Signals152.pdf

Sydney’s hydrofoils

Bearings

From the Director

WELCOME TO THE SPRING EDITION of Signals.

As spring unfolds, we continue to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with our series of exhibitions and talks entitled The World Remade. With so much uncertainty in the world, it is timely to reflect on our history – we can always learn from the past.

We are proud to launch a wonderful Indigenous exhibition, Ur Wayii (Incoming Tide), featuring the work of Torres Strait Islander Brian Robinson.

Robinson is a Waiben (Thursday Island) artist who also has Maluyligal and Wuthathi heritage. His work explores imagery drawn from ancestral iconography of the Torres Strait (Zenadth Kes), which he uniquely interweaves with images from popular culture and science fiction. His work is in great demand around the world, and we are so pleased to feature it in a solo exhibition.

We also have a small exhibition called Frozen Witness: Aurora’s polar voyages , which brings to life the extraordinary story of a remarkable vessel – a timber whaling ship turned Antarctic explorer – whose legacy spans sealing, science, survival and ultimate sacrifice.

Built in 1876 in Dundee, Scotland, the 580-ton SY Aurora was originally designed for Arctic whaling. But the ship’s destiny lay far to the south. Over four decades, Aurora became a silent witness to some of the most dramatic chapters in polar exploration, including the heroic expeditions of Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton.

The exhibition features a selection of historic objects donated to the National Maritime Collection by family members, including a lifebuoy, the only remaining

item from the vessel’s disappearance in 1917, a most evocative artefact. The exhibition invites visitors to rediscover this remarkable vessel and the people whose lives were entwined with it. Their story is one of endurance, innovation and the power of the human spirit in the face of the unknown.

In November, the 2025 Ocean Photographer of the Year exhibition will have its world premiere here at the museum. We are so proud of shepherding it alongside Oceanographic Magazine off the printed page and computer screen into museums and galleries around the world.

As this edition goes to press, we are delighted to announce the appointment of The Hon Hieu Van Le AC as the new Chair of the Australian National Maritime Museum Council. He was governor of South Australia from 2014 to 2022 and is a former chair of the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission. A fuller profile will appear in the next issue of Signals

As always, I am happy to hear from the museum family about what matters to you, so please, if you have any ideas, drop me a line to thedirector@sea.museum I may not be able to respond directly to every person, but please be assured, different voices are both welcome and encouraged.

Daryl Karp AM Director and CEO

Works by artist Brian Robinson feature in the exhibition Ur Wayii (Incoming Tide). Image Saul Steed

Contents

Spring 2025

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 Two youth sail trainees aboard traditional sailing ship STS Leeuwin II

See article on page 2. Image Leeuwin Ocean Adventure Foundation

2 New respect for old ways

Youth sail training and tall ship traditions

10 The fast and the futuristic

The brief, exhilarating reign of Sydney’s hydrofoils

14 The weird and the wonderful

Our Head of Registration chooses her favourite collection items

20 Len Randell OAM

Western Australia’s first naval architect

26 Top-secret transmissions

A teenaged telegraphist’s wartime mission

30 Zane Grey’s quest

The epic hunt for a monster shark

36 Keeping historic boats afloat

Sydney Harbour Federation Trust restoration projects

42 David Attenborough’s plea for the ocean

A milestone event on World Ocean Day

44 A flotilla of model ships

Sydney Model Shipbuilding Club’s Expo 2025

46 Foundation

Donations make a difference

48 Members news and events

The latest talks and tours this spring

52 Exhibitions

What’s on display this season

56 Maritime heritage around Australia

The distinctive maritime culture of the Cocos Atoll

62 Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme

Highlights of the 2024–25 program

68 Research

Conserving the Barangaroo Boat – a rare colonial vessel

74 Collections

Japan’s maritime history in postcards

78 National Monument to Migration

Celebrating journeys to a new life

80 Readings

The Tinpot Navy ; Dangerous Passage

86 Currents

Vale Hugh Treharne OAM; Tunku & Ngaadi at Vivid Sydney

New respect for old ways

Tall ship traditions and youth sail training

Tall ship sailing is growing in popularity around the world, including in Australia, where a fleet of restored, replica and newly built vessels with traditional sail configurations routinely ply the nation’s waterways. Jane Dargaville profiles the vessels and those who maintain and sail them.

South Australia’s modern-built brigantine One and All, whose design was inspired by that of a 19th-century schooner, conducting a public cruise on the Derwent River, Hobart, during the 2025 Australian Wooden Boat Festival. This biennial event brings tall ships from all around Australia to celebrate traditional marine craft. Image Michelle Bowen

The expansion of Australia’s tall ship fleet owes much to the immense success of youth sail training

Tall ship rigs involve complex arrangements of masts, booms, sails, ropes, cables, chains and tackle, and often unique pieces of gear

A VAST NUMBER OF SAILING SHIPS contributed to Australia’s development in the first 150 years of European settlement. The first mechanised ships –hybrid vessels, with both sails and steam-driven paddle wheels – began operating in Australia as early as the 1830s, but sailing ships continued to play a vital role in Australia’s commercial maritime trade for at least another century.

The term ‘tall ship’ is a modern generic name for a large, traditionally rigged sailing vessel.1 Accelerated industrialisation during World War II led to a decline in tall ship numbers, and by the 1950s a tall ship was a rare sight anywhere in Australia. But when tall ships from 30 countries figured large in national celebrations to mark the 1988 bicentenary of European colonisation, the public imagination was captured. Today, tall ships operate out of all the major cities, and from various regional and remote coastal locations, providing everything from brief harbour cruises to extended blue-water passages.

