats – in particular the captain of HMAS Melbourne, John Robertson, who took the main blame. Robertson was subsequently banned from sea duties and resigned from the navy soon after.

Through her extensive research, including interviews with survivors, McCarthy has uncovered evidence that authorities tampered with evidence, withheld vital information and allowed the bullying of witnesses at the first inquiry.

McCarthy has uncovered evidence that authorities tampered with evidence, withheld vital information and allowed the bullying of witnesses at the first inquiry

01

Survivors from HMAS Voyager talk and rest on stretchers in the hangar of HMAS Melbourne after the collision, Jervis Bay, 10 February 1964. Naval Historical Collection © Australian War Memorial 305896 CC BY-NC

02

HMAS Melbourne entering Sydney Harbour on 12 February 1964, after the Voyager collision. Image supplied by ANMM volunteer John Withers

John Jess described the findings of the two commissions as ‘the greatest injustices carried out in Australian service history’. He said those assisting with the Royal Commissions had little understanding of navy procedures. He and others wanted a naval inquiry. ‘It would have been conducted by men who knew what they were talking about,’ Jess said.

The book contains the stories of a number of witnesses who were on Voyager and Melbourne when they collided, but whose evidence was dismissed. Elizabeth McCarthy writes: ‘This book is not an opinion. It is an insight into the Voyager story. It is also an insight into the 1964 Royal Commission which has framed the entire history of the disaster.’

The most comprehensive independent study ever made of the Voyager disaster, the book is highly recommended reading, especially the accounts by survivors whose evidence was dismissed by the two Royal Commissions, despite the fact they contained information that, properly examined, could have helped explain the reasons for the tragedy.

Reviewer Peter Allen is a retired author and journalist. He helped to cover the Voyager disaster for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald and wrote a number of stories about the findings of the two Royal Commissions and developments arising from them.

Abide with me: The HMAS Voyager tragedy By Elizabeth McCarthy, published by Sidharta Books & Print, Glen Waverley, VIC, 2023. Softcover, 270 pages, illustrations, index.

ISBN 9781922958518

RRP $29.95. VEL 359.00994 MCC

Shared skies, different worlds

The global career of William Dawes

STANDING BENEATH the Sydney Harbour Bridge today, the night sky is often dim and indistinct. The lights and haze of Australia’s largest metropolis obscure all but the brightest stars. But in 1788, this was another world –and another sky. The heavens were afire with celestial bodies, from the pearlescent clouds of the Milky Way to the bright constellation that Europeans named the Southern Cross. The new British arrivals in Warrane –Sydney Cove – had spent eight months reaching this novel land, guided by their observations of the sun and stars.

Among them was a 25-year-old Marine officer, Lieutenant William Dawes. He was not only the astronomer for the First Fleet; Dawes also served as an engineer, surveyor, artillery officer and unofficial linguist. As astrophysicist Richard de Grijs and astronomy curator Andrew Jacob detail in this first full biography of Dawes, such diverse roles were typical of his global career.

Born in 1762, Dawes witnessed profound changes in the reach of the British Empire. After serving in the fruitless campaign to retain the North American colonies, a posting to Barbados exposed this deeply religious man to the iniquities of slavery. Driven both by financial necessity and a venturer’s spirit, he volunteered to join the First Fleet arrayed to establish a penal colony in New South Wales.

Apparently well-trained in mathematics, Dawes was appointed the expedition’s astronomer on the imprimatur of the Astronomer Royal, Dr Nevil Maskelyne. According to de Grijs and Jacob, ‘Dawes appears to have been a careful and thorough observer’ who soon oversaw the erection of the colony’s first observatory. Here, Dawes charted stars, discovered nebulae, measured gravity and recorded weather and tides, while seeking in vain for a comet that Maskelyne had predicted. Although only fragments of these historic records have survived, his name is imprinted upon Sydney’s landscape as Dawes Point.

William Dawes: Scientist, Governor, Abolitionist: Caught Between Science and Religion

By Richard de Grijs and Andrew Jacob, published by Springer, 2023. Hardcover, 272 pages, illustrations, endnotes, index. ISBN 9783031387739, RRP $119.00 VEL 994.4020924 DEG

Despite forming harmonious relations with local Aboriginal people – particularly a young woman named Patyegarang, whose Gadigal language he transcribed –the ‘self-absorbed and self-righteous’ Dawes irked fellow officers and he departed Sydney aboard HMS Gorgon in December 1791. An aptitude for languages, including Arabic and Persian, contributed to his subsequent but equally problematic appointments as governor of the commercial colony of Sierra Leone and then – while based on the Caribbean island of Antigua – general superintendent of Church Missionary Society operations in Africa.

