Object of the Week: The many lives and deaths of the tug HERO
19 Jun 2012
If ever there was a little tug whose adventures could have graced the pages of a children’s book, it would be the Aussie tug HERO.
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Discover stories behind the latest exhibitions, fascinating explorations into maritime science and archaeology, and the surprising details of what happens inside (and outside) a modern working museum.
Restoring hope and a fishing boat called ‘Freedom’
14 Jun 2012
With all the rain in Sydney recently, you could be forgiven for forgetting what blue sky looks like. But for the Lu family, who arrived in Australia in 1977 on the Vietnamese refugee boat Tu Do, the colour sky blue is forever etched in their memories as the colour of freedom.
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Through the eyes of a 13 year old
13 Jun 2012
An Estonian woman remembers what it was like being 13. In 1991, Mall Juske described what she saw 42 years earlier on board SS Cyrenia, rolling into the harbour at Fremantle. It was a bright and sunny Sunday as she ‘took a stroll in the town’.
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Who's that girl?
07 Jun 2012
As much as I enjoy working with these sailing images, I was delighted to find a number of studio portraits within the William Hall collection. There are portraits of men, some family shots and the occasional wedding – but most strikingly there are a number of beautiful portraits of women.
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Object of the Week: Jantzen, an American company in an Australian market
05 Jun 2012
The history of the swimsuit is a long, gorgeous and complicated story that has it all – sex, celebrity, politics and an international stage. The evolution of swimwear design involves technology as much as it involves fashion, as fabrics and techniques developed and improved.
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24 years ago today
05 Jun 2012
It’s been 24 years since Australian long-distance sailor, Kay Cottee, returned from her record breaking 189-day solo circumnavigation of the globe in her yacht, Blackmores First Lady. She was the first woman to circumnavigate the world alone and unassisted.
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Boorun's Canoe
29 May 2012
Boorun was a pelican, the first of the Gunnai/Kurnai people who came to Gippsland. When Boorun first travelled to the area, he carried with him a bark canoe. As he walked, Boorun heard a tapping sound coming from his canoe.
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Fashions on the harbour: Fox furs and cloche hats
28 May 2012
Object of the week has taken a different direction this week – it’s all about vintage fashion. The museum’s Samuel J Hood collection has been a pleasure to investigate and research.
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Object of the Week : The convict artist Richard Browne
23 May 2012
In the late 1980s the Australian National Maritime Museum found itself in the process of acquiring two unusual paintings. The works dated to the 1820s and depicted Aborigines fishing: one portraying a couple in a canoe and the other a man presenting a catch of fish to his wife
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Object of the week: Batavia - Mutiny, madness and murder
15 May 2012
These words, which appeared in The Disastrous Voyage of the Ship Batavia (1647), are believed to have been written by Commander Francis Pelsaert. The text details the tragic fate that befell the survivors of the wreck of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) cargo vessel, Batavia.
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