The rise in tall ship numbers over the last four decades has been driven by the passion, determination and hard work of a community of individuals and groups of dedicated tall ship devotees.

Australia’s tall ship fleet

In Sydney Harbour, tall ships are a relatively common sight. The Australian National Maritime Museum has two working square riggers, a replica of Captain James Cook’s Endeavour and a replica of Duyfken, the original of which is believed to have been the first European ship to make landfall in Australia, off the northwest coast in 1606. The volunteer-run Sydney Heritage Fleet sails James Craig , a fully restored 1874 square-rigged, iron-hulled barque –one of only three remaining worldwide. The commercially run Sydney Harbour Tall Ships sails three historic square riggers, including two – Søren Larsen and Southern Swan (formerly Our Svanen) – that participated in the 1988 First Fleet re-enactment voyage. Sydney stages a tall ships ‘race’ each year on Australia Day. Britain’s gift to the people of Australia for the 1988 Bicentenary was a modern-design, 44-metre, steel-hulled, two-masted brigantine named Young Endeavour, which was handed over to the Royal Australian Navy to conduct civilian youth sail training.2

The expansion of Australia’s tall ship fleet owes much to the immense success of youth sail training, which is popular worldwide and promoted and supported by the global charity Sail Training International (which also organises a hugely popular annual tall ship race in European waters).

Over four decades, tens of thousands of young people aged between 14 and 25 have participated in Australian tall ship youth sail training programs. The benefits of sailing for building youth self-esteem and capability were well understood in Australia before the arrival of Young Endeavour, and in the two years before that vessel came onto the scene, two not-for-profit organisations, Leeuwin Ocean Adventure in Western Australia and One and All in South Australia, began operating tall ships to conduct youth development sail training.

In Tasmania, that state’s Sail Training Association runs sail training and youth adventure cruises on a two-masted brig named Lady Nelson, a replica of an 18th-century ship that played a major role in the early exploration and surveying of Australia’s southern coastal waters and in passenger transportation between Tasmania and the mainland. Also in Tasmania, the Windeward Bound Trust operates Windeward Bound, a modern-built, 33-metre, 120-tonne topsail schooner based on a traditional mid-19th-century design and made of Tasmanian hardwood timbers.

In Victoria, the trust-owned 27-metre topsail schooner Enterprize, a replica of a vessel of the same name which was built in Hobart in 1830, has been offering youth sail training since the 1990s. Another tall ship will soon put to sea for youth sail training once the Waypoint Foundation’s restoration of Alma Doepel is completed at Melbourne Docklands’ North Wharf. This 45-metre, three-masted topsail schooner and former cargo ship was built in Bellingen, New South Wales, in 1903.

James Craig crew members, who are all volunteers, high in the rigging on a day sail in Sydney Harbour in May 2025. Image Michelle Bowen

The Sail Training Association of Queensland provides sailing adventures for school children and youths on a modern-design 30-metre gaff-rigged schooner named South Passage, which was built and launched in the 1990s and sails out of Moreton Bay.

In North Queensland, a 1902 Dutch-built squarerigger, Solway Lass, operates as a tourist vessel in and around the Whitsunday Islands, while several original early-20th-century ketches with gaff rigging, which are considered part of the tall ship fleet, sail in different locations around Australia.

Costly endeavours

Building, restoring, maintaining and sailing tall ships is costly and time-consuming. The tall ships run by notfor-profits fund their operations through their sailing activities and from hard-won sponsorships, grants and donations. Along with both youth and adult sail training, most also conduct commercial public cruises, charters and sea voyages. The service organisation Rotary is a strong supporter of tall ship youth sail training, providing different types of financial assistance, including individual scholarships to several vessels, such as Young Endeavour, Windeward Bound, Lady Nelson, Enterprize, South Passage and One and All. Apart from Young Endeavour and the Australian National Maritime Museum’s Endeavour and Duyfken, no Australian tall ship receives recurrent government funding.

Tall ship rigs involve complex arrangements of masts, booms, sails, ropes, cables, chains and tackle, and often unique pieces of gear, which might vary from one ship to another and which require a competent, experienced and fit crew to operate. Tall ship sailing also requires a knowledge and understanding of an extensive vocabulary of traditional nautical terminology. While some crew members are paid, the not-for-profits rely heavily on volunteers, and it is a constant challenge to train and retain good crew.

Over four decades, tens of thousands of young people aged between 14 and 25 have participated in Australian tall ship youth sail training programs

For ordinary crew members, an accredited deckhand qualification is offered by vocational training institutions in most states, but organisations also develop and implement their own training regimes. Senior crew members – masters, mates and coxswains – on vessels over 24 metres must hold qualifications recognised by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. The Sydney Heritage Fleet, whose James Craig is Australia’s largest tall ship, requires its masters, all of whom are former senior naval or merchant mariners, to hold the Nautical Institute’s square rig endorsement.

Challenge and camaraderie

Eminent among Australia’s tall ship community is Captain Sarah Parry AM . In the 1960s, as a young navy sailor at Garden Island, she witnessed the entry into Sydney Harbour of a big three-masted schooner named New Endeavour. Mesmerised by its grace and beauty, Parry resolved to build one for herself, but it was another 30 years before Windeward Bound was launched in Hobart in 1996. The Windeward Bound Trust was set up in 1999 and has graduated more than 6,000 young people from all walks of life, including some of the most disadvantaged, from its sail training program.

For young people in particular, Parry says the experience is life changing:

It’s about learning to do something that’s going to bring them out of their comfort zone and enable them to move forward … sometimes you can see a shiver passing through them as they realise they’ve got control of a 120-tonne vessel in their hands. It makes magnificent changes in them.