This carefully researched and well-illustrated biography accessibly encompasses Dawes’ many careers, from maritime navigation to the complex politics of slavery in the era of abolition. The authors surmise that while their subject’s aspirations were often heavenly, he regularly overlooked his own shortcomings and their down-to-earth consequences.

Reviewer Dr Peter Hobbins is the museum’s Head of Knowledge.

Professor Richard de Grijs is a museum volunteer who demonstrates winding the replica H1 marine timekeeper.

What is it about whales?

An ode to ocean behemoths

I FIRST HEARD about Dr Vanessa Pirotta in January 2018. CSIRO colleagues enthused about a Macquarie University PhD student who had been granted sea time on RV Investigator to fly drones through whale blows to collect their DNA, bacteria and hormone-laden snot. Less than a month later, she was all over the news, and even presenting at TEDx on her novel approach to offshore data collection from free-swimming behemoths. Since then, she’s made it one of her life’s missions to ‘do her part’ for science communication in Australia – popping up on television whenever a whale does something cool (or sad), as ambassador for the Volvo Ocean Lovers’ Festival and the Antarctic Science Foundation, and as founder of the Wild Sydney Harbour citizen science program. This working scientist mother of two also finds the time to write books aimed at the scientists and nature lovers of the future: for younger children, The Voyage of Whale and Calf (2022) and Oceans at Night (2024), and Humpback Highway (2024) for teen readers.

Humpback Highway is an ode to the whales that have shaped her career. Tracing her journey from student to specialist, Dr Pirotta weaves Gadigal, Dharawal and Yuin whale traditions with the history of whaling and antiwhaling measures, through to biological and societal characteristics of the species she studies. She addresses human impacts such as pollution (acoustic to physical), climate change, entanglement and ‘marine roadkill’ –accidental death or injury to marine creatures through collision with vessels.

But why do we love whales so much? Is it their huge size yet apparently peaceable natures, or their big brains and complex systems of communication, or their close familial bonds? Or maybe it’s because they exist mostly beyond the horizon – glimpses of tail or blow only fleetingly seen from shore or the deck of a heaving whale-spotting cruiser. Dr Pirotta’s love is crystallised in a single image of her swimming with a whale calf in Tonga – a moment when she touched a whale.

By Vanessa Pirotta, published by NewSouth Books, 2024. Softcover, 208 pages, illustrations. ISBN 9781742237978 RRP $33.00 VEL 599.5251568 PIR

Vanessa Pirotta’s books are aimed at young people, the scientists and nature lovers of the future

In the end, it doesn’t really matter why we love them; only that we do. Whales are keystone species, stabilising the marine food web and cycling nutrients throughout the ocean. Without whales, the ocean ecosystem could collapse. So it’s a good thing, as this book says, that numbers are on the increase, due to strict national and international regulations around the capture or hunting of whales.

This book concludes, like many targeted at the next generation, with a call to action – to take the plunge yourself to protect and preserve our ocean and its inhabitants however you can. It’s an inspiring story of one scientist’s journey and an insight into the wonderful world of whales.

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

Humpback Highway

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

Ian Bowers (ed)

Coalition navies during the Korean War: Understanding combined naval operations 951.9042 BOW

Richard Broome

Aboriginal Australians: A history since 1788 305.89915 BRO

A Burgess, E Keeves and EJ Prest (ed Helen Jones) Jubilee history of the Kindergarten Union of South Australia 1905–1955 372.99423 JUB

Alberto Cairo

How charts lie: Getting smarter about visual information

001.422 CAI

Manning Clark

A historian’s apprenticeship 994.0072 CLA

Judith Connor and Charles Baxter Kelp forests 579.88 CON

Boyd Cothran and Adrian Shubert

The Edwin Fox : How an ordinary sailing ship connected the world in the age of globalization, 1850–1914 387.2240993 COT

