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.
01 Aug 2012
Adam Cullen, well-known Australian artist, worked at the Australian National Maritime Museum for six years from 1994 and all his friends and colleagues here would like to say how saddened we were to hear of his death.
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01 Aug 2012
Today is the birthday of all Australian horses and to celebrate I decided to write about shipping horses from Australia to India. Yes a rather unusual topic, but nevertheless a key story in our upcoming exhibition East of India: Power, Trade and Australia 1788-1857.
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31 Jul 2012
All eyes may be on the London 2012 Olympic Games at the moment, but my attention has been caught by what is commonly recognised as the golden years of Australian swimming.
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25 Jul 2012
In case you hadn’t yet heard, the Olympics are just about to roll around again. As July comes to a close the Olympics will commence, captivating the world as it showcases the physical heights of human potential and creates history in its wake. Clearly this is an excellent opportunity for museums such as ours to combine a very Australian love of sports with a little history.
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16 Jul 2012
There’s something ambient about Kenneth Macqueen’s The Beach Fisherman, 1934. A man stands barefoot on a beach, fishing line in tow, with the shore stretching out further than the eye can see and the clouds threatening rain in a decidedly gloomy way.
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11 Jul 2012
There is something intriguing about natural history illustrations. The plants look as though they are sprouting from the page but the animals appear slightly on the edge of reality, with blankly staring eyes and stiffly posed limbs. Perhaps this is because the immobility of plants permit them to be drawn from life whereas animals do not generally allow the painter that luxury unless they are in a more, well, deceased state.
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09 Jul 2012
Today is the 100th birthday of one of the museum’s oldest friends – in several senses. Happy birthday to Carl Halvorsen, of the famous Halvorsen boatbuilding dynasty.
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05 Jul 2012
Kunmatjs are dilly bags from the Northern Territory used for carrying small fish such as catfish. They are a common item across many Indigenous groups in the Northern Territory and known by a number of different names depending on their region of origin.
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26 Jun 2012
During early February in 1893 the south-east of Queensland had seen a week of unusually heavy rainfall. The Brisbane Courier newspaper reported that ‘disastrous floods’ had caused an ‘unprecedented rise’ in the Brisbane River, and on the 6th of February residents awoke to read that the flooding had finally ‘reached the magnitude of widespread calamity’.
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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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