01

James Craig crew member Pi Jeffares describes tall ship sailing as ‘beautiful to be a part of and to share with others’.

Image John Bowen

02

Former Windeward Bound youth sail trainee Mia Scicluna, left, is now a regular volunteer crew member on the vessel, as is Fenn Gordon, right. Many youth sail trainees go on to volunteer as crew members on tall ships in Australia and abroad. Image Windeward Bound

‘When you’re at sea, it’s about how you pull through. That’s the addictive side of it’

01 James Craig on Sydney Harbour, May 2025. John Dikkenberg (right) is one of its five Masters, all of whom are former naval or merchant mariners. Left is Head Bosun Brett Ryall and centre is longtime Mate Ainslie Robinson. Image Michelle Bowen

02

Since its launch in 1986, the purpose-built youth sail training barque Leeuwin II has hosted more than 40,000 young people from Western Australia on its voyages. Image Leeuwin Ocean Adventure Foundation

A plea for Leeuwin II

Australia’s tall ship community was stunned and saddened in August last year when the magnificent 55-metre three-masted barque Leeuwin II, while alongside at its homeport of Fremantle, WA, was struck by an out-ofcontrol container ship.

Two crew members who were asleep on board escaped serious injury and the ship’s hull was less damaged than it might have been. However, its masts, sails and rigging were completely destroyed.

Annie Roberts, CEO of the South Australian not-forprofit that operates One and All, which has seen more than 10,000 participate in its youth sail training, talks about the ‘camaraderie, the bonding, the feeling of belonging, of being needed and wanted’ experienced by young people:

They find that those they’ve met only five days earlier quickly become like family members. It gives a great sense of belonging and it doesn’t matter what background you come from. When you’re at sea, it’s about how you pull through. That’s the addictive side of it; that’s why people keep coming back.

Pi Jeffares began as a regular volunteer crew member on the Sydney Heritage Fleet’s James Craig at the age of 16 in 2022 and has also crewed on Leeuwin and Duyfken

She usually sails as a ‘topman’, climbing high into the rigging to work the sails, a role that demands skill and endurance, and one she loves:

Once we’ve set all the sails, we send two crew up each of the masts to tend the ropes to make them billow. We get sent up in any weather even if there’s a high wind.

Jeffares says she had always been fascinated by history but knew little of Australia’s maritime history before going for a public day sail on James Craig on Sydney Harbour:

It was so much fun to see how everything was working as it was in 1874. I was interested and wanted to know more … I soon fell down the rabbit hole and now I can’t leave. It’s beautiful to be a part of and to share with others.

Since its launch in 1986, the purpose-built Leeuwin has hosted more than 40,000 sail trainees in its program that targets disaffected young people aged 14 to 25. Leeuwin is Australia’s biggest youth sail training tall ship – with berths for 55 – and the only one that caters for people with disability.

Leeuwin ’s Master James Rakich, a former sail trainee on the ship himself, says:

Leeuwin’s program is incredibly popular, and the ship was busy conducting almost back-to-back voyages when it was damaged ... one of our promotional slogans is a quote from a young participant who said, ‘The only thing better than going on the Leeuwin is going on it twice’.

Last year the philanthropic Minderoo Foundation, established by Andrew Forrest and Nicola Forrest, granted the Leeuwin Ocean Adventure Foundation $3.5 million to help cover operating expenses over a three-year period and establish long-term financial sustainability. Even with this endowment, Leeuwin ’s restoration faces significant financial and practical challenges. Donations to assist with this project can be made at sailleeuwin.com/support/make-a-donation/

1 The term ‘tall ship’ was popularised by John Masefield in his poem ‘Sea Fever’ (1902): ‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by’.

2 At the time of writing, the original Young Endeavour was on its farewell voyage, circumnavigating Australia with groups of young sail trainees embarking and disembarking at different locations, and its replacement, a three-masted Dykstra-designed brigantine, Young Endeavour II, was nearing the final stages of construction at a shipyard in Port Macquarie, NSW.

Jane Dargaville is a freelance journalist and a volunteer with the Sydney Heritage Fleet.

The fast and the futuristic

The reign of Sydney’s hydrofoils

Sixty years ago, in January 1965, the first hydrofoil in Australia hit Sydney Harbour, revolutionising the Manly commute. Rob Egan looks back.

EARLY EXPERIMENTS in hydrofoil vessels began in the second half of the 19th century, and in 1965 the technology came to Sydney. The first passenger service left Circular Quay at 7.15 am on Thursday 7 January 1965. The vessel Manly was powered by a 1,350-bhp V12 Mercedes Benz–Fiat diesel motor capable of a cruising speed of 35 knots while planing on its foils. This halved the duration of the run from Manly to Circular Quay, taking 15–20 minutes compared with the regular ferry’s 35-minute trip.

Decades of change

In the decade or so following World War II, Sydney’s transport system underwent a series of rapid, dramatic and far-reaching changes. Public passenger transport, especially ferries and trams, was the area most affected. The last line on the tramway system closed in 1961. Ferry travel had revived somewhat during the war years, from 28 million passengers in 1939 to 37 million in 1945, but began declining after the war, and its patronage fell

to a low of 11 million in 1963 (although it has since risen slightly).1 Part of the cause was the growing acceptance of the motor car. In the 1950s, the remaining ferries were gradually converted from coal-burning engines to diesel power. This may have increased speed, but only marginally. For many people, trips appeared shorter and more convenient using private cars.