Megan Davis

Voice of reason: On recognition and renewal 323.119915 DAV

Richard de Kerbrech

The Shaw Savill line: Images in mast, steam and motor 387.50941 DEK

Janet Hitchman

They carried the sword

362.730942 HIT

Margaret Humphreys

Empty cradles

304.894 HUM

Sarah Lloyd and Timothy Millett (eds)

Tokens of love, loss and disrespect, 1700–1850 737.4941 LLO

Jutta Malnic

Bateau Bay: Once were children 779.25 MAL

Luis Marden

‘I found the bones of the Bounty ’ [National Geographic article] 910.453 BOU

Thomas Mayo and Kerry O’Brien

The Voice to Parliament handbook 323.119915 MAY

Robert McDougall and Robin Gardiner

White Star Line: In picture postcards 387.2432 MCD

Lydia McLean

The Barwell boy 823.4 MCL

Gordon Miller

Pacific voyages: The story of sail in the great ocean 387.224 MIL

Allan Moore

Growing up with Barnardo’s 362.732 MOO

Terry Moore

The Blue Funnel Line: A portrait in photographs and old picture postcards 387.50941 MOO

John Oakes

Sydney’s forgotten goods railways 385.24099441 OAK

John Ogden

Waterproof: Australian surf photography since 1858 797.32 OGD

Orient Steam Navigation Company

Orient Line cruises 1954 to Mediterranean Adriatic Northern waters by Orcades Oronsay Orsova 387.2432 ORI

Orient Steam Navigation Company

Orient Line to Australia: Health and comfort in tropical waters 387.50941 ORI

Glen Palmer

Reluctant refuge: Unaccompanied refugee and evacuee children in Australia, 1933–45 940.53161 PAL

Charles Prouse

On the Voice to Parliament 323.119915 PRO

John Ramsland

Children of the back lanes: Destitute and neglected children in colonial New South Wales 362.709944 RAM

Henry Frederick ‘Joe’ Rich

Noah Riseman, Shirleene Robinson, Graham Willett

Serving in silence?: Australian LGBT servicemen and women 355.0086640994 RIS

Rob Ross

Rainbows & dragons: The fortunate life of yachtsman Gordon ‘Wingnut’ Ingate 797.124092 ROS

Graeme Somner

DP&L: A history of the Dundee, Perth & London Shipping Company Ltd and Associated shipping companies 387.5065 SOM

Laura Todd (ed Amanda Midlam)

A place like home: Growing up in the School of Industry 1915–1922 362.732099441 TOD

Stephen Turnbull

Fighting ships of the Far East. 1, China & Southeast Asia 202 BC–AD 1419 623.821095 TUR

David Unaipon (ed Stephen Muecke and Adam Shoemaker)

Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines 398.20994 UNA

Robert M Warneke

Three colonial adventures: The journals of John Lingwood Stuart RARE 910.4 STU

AE Williams

Barnardo of Stepney: The father of nobody’s children 362.730942 WIL Image Janine Flew/ANMM

The Lochiel apprentice: The memories of a Barwell Boy, 1923–1934 305.23086 RIC

Expo 2024 A festival of model shipbuilding

THE SYDNEY MODEL SHIPBUILDERS’ CLUB will hold its annual exhibition on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 October at the Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, 115 Liverpool Road, Ashfield, Sydney. The exhibition, sponsored by the Australian National Maritime Museum and co-sponsored by the Leagues Club, brings together ship modelling clubs from across New South Wales. Last year, eight clubs participated, plus independent exhibitors. Between them they brought over 170 models, and we are hoping for even more this year.

Visitors will be able to see a great variety of ship types, scales and modelling approaches. Some models are built only to be displayed, others to be sailed via remote control. Some ships form part of a diorama that depicts a significant moment in the ship’s history; this Expo will feature a diorama set in 200 BCE, which represents a battle between Roman and Carthaginian biremes during the Punic wars, at a time when naval battles were fought by boarding the enemy ship via a dropped gangplank.

Many of the models are constructed from kits, and others from scratch, from researched plans. They vary in size from 15-centimetre miniatures to working models almost three metres long; in period, they range from 200 BCE to the present day.

Each club has its own display, and each has a different focus. The most popular subjects from the Sydney Model Shipbuilders’ Club and its sister Canberra club are models of well-known ships such as Endeavour, Bounty, Victory, clipper ships, Krait and of course Titanic

The Canberra club is also bringing models of two liquefied gas tankers that did a ‘milk run’ around the Melanesian islands during the 1980s.

