Blog

Anyone for tea?

15 Apr 2019

The death of Captain Cook may seem a bizarre scene for a tea tray, but such an item was the perfect gift for wealthy industrialist Henry Bolckow.

In celebration of military nurses

10 Apr 2019

With the continued public interest in medical-based period dramas thanks to the wildly popular BBC series Call The Midwife, we thought it would be a great time to showcase some fabulous images of wartime military nurses from our collection. 

High-tech wreck hunting on board the RV Investigator

05 Apr 2019

RV Investigator uses the latest technology to survey, record and analyse the coast and waters of Australia, including searching for shipwrecks.

Vinedressers and vintners

04 Apr 2019

So you think you know a thing or two about sharks

03 Apr 2019

Do sharks like jazz music? Do they feel pain? Meet Dr Catarina Vila-Pouca. She is researching the connection between cognition and shark behavioural ecology.

Red sky at night, sailor's delight?

23 Mar 2019

Sailors' weather lore — myth or meteorology? When European sailors began arriving on Australian shores, they brought with them a host of sayings about the weather. What truth was there in these, and were any of them relevant to conditions in the southern hemisphere?

Remembering the Irish famine orphans

17 Mar 2019

Today some 80 million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry, including an estimated seven million Australians. For St Patrick’s Day, we take a look at the story of the destitute Irish orphans who arrived in Australia 170 years ago at the height of the Great Famine.

Investigating a rocky relationship

15 Mar 2019

Australia is surrounded by deep, mysterious oceans. The RV Investigator to explores these depths. But who is conducting the groundbreaking science on board? Enter Dr Joanne Whittaker, marine geophysicist, and Dr Rebecca Carey, volcanologist. Together they are gathering data to unlock the ancient history of the sea floor...

When going to the beach required pyjamas

11 Mar 2019

There's a reason people are still so fascinated with the art deco style of the 1920s and 1930s...  Take these stylish 'beach pyjamas' from the museum's archives, for example. Why make a trip to the seaside looking drab when you could look fabulous?

An anchor’s secrets revealed

07 Mar 2019

In December last year, maritime archaeologists and researchers from the museum and the Silentworld Foundation conducted a shipwreck survey of Boot Reef in the Coral Sea. While searching for the wreck of the Lancashire Lass, they also discovered something at the end of a large, long chain...