The future was seen as belonging to the motor vehicle: motor buses would soon be the major form of public transport serving the city and suburbs. At the same time, private motor cars were owned by more and more people.2 The Warringah Freeway was in the works, splitting the lower north shore in two and prioritising vehicles across the now eight lanes of traffic over the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

With the tram network removed by 1961 for the benefit of buses, and the Warringah Freeway yet to be completed, the hydrofoil was the ultimate traffic buster. Not only did it halve the travel time of the traditional ferry, it rivalled the fastest bus trip through the north shore – and avoided any inconvenient Spit Bridge openings.

Hydrofoil Manly, in its original livery, on its regular run from Circular Quay to Manly. Printmax c 1965. Postcard from the author’s collection

As a hydrofoil’s speed increases, the hull is raised entirely clear of the water by the lifting force of the foils

In the decade or so following World War II, Sydney’s transport system underwent a series of rapid, dramatic and far-reaching changes

01

The National Maritime Collection recently added ticket number one from the first journey. ANMM Collection 00056621

02

Passengers board a hydrofoil at Manly for the trip to Circular Quay. Photographer Curly Fraser. State Library of New South Wales, Australian Photographic Agency –18258

03

A souvenir ticket from an early journey, another recent addition to the National Maritime Collection. ANMM Collection 00056622

04

A souvenir keyring depicts a hydrofoil zooming towards Circular Quay. Author’s collection

A thousand miles from care

The Port Jackson and Manly Steamship Company’s popular slogan trumpeted Manly as a location ‘seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care’. Until bridges and roads connected Manly directly with the city, the locality remained largely the haunt of the wealthy or those with established sea legs. After World War II, however, aged and deteriorating facilities, combined with changes to the tourist market, led to a significant decline in stopover visitors. This became acute by the early 1960s. The rise of both the car and the backyard swimming pool also undermined harbourside resorts as people drove to surf beaches or swam at home. Enter the hydrofoil – part traffic buster and part novelty. For the first 18 months or so, you could even get a personalised souvenir ticket. From the mid-1970s, a burst of successful local protest reversed the decline of traditional ferry services, which had been exacerbated in part by the establishment of hydrofoils as a faster commuting option. This contributed to a period of urban gentrification which continues in the 21st century. 3

Manly was the third ferry to carry this name and had a capacity of 72 passengers. It was a PT20 type built by Hitachi Shipbuilding and Engineering in Japan under licence from Sachsenberg Supramar. Manly arrived in Sydney aboard the Japanese cargo ship Kanto Maru on 31 December 1964. The hull was aluminium alloy, with two foils of tempered steel. As a hydrofoil’s speed increases, the hull is raised entirely clear of the water by the lifting force of the foils, which enables the vessel to navigate at high speeds without wave and friction resistance on the hull.

The vessel was certified to travel as far as Port Stephens and Jervis Bay, but only one such trip went beyond the proposition stage. In 1967 Manly, along with the

The rise of both the car and the backyard swimming pool undermined harbourside resorts

traditional ferry North Head, travelled to Melbourne to provide tourist trips during the Moomba Festival. It took 30 hours to complete the 385-nautical-mile journey, with one fuel stop at Eden. The vessel was damaged in a wind squall in Port Phillip Bay on 16 January 1967. Manly served until 1978, when limited passenger capacity and reliability issues relegated it to a spare boat.

Manly was withdrawn and sold in 1979 to Hydrofoil Seaflight Services in Queensland and renamed Enterprise for use between Rosslyn Bay and Great Keppel Island. The service was unsuccessful and Enterprise was sold to a private owner, who removed the foils and engine. In 1991 the hull was transported to Mildura, Victoria, where it was intended for use as a floating restaurant on the Murray River. In 1995 the hull was transported to a private property north of Sydney for conversion to a private cruise boat. It remained there until around September 2021, when the vessel was finally broken up.

Hydrofoils ceased operation in 1991 and were replaced by JetCat catamarans. These operated from 1990 to 2008 but proved unreliable and expensive. Both hydrofoils and JetCats led the way for the current services, provided by Manly Fast Ferry and the Emerald class of vessel, to continue the legacy of Manly

1 Wotherspoon, G (2008). Transport. The Dictionary of Sydney <https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/transport>. Ferry patronage has risen slightly since, to 15.5 million passengers per year today.

2 Ibid.

3 Ashton, P (2008). Manly. The Dictionary of Sydney

Rob Egan works in a local history role for Blacktown City Libraries and is a volunteer with the museum’s Vaughan Evans Library.

Seven individual engravings tell a story about Mr Jones, ‘a martyr to rheumatism’, as he undergoes the whale cure. ANMM Collection 00006998

A founding staff member of the museum, Sally Fletcher has been overseeing the collection since the late 1980s

The weird and the wonderful

A foray into odd corners of the museum’s collection

Sally Fletcher, Head of Registration, is the woman who knows how to find anything among the 162,000-plus objects in the museum’s collection. She shares some of her favourite items with Tim Barlass.

THERE’S A WOODEN SIGN pushed into the back of what looks to be a decaying sperm whale washed up on the beach. The sign says, ‘New South Whales bathing establishment’. Languishing in holes cut into the putrefying carcass are 30 or so men and women, some literally up to their necks in it. One is reading a newspaper despite the evident appalling smell of ‘ammoniacal gases’.

This image, published in The Graphic in May 1902, is captioned ‘The whale cure for rheumatism in Australia’. Whalemen of the time asserted that chronic rheumatism could be perfectly cured by the treatment outlined above. ‘Sometimes the patient cannot stand this horrible bath for more than an hour and has to be lifted out in a fainting condition, to undergo a second, third, or perhaps fourth course on that or the following day.’