Two plastic modelling clubs concentrate their miniature fleets on World War II and contemporary navies. They will also bring a collection of models of the wonderful racing seaplanes that competed in the Schneider Trophy. This international competition was held between the two world wars, and the final winner, the Supermarine S6B, formed the basis for the legendary Spitfire.

Task Force 72 is an international club that began in Australia. All its models are highly detailed and built at 1:72 scale, hence the club’s name. Most models are of modern naval vessels. Club members regularly sail together, steering their vessels by radio control.

Ships in bottles are a perennial visitor favourite. This year, our master bottler has managed to fit the major vessels of the Australian National Maritime Museum fleet –HMA Ships Vampire, Onslow and Advance and MV Krait – all into one bottle, while the three ships associated with the sinking of the Titanic appear in another bottle. If you ask, you may find out how it was done.

After the expo closes at 3.30 pm on the Sunday, the raffle will be drawn and awards made.

The venue has ample parking as well as multiple food outlets. Children of all ages are very welcome, and our exhibitors enjoy talking to them and answering their questions. It makes a great day out for all of the family, and entry is free!

The models vary in size from 15-centimetre miniatures to working models almost three metres long

When and where

10 am–8 pm Saturday 10 October 10 am–3.30 pm Sunday 20 October Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, 115 Liverpool Road, Ashfield, Sydney FREE ENTRY

For queries or further information, please phone Michael Bennett on 0411 545 770 or email mjbennett@ozemail.com.au

A Roman sailor in his ship’s rigging. Detail from a diorama being constructed by Peter Rae, which depicts a sea battle in the Punic Wars of 264–146 BCE.
to emerge from the workshop:
model of the Pacific Gas, built by Bob Evans of the Canberra Model Ship Club He was the tanker’s master in the late 1970s. Image courtesy Bob Evans

Blak! Loud & Proud

NAIDOC celebrations at the museum

NAIDOC WEEK this year was held from 7 to 14 July, with the theme Blak! Loud & Proud. On Sunday 7 July, the museum began a day of NAIDOC celebrations with an engaging Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony from Uncle Les McLeod and our Indigenous curator Tyson Frigo. Uncle Les made sure to take his time, allowing people to come in close and be cleansed by the smoke. The ceremony highlighted the importance of intergenerational learning among Indigenous communities.

After the Welcome to Country, La Perouse shell artist Sara Campbell ran a workshop on the Ben Lexcen Terrace in which more than 150 children participated. Sara told them the history of shell craft and about the ‘mullet run’, a traditional cultural practice among La Perouse Aboriginal people in which mullet are caught co-operatively and then cooked and eaten on the beach. Two dancers from Bangarra Dance Theatre attended to show the kids some traditional and contemporary dance moves. They taught them a few Aboriginal language words for different native animals and incorporated these words into their stories and dance routines.

In other activities, kids were able to have their favourite native animals painted on their faces, and to craft turtles and canoes from foam. Scores of children ran about with their faces painted up, pretending to be native animals, clearly enjoying themselves immensely.

Embracing the theme of this year’s NAIDOC – Blak! Loud & Proud – enabled the museum to showcase the vast and varied knowledge that First Nations people have passed down for thousands of years, and to emphasise and share their living culture and ongoing practices with the wider community.

Dixon, Indigenous Programs and Education Officer

The previous issue of Signals carried errors in the review of Seaward: Chasing Master Mariners in the Age of Sail. The author’s name should have been given as Harold (not Howard) Bradley, and John Kelly was lost while serving as first mate on (not captaining) Hilton in 1860. Also, Princess Alexandria should be Princess Alexandra

The review’s author and the editor of Signals apologise to Harold Bradley and to readers for these errors.

Children learn shell craft at a workshop run by La Perouse artist Sara Campbell. Image
Annalice Creighton/ANMM

Neurophysiologist turns maritime historian

Vale Professor Adrian Horridge FRS

(12 December 1927–30 April 2024)

01 Adrian Horridge in Makassar Harbour, South Sulawesi, inspecting a patorani fishing boat. Photograph Audrey Horridge 1979, film AH00107

02

Adrian Horridge at 90, with a model of an Indonesian golekan sail trader. Image Jeffrey Mellefont

ADRIAN HORRIDGE was a founding Professor of Behavioural Biology at the Australian National University who took a sudden, unexpected mid-career detour. Over a decade of part-time field research, he became the world’s leading expert on the distinctive forms of traditional Indonesian seacraft. All the while, he continued his laboratory work in neurophysiology and became a world authority on the vision of honeybees. He continued publishing about the latter right up to his death in April this year, aged 96.