‘I wouldn’t do it,’ says Sally Fletcher, who is the museum’s Head of Registration and has chosen the item as one of her favourites among the collection.

A founding staff member of the museum, Sally has been overseeing the collection for decades, even before the museum’s opening in 1991. She is responsible for ensuring that all objects purchased or on loan, however large or small, however delicate or valuable, are accurately catalogued and stored where they can be readily found by curators preparing them for exhibition.

Sally’s chosen favourites include other objects bound to raise a smile, such as the lithograph poster advertising sub-aqueous entertainer Charles Weightman. He could, apparently, smoke a pipe underwater, and performed in England, Australia, New Zealand and America from the 1860s to 1880s.

Titled ‘Natator The Man-Fish’, the poster, which Sally says has never been on display, includes five vignettes from his stage performance – ‘Eating underwater’, ‘Drinking underwater’, ‘Smoking underwater’, ‘The egg feat’ and ‘The chair act’.

‘Man-Fish’ demonstrated his skills at the Queen’s Theatre in York Street, Sydney, from August to September 1874, followed by a performance as part of a Christmas festival at Sydney’s Exhibition Building in December 1874.

He would dive to the bottom of the tank, where he sat and ate a plate of bread and butter and then drank a bottle of milk. His next feat was to smoke a pipe, before performing the chair act, which involved repeatedly swimming with fish-like ease between the legs of a chair secured to the bottom of the tank.

‘The Chair Act?’, Sally asks. ‘What’s not to love about the Chair Act?’

As you would expect, Sally and her team know the precise number of objects in the collection – it stands at 162,454. Of those, 590 were accessioned (added to the collection) in 2024. Last year 2,760 items were digitised, 3,713 items were photographed, and 18,794 objects were moved or inventoried. Sally notes:

Our role is quite diverse, with a skill set ranging from forklift driving to computer coding. When we acquire things for the collection, whether it’s a donation or a purchase, we work with the curatorial and conservation teams to assess whether we’ve got the resources to care for it and whether we should bring them in. So if it’s a very big acquisition, then I would try to get some additional funds to process it.

It is important to us that the collection is documented and accessible to our staff and the public. My team will then accession the item, give it a unique number and description in the database, photograph it, locate it and put it in storage and keep track of it from then on.

We work with the exhibition teams to physically move objects on or off display. If we borrow objects from other individuals or organisations, it’s my team who negotiate and issue loan agreements, so there’s a lot of risk assessment.

‘Man-Fish’ would dive to the bottom of the tank, where he sat and ate a plate of bread and butter and then drank a bottle of milk

Illustrated poster advertising English-born entertainer Charles Weightman, who performed aquatic feats as part of popular stage entertainments from the 1860s to the 1880s.

ANMM Collection 00051367

We also work with international freight agents on pieces like James Cameron’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible, for instance – that was a massive job. It came from the United States, from Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. Every step of the way was very carefully planned and managed

Of course, many objects are of perhaps greater historical significance than the examples above. Among the ten massive sliding racks in the small objects storage area is the remarkable log of Henry William Downes, master of the appropriately named whaling barque Terror during its round trip from Sydney into the Pacific Ocean in 1846–47.

Terror was one of many whaling ships owned by the colourful and controversial entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd, a Scottish adventurer and a prominent figure in the history of whaling in early colonial Australia. It was Boyd who established the whaling base Boyd Town in Twofold Bay in southern New South Wales.

01 Inside front cover of a journal of the whaling barque Terror, written and illustrated by the ship’s master, Captain Henry William Downes. The 90-page manuscript describes a journey out of Sydney from 7 September 1846 to 17 July 1847. ANMM Collection 00038301

02 The skull of a merino ram forms the base of the Intercolonial Sailing Carnival trophy. ANMM Collection 00048268

Sally and her team know the precise number of objects in the collection –it stands

at 162,454

Senior curator Daina Fletcher recognised the importance of the logbook when it came up for auction and persuaded the museum’s management and governing Council to provide the additional funding needed to purchase it.

Downes was a skilled and lively writer, and he conveys vividly the spirit and the language of those intrepid times. He was also an accomplished watercolour artist, and his written account is complemented by his own illustrations. The log contains about 50 views of different places visited during the 10-month cruise, along with 25 illustrations of whales and 25 paintings of ships, rigging and crew members.

He writes of their first kill of a whale:

His spout about this time was nearly all blood an evidence that he was deeply wounded. Still he was not all ours for unfortunately the boats got foul of each other & ours had to pay out line & retire a little from the active warfare – fortunately we left him in able hands the 2nd Mate whenever he had a chance driving his lance into the whale & Jackey Nahoe (3rd Mate) alternately swearing and roaring out like a madman in broken English as he sent his lance home, hit him hard he has no friends hurrah, hurrah, look out for your boats, he is dying,

he is in his flurry, and so he was going round at no small rate, described a complete circle turned his head up towards the Sun & resigned himself over to the slayers. This terminates my first encounter with a Whale ‘thank God’ without any incidents Sure a plank or two being smashed in one of the boats the Ship worked up to us & the monster was secured alongside his length can not be less than 50 feet ...

‘I think it’s a rollicking story!’ Sally remarks. ‘Our volunteers have transcribed it and we have photographed it. I think it is quite beautiful.’

Closer to home is one other item that is among Sally’s chosen objects. It’s the John Walker Intercolonial Sailing Carnival trophy in the form of a cigar and cigarette stand with silver ashtray and lid set into a merino ram’s skull. It was awarded to the Australian champion 22-foot skiff from 1896.

‘It’s like an urn on little wheels,’ says Sally. ‘I think that’s one of my favourites. I don’t think it has ever been on display – I don’t know why!’

Tim Barlass is a journalist who has worked for The Sydney Morning Herald and is now researching stories for the museum’s Journeys project, which will revitalise its permanent galleries.

Len has always emphasised giving equal importance to the artistic quality of his designs

An award-winning Randell 41-foot motor cruiser off Sydney Heads, 1990s. Image courtesy Len Randell

Len Randell OAM

Western Australia’s first naval architect

Highly regarded Western Australian naval architect, boatbuilder and yachtsman Len Randell was honoured in 2024 with an OAM for his contributions to the maritime industry. David O’Sullivan chats with Len about his approach to vessel design and of notable memories from his long career.

LEONARD ‘LEN’ RANDALL is known for his innovative and ‘do it yourself’ approach to boatbuilding, which has won over fans to his practice far beyond the reaches of his native Swan River. His name is widely associated with a broad range of recreational and service vessels across Australia, from champion racing dinghies to tall ships, cray boats and ferries. While investigating historic boats in my own work, I have often found myself exclaiming with a smile, ‘Oh, it’s another one by Len’.

Len was born in 1926 in Perth, Western Australia, and spent most of his childhood down on the Swan River waterfront and surrounding waterways. He started sailing at the age of eight, as a bailer boy with one of the founding members of the Maylands Yacht Club. In 1941, aged 15, he constructed his first vessel, a 16-foot hardchine dinghy. Len remembers this first build and how the process of boat design came naturally to him:

The only way I could earn money was as a postman in the school holidays. So any money I could make I would save, and that went towards sheets of plywood and whatever I could find in the way of timber. I made the sails myself and it was quite a successful little boat. I sort of knew about design intuitively – the mathematics of displacement and trim sort of all came naturally before I studied naval architecture. I had already been designing model aircraft when I was 12 and this helped.

Len left school at an early age to become an apprentice electrical fitter with the Public Works Department. A year after he completed his apprenticeship he was appointed as an assistant supervisor, and then a supervisor, for infrastructure projects across regional Western Australia. At age 22 he covered projects across three-quarters of the state, including large stretches of the Kalgoorlie water pipeline.

When Len was struggling to get going with his own business, a saviour came in the form of the crayfishing industry

During his time with the Public Works Department Len studied naval architecture books in his own time, formalising early design skills he had developed. He then began to create his own designs, initially focusing on keelboat racing yachts. In 1952 Len made a submission of his work to the Royal Institute of Naval Architects and was accepted as an associate. He was the first person to achieve this accreditation in Western Australia. Some of his notable early designs include Rugged, the winner of the first Cape Naturaliste Yacht Race in 1955, and Rebel, an 18-foot keelboat and the second of its kind on the Swan River. Despite these early successes Len did struggle to get going with his own business:

From my point of view I battled, because no one knew what a naval architect was, and I had to take jobs helping to build boats and working in the retail industry, whatever was available.

A saviour came in the form of the crayfishing industry, where Len saw an opportunity to improve upon the old-fashioned heavy displacement sailing boats used at the time. He recalls the proposition he made in the late 1950s to a worker in the industry in Geraldton:

I said why don’t we do a high-speed boat, you’re not carrying a heavy product, you haven’t got a huge range to go to catch the crays, so I’ll design a 30-footer to do about 13–14 knots instead of 6–7 knots.

To say this design took off would be an understatement. For the next 50 years Len was designing high-speed cray boats for the industry. These designs included large 70-foot multihull vessels with maximum speeds of up to 30 knots. His cray boat success provided a gateway to other fishing boat designs, including the first 54-foot prawn trawler for Shark Bay, on the far north coast of Western Australia.

Len’s name started getting around following his successes with fishing vessels, and he began designing a wide range of different watercraft. He designed tugboats for Geraldton Harbour, workboats for Port Hedland and Dampier, ferries in Perth, and patrol boats. In the early 1970s, he recalls, he designed 26 boats of differing sizes in one year. Throughout this period he preferred to work by himself, aside from two years where he employed an engineer–designer to help with prawn trawlers. Len has always emphasised giving equal importance to the artistic quality of his designs:

Everything had to look nice, no matter what it was. If the proportions weren’t right, I wouldn’t do it. I’ve heard it said that John Longley [crew member of Australia II ] said he’s never seen me design an ugly boat. Well, that’s quite correct, I wouldn’t have an ugly boat!

Len Randall on the Swan River in front of the Perth Flying Squadron, 1945.

Image courtesy Len Randell

Wootakarra served as the primary tug for Geraldton Harbour during the 1970s. Image courtesy Len Randell

Len studied naval architecture books in his own time, formalising early design skills he had developed

One of Len’s most visually impressive designs is the tall ship STS Leeuwin II, built in 1986 for the Sail Training Foundation of Western Australia

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STS Leeuwin II off the Kimberley coast of Western Australia, 2008.

Image courtesy Leeuwin Ocean Adventure Foundation

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Len Randell at the South of Perth Yacht Club in 2024.

Image courtesy Western Australia Museums

One of Len’s most visually impressive designs is the tall ship STS Leeuwin II, built in 1986 for the Sail Training Foundation of Western Australia. The 180-foot, three-masted barquentine is Australia’s largest sail training ship and offers programs enabling young people to develop core life skills. Sadly, in August 2024 Leeuwin was hit by a container ship and sustained extensive damage to its rigging. In May 2025, Leeuwin was moved to the Australian Marine Complex in Henderson, Western Australia, where it will receive a full set of sails and a new rigging system. The STS Leeuwin Foundation intends to have the ship sailing again by the end of 2025.