His recording, from the 1970s, of Indonesia’s unique maritime world was timely and significant. Here he encountered a little-known cultural tradition of boatbuilding and seamanship found nowhere else in the world but the vast, tropical archipelago to Australia’s near north. This was the world’s largest and most diverse surviving fleet of engineless, working sail craft ranging from outrigger dugouts to large sail-traders.

Built beneath the palm trees to ingenious and often ancient local designs, using simple hand-tools and natural materials, the vessels had survived to serve the needs of a struggling, post-colonial economy spread across the world’s largest archipelago. But many of these designs would soon disappear as the country modernised and the fleets became motorised.

Adrian’s detailed, analytical studies of them appeared in his many books, monographs and scholarly essays. They threw light on the maritime technologies that had enabled Micronesians and Polynesians to settle the Pacific Ocean, launching their voyages from the islands of Southeast Asia. His work also increases our understanding of the historical voyages to Arnhem Land and the Kimberley that had connected Indonesian seafarers with First Nations people since pre-colonial times.

Adrian was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, in 1927. His education was disrupted by teacher shortages during World War II, but at 17 he won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge. There he gained first-class honours in natural sciences and a PhD on primitive nervous systems. During this time, he studied jellyfish, coral and anemones on expeditions to the Mediterranean and Red seas.

In lieu of national service Adrian served as a scientific officer in the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, England, which taught him about making strong, light structures for aircraft and missiles. He credited this, and his knowledge of biological structures, with helping him to interpret the unfamiliar designs of Indonesian timber boats held together by wooden pegs and bindings of rattan.

In the 1950s and 60s he was a lecturer at St Andrews University, Scotland, and director of its Gatty Marine Laboratory, as well as a visiting professor at the Universities of California and Yale. He also worked at Woods Hole Marine Laboratory in Massachusetts.

In 1969 Adrian was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for ground-breaking discoveries in marine invertebrate neurophysiology. That year he was also appointed as one of the founding professors of ANU’s School of Biological Sciences, relocating to Canberra with his wife and children.

In 1975 he led an Australian team of marine biologists on an American research ship, the Alpha Helix, exploring remote seas of eastern Indonesia. While studying the eyeballs of mantis shrimp he noticed exotic-looking local vessels working under sail and being built on village beaches. This piqued his curiosity and, since he found little written about them, over the next decade he returned whenever he could to record them himself.

Every maritime culture finds its own solutions to the universal challenges of seafaring and to the unique facets of its own marine environment. By applying its own technology and aesthetics, its seacraft become distinctive cultural expressions. Adrian Horridge’s work has preserved much of this now-vanished heritage for future Indonesians (and us) to study and enjoy.

Adrian Horridge is survived by a son, four daughters, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He has bequeathed his research archive to this museum. It includes more than 10,000 fieldwork photographs, his large research library, manuscripts, maps, Indonesian boat models and boatbuilding tools.

Author Jeffrey Mellefont is an Honorary Research Associate of the museum.

Australia’s greatest shipwreck hunter

Vale Hugh Edwards OAM (29 July 1933–10 May 2024)

HUGH EDWARDS packed an impressive range of roles, careers, honours, publications and adventures into his 90 years of life. He was a pioneer Australian diver, journalist, author, historian, maritime archaeologist, professional Australian Rules footballer, Western Australian icon and, as noted on the cover of his autobiography Dead Men’s Silver (Harper Collins, 2011), ‘Australia’s greatest shipwreck hunter’.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 29 July 1933, William Hugh Edwards, better known as Hugh, migrated to Australia with his family on board SS Themistocles in 1941. Off Rottnest Island in Western Australia in the summer of 1946, Hugh was introduced to the joys and challenges of exploring the underwater world through the medium of a World War II army surplus gas mask and a long hose borrowed from his mum’s washing machine.

He survived these first neophyte attempts beneath the waves, and after seven years boarding at Geelong Grammar School, where a young Rupert Murdoch was editor of the school magazine, Hugh made his way back to Western Australia. He enrolled in an arts degree at the University of Western Australia before switching to law two years later. After an unfortunate punch-up with another student at the end-of-year law dinner Hugh departed the university, where his father was a professor of English, under something of a cloud.

On an impulse, Edwards fronted up to the counter of the Daily News newspaper in Perth shortly after leaving university. By several strokes of luck, and using a family connection as a reference, he managed to avoid the difficult cadetship step of becoming a journalist and found himself employed as a junior reporter at the Daily News, one of Western Australia’s two newspapers.

Edwards’ discoveries eventually led to Australia’s earliest historic shipwreck legislation

During his 15 years there, Edwards became deeply immersed in the horrendous story of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Batavia, which was wrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1629. Spurred on by research by author Henrietta Drake-Brockman (another family connection), and backed by the Western Australian newspapers, Edwards led several expeditions to find the shipwreck before successfully locating it on Morning Reef, off Beacon Island in the Abrolhos Islands, in 1963.

Edwards’s second book, Islands of Angry Ghosts (Hodder and Stoughton, 1966) recounted the discovery of the wreck and the archaeological excavations on the wreck itself and its associated land sites. The book won the Sir Thomas White Memorial Prize for the best book written by an Australian in 1966.

The book became part of the Western Australian school curriculum and later inspired this reviewer, a young history student at South Fremantle High School, to take a serious interest in the discipline of maritime archaeology and become a professional in the field.

In addition to Batavia, Edwards discovered three other VOC ships ( Zeewijk, Zuytdorp and Vergulde Draeck) and the British East India Company vessel Tryall off the coast of Western Australia in the 1960s. These discoveries eventually led to Australia’s earliest historic shipwreck legislation and the creation of the world-leading maritime archaeology program at the Western Australian Maritime Museum.

Never content to sit back, Hugh Edwards went on to write more than 30 books, which were translated into six languages, on the themes of diving, shipwrecks, maritime history and marine salvage. They include The Wreck on the Half Moon Reef (Rigby, 1970), which details his discovery of the wreck of the Dutch India Company ship Zeewijk ; Treasures of the Deep (Harper Collins, 2000), about the life of shipwreck salvor Captain Michael Hatcher; The Buccaneer’s Bell (Tangee, 2006), recording the discovery of William Dampier’s vessel Roebuck by the Western Australian Maritime Museum in 2001; and his autobiography Dead Men’s Silver (Harper Collins, 2011).

Officially recognised as a ‘primary finder’ of Batavia (1629) and Zeewijk (1727), Edwards was awarded the Order of Australia for services to Australia’s maritime heritage through the discovery of historic shipwrecks and as an author in 2009.

Hugh Edwards died in Perth, Western Australia, on 10 May. Married twice, he is survived by his daughters Caroline and Petrana.

Fair winds and following seas, Hugh.

Reviewer Kieran Hosty is the museum’s Manager, Maritime Archaeology Program.

01
Hugh Edwards with an astolabe recovered from the Batavia wreck site, 1967. Unknown photographer. Image Westpix
02
Hugh Edwards at his Perth home, among mementoes from his expeditions and travels.
Photograph by Peter Rigby, used with permission