When asked to name his favourite design, Len stressed that what he most liked was the design process. The 73-foot Hydroflite ferry, launched in 1973, was one vessel where Len believes he got the design perfect. This was the first fast ferry for Rottnest Island. Built with a composite aluminium frame and plywood shell, it had a top speed of 29 knots on an almost silent engine. RV Flinders was another design dear to Len, the first research vessel specifically designed and built for the State Fisheries Department. Local sailors might nominate as their favourites Len’s champion 14-foot sailing dinghies, many of which won Australian titles in the 1950s.

Len notes that he is ‘always looking for the next day ahead, not the one behind’. In this spirit, at the age of 54 he took up glider flying. This was an easy skill to learn for someone who had been sailing for 46 years:

Soaring in a sailplane is a bit like going to windward in a racing yacht. You’re up as high as you can without stalling, you’re at an angle of 45 degrees just before the stall, so you can get the maximum lift at minimum speed. It takes a lot of skill to get it perfect, and you get to love the feeling when you do, it’s just like a good racing yacht. I only gave up gliding when I was 90.

Now 99 years of age, Len continues to skipper his Sparkman & Stephens 34-footer in the Wednesday races at the South of Perth Yacht Club. Len has contributed much to the maritime industry and, in the most genuine way possible, is a true inspiration to both newcomers to the boating world and his peers. Congratulations on your OAM, Len, and here’s hoping we see you out on the water for many more years to come.

David O’Sullivan is an Assistant Curator in the Maritime Heritage Department of the Western Australia Museum.

This article originally appeared in the Australian Association for Maritime History Newsletter Issue 160, September 2024, and is republished here with permission.

Top-secret transmissions

The Australian teenager who helped sink Japanese submarines

Gwenda Moulton (later Garde) was one of the first recruits to serve in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service during World War II. Now aged 102, she lives in Orange, NSW, and recently recalled her wartime experiences during a video interview with museum staff.

GWENDA MOULTON, AGED JUST 19, sat with several other young women in their green uniforms in a small room at HMAS Harman outside Canberra.

It was 1942 and the newly qualified telegraphist had been listening to Japanese Morse code messages over her headphones. She was well into her evening shift when, without warning, came the most important signal that she knew.

It was ‘RS NO’ (the telegraphists knew it as ‘RS negative’) – the Japanese codeword for ‘submarine’ – which always caused great excitement.

‘As soon as you heard that, you called out to your leading hand,’ Gwenda said:

She would then dial the direction-finder operator who was way out up on a hill in the country. He would contact other direction finders and they would cross reference their bearings to get a fix on where the Japanese submarine was.

Other Morse messages that Gwenda received were sent by teleprinter to Melbourne, where they were decoded. There were Japanese submarines all up and down the east coast of Australia at the time, but Gwenda and her colleagues were never told if any of them had been sunk.

It was a time of change for the forces in Australia, notes Margaret Otter, former Acting First Officer of the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service:1

What! Women in the Royal Australian Navy? Good gracious no. The response from officialdom was if women wanted to dress up and do something to help the war effort, why, they could work in a canteen or take a job in a factory or carry on with their knitting in a woman’s proper place, the home.

But even before World War II was declared on 3 September 1939, several women’s voluntary organisations had sprung up, despite the derision heaped upon them.

One was the Women’s Emergency Signalling Corps, started in Sydney by Florence McKenzie. At the time, girls and women were barred from joining any of the services in Australia, but ‘Mrs Mac’, as she was affectionately known, foresaw a future need, and voluntarily trained those who were willing to learn wireless telegraphy.

Such was the bureaucracy that not until 18 April 1941 – 18 months into the war – did the Minister for Navy reluctantly approve the employment of telegraphists for HMAS Harman, the navy’s communications base. But there was a proviso – no publicity should be given to the break in gender tradition.

‘Mrs Mac’, as she was affectionately known, voluntarily trained girls who were willing to learn wireless telegraphy

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Petty Officer Gwenda Moulton outside the cottages at HMAS Harman. Image courtesy Gwenda Garde

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Florence McKenzie, the founder of the Women’s Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC), was known to her students as ‘Mrs Mac’. Image Australian War Memorial P01262.001

Gwenda was among those first 48 recruits:

I heard about Mrs McKenzie and went to her classes in Clarence Street. She was the first female electrical engineer, founder of the Women’s Emergency Signalling Corps and a lifelong promoter for technical education for women. She was a little woman, not much bigger than me at five foot, but about 20 years older. She was quite stern with you; you had to do what she said.

One day Mrs Mac said that the girls were going for a Morse test, and that Gwenda had better come for the experience. Gwenda passed, and the next thing she knew she was joining the navy in late December 1941.

Mrs Mac got the navy, with great difficulty, to take girls – I was WRANS number 36. When we got to our accommodation, they wanted us to paint the place, to camouflage it. The male telegraphists went off to sea and we moved into their cottages.

They ate in the mess, the girls on one side and the remaining men on the other. There was a dance every Saturday night in nearby Canberra. Gwenda would dance with boys from the army and air force but she and the other telegraphists weren’t allowed to date naval officers, who were considered to be above them.

Gwenda didn’t speak about her wartime role to anyone until the COVID-19 pandemic

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Gwenda, front left, and her fellow telegraphists on pay day at HMAS Harman. Their dark green and gold uniforms were designed by Florence McKenzie.