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

Major Donors

The Sid Faithfull and Christine Sadler

Acquisition Program

David & Jennie Sutherland Foundation

Honorary Research Associates

RADM Peter Briggs AO

John Dikkenberg

Dr Nigel Erskine

Dr Ian MacLeod

Jeffrey Mellefont

David Payne

Lindsey Shaw

Major Benefactors

Margaret Cusack

Basil Jenkins

Dr Keith Jones

Geoff and Beryl Winter

Honorary Life Members

Yvonne Abadee

Dr Kathy Abbass

Bob Allan

Vivian Balmer

VADM Tim Barrett AO CSC

Lyndyl Beard

Maria Bentley

Mark Bethwaite AM

Paul Binsted

David Blackley

Marcus Blackmore AM

John Blanchfield

Alexander Books

Ian Bowie

Colin Boyd

Ron Brown OAM

Paul Bruce

Anthony Buckley AM

Richard Bunting

Kevin Byrne

Sue Calwell

RADM David Campbell AM

Marion Carter

Victor Chiang

Robert Clifford AO

Helen Clift

Hon Peter Collins AM QC

Kay Cottee AO

VADM Russell Crane AO CSM

Stephen Crane

John Cunneen

Laurie Dilks

Dr Nigel Erskine

John Farrell

Dr Kevin Fewster CBE AM FRSA

Bernard Flack

Daina Fletcher

Sally Fletcher

Teresia Fors

CDR Geoff Geraghty AM

Anthony Gibbs

RADM Stephen Gilmore AM CSC RAN

Paul Gorrick

Lee Graham

VADM Mark Hammond AO

RADM Simon Harrington AM

Jane Harris

Christopher Harry

Gaye Hart AM

Janita Hercus

Robyn Holt

William Hopkins OAM

Julia Horne

Kieran Hosty

RADM Tony Hunt AO

Marilyn Jenner

John Jeremy AM

VADM Peter Jones AO DSC

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

Stephen Martin

Will Mather

VADM Stuart Mayer AO CSC and Bar

Bruce McDonald AM

Lyn McHale

VADM Jonathan Mead AO

Rob Mundle OAM

Alwyn Murray

Martin Nakata

David O’Connor

Gary Paquet

David Payne

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)

Share your family’s migration story

As an acknowledgement of your taxdeductible gift of $500 your name, or the name of a family member, relative, co-worker or friend will be etched in bronze onto the museum’s Welcome Wall, Australia’s National Monument to Migration in recognition of their journey across the seas to make Australia their new home. Register for the next unveiling.

For more information sea.museum/national-monument

Volunteer

with us For more information sea.museum/volunteer

Our volunteers are the beating heart of the museum. We’re always on the lookout for new members of our crew. Whether you’re a maritime buff or just looking to be part of your community, we have a wide range of roles for people of all interests and backgrounds.

Signals

ISSN 1033-4688

Editor Janine Flew

Staff photographer Jasmine Poole

Design & production Austen Kaupe

Printed in Australia by Pegasus Media & Logistics

Material from Signals may be reproduced, but only with the editor’s permission.

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Australian National Maritime Museum

2 Murray Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia. Phone 02 9298 3777

Our opening hours are 10 am–4 pm (NSW school holidays 9.30 am–5 pm)

The Australian National Maritime Museum is a statutory authority of the Australian Government

Explore Australia’s stories of the sea by becoming a museum member. Options for individuals, families and people who live interstate or overseas offer a great range of benefits, such as unlimited entry to our museum, vessels and exhibitions, as well as special discounts.

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ANMM Council

Chair Mr John Mullen AM

Ms Daryl Karp AM

Councillors

Mr Paddy Crumlin

Hon Justice Sarah C Derrington AM

Mr Hieu Van Le AC

Mr John Longley AM CitWA

Hon Leo McLeay

Ms Alison Page

RADM Christopher Smith AM CSM RAN

Ms Arlene Tansey

Australian National Maritime Museum

Foundation Board

Mr John Barbouttis

Mr Daniel Janes, Chair

Mr James Emmett SC

Mr John Mullen AM, ex officio Chair

Ms Daryl Karp AM, ex officio

Mr Simon Chan

Mr David Mathlin

Dr Jeanne-Claude Strong

Ms Arlene Tansey

Mr Nick Wappett

American Friends of the Australian National Maritime Museum

Mr Robert Moore II

Mr John Mullen AM

Ms Daryl Karp AM

What’s in the shop?

It’s all about nature in our store this season, with official Wildlife Photographer of the Year merchandise and an irresistible range of soft toys.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 59

Publications, decorative items and stationery featuring a stunning selection of the winning images from the 2023 competition. See our website for more options.

Bookmarks $4.95 / Members $4.45

Fridge magnets $6.95 / Members $6.25

Highlight Volume 9 $22.00 / Members $19.80

Notecards (set of 10) $24.95 / Members $22.45

Wall prints $24.95 / Members $22.45

A5 notebooks $24.95 / Members $22.45

Portfolio 33 $64.95 / Members $58.34

Members receive 10% discount

Open 7 days a week

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Animal toys

Cute and cuddly plush critters for kids of all ages. Various species and sizes; see our website for more.

$19.95 to $64.95 / Members $17.95 to $58.45

© Max Waugh

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