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Studio portrait of Gwenda Garde, taken for the project ‘Reflections – Honouring our World War Two Veterans’, 2015–17, Australian War Memorial. Image AWM2017.520.1.1183, photographer Melissa Montagliani

As soon as the war ended, Gwenda was taken off Japanese transmissions and was charged with listening to the Russians instead: ‘I thought that was terrible because the Russians were our allies.’

Later, Australian prisoners of war came through Townsville after their release: ‘They were so emaciated; it was so sad to see them,’ Gwenda recalls.

Gwenda didn’t speak about her wartime role to anyone until the COVID-19 pandemic, when she sat down with her daughter Robin and told her the complete story.

The female telegraphists were divided into two lots of 12. One lot went to the regular station and did ordinary communications, but Gwenda’s group went to a separate location, called Y Hut. Theirs was important work, but so secret they didn’t know what the other people on the base were doing. They weren’t allowed to talk about it and they had to learn the Japanese Morse, which was slightly different from the Australian version:

The Japanese didn’t know, but we had their code books and we knew, for instance, what their signal was for ‘submarine’. It was dit dah dit / dit dit dit / dah dit / dah dah dah [ .-. ... -. ---].

The telegraphists knew quite a lot of the frequencies that the Japanese used, and would listen in to different frequencies until they heard something they knew was Japanese. After writing it down in Morse code, they then had to transcribe it into letters (kana) so it could be sent on the teleprinter to Melbourne. They were never told what kana was.

‘It’s a funny thing, but you got to know the Japanese a bit’, Gwenda remembered. ‘They could be very cross with each other, you could hear the tension in their sending.’

By 1944, Gwenda was a petty officer in charge of 42 girls, based in Townsville. Dengue fever was rife and everyone seemed to get it eventually.

At the start of the war, Gwenda had had a steady boyfriend, Robert, a Spitfire pilot who was killed when he was shot down over the North Atlantic. After the war she married his best friend, John, who had flown Kittyhawks in New Guinea. They had three children and their eldest daughter, Robin, said: ‘Mum may be 102, but she’s as bright as ever and playing bridge four times a week – and still winning!’

Australian National Maritime Museum historian and curator Dr Roland Leikauf, who interviewed Gwenda, sees the Morse code WRANS as another case in which a wartime shortage helped women break gender barriers in a reluctant, male-dominated world.

Florence McKenzie’s school later trained men as well as women, and by August 1945 it had instructed some 12,000 men in Morse code, visual signalling and international code. After the war, the school continued its work, training 2,450 civil airline crewmen and 1,050 merchant navy seamen by 1952. The school closed in 1955. ‘Mrs Mac’ was awarded an OBE in 1950 and died in 1982.

1 Margaret Curtis-Otter, 1975, WRANS: The Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service, Naval Historical Society of Australia, Garden Island, Sydney. Vaughan Evans Library 359.00994 CUR

Written by Tim Barlass, based on a video interview conducted with Gwenda Garde by museum curator Dr Roland Leikauf.

Zane Grey’s quest

The hunt for a monster shark

Zane Grey was the world’s first millionaire author, inventor of the Western in both literature and Hollywood films, and globally feted as a celebrity adventurer. He made two trips to Australia in the 1930s to pursue the new sport of game fishing. The following extract from Vicki Hastrich’s new biography, The Last Days of Zane Grey, describes his catch of a world-record tiger shark off Sydney in 1935.

UNDER A CANOPY OF BLUE SKY on the morning of Thursday 9 April, just before the Easter weekend, the ocean was finally calm. It was a perfect day for fishing, warm and still, and Zane Grey left the Palace Hotel early. Out through the Heads they motored with the wily Billy Love on board, who soon had them trolling for bait on the way to Bondi. Then the serious fishing began. First, they chugged out to sea about sixteen kilometres, then north and in towards Manly Beach, at length settling to anchor directly in front of the entrance to the harbour and scarcely a kilometre and a half out – Billy’s favourite shark ground. There could not be a more scenic place to fish. In short time a small shark was caught.

Telling the story in An American Angler in Australia, Grey says Billy Love was gleeful: ‘Shark meat best for sharks. Now we’ll catch a tiger sure!’

With the care and expertise of a modern-day sushi chef, Billy tied a well-cut piece of shark to the hook and added a fillet to hang from the point. Then he let the unweighted bait sink around 45 metres. It was noon.

Zane Grey fishing from the Avalon on location for the filming of White Death, Hayman Island, Queensland, 1936, with shark expert Billy Love (left) and boatman Peter Williams. Courtesy Ed Pritchard

Grey, who had caught thousands of fish, shook at the possibilities of this one

After lunch Grey settled into his fishing chair and the patient game of waiting began. In the hot sun, with his feet up on the gunwale, there was no place he’d rather be. The sea had the slicked look that calmness sometimes brings, beautiful in the extreme and compelling. Time became atrophied, inconsequential, uncountable, irrelevant in the long lazy lull of the afternoon. The crew dozed. Hours slipped by, but Grey was content watching the water and the birds. He stayed in his fishing chair, dreamy but attuned.

By four o’clock in the afternoon and still with no bites, the crew were bored, ready to give up and go home. But Grey demurred, mildly reproaching them, reminding them of the time he fished for eighty-three days without a bite before catching his giant Tahitian striped marlin on the eighty-fourth (the incident is said by some to have inspired Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea). The boatmen, the cameramen – he was paying their wages, and there was no question of any real dissent. He was their boss. But it was clear to Grey his crew thought staying was a waste of time.

‘We’ll get one tomorrow,’ said Billy Love.

‘Ump-umm. We’ll hang a while longer,’ drawled Grey, in what he confessed was cowboy parlance.

‘The afternoon was too wonderful to give up,’ he wrote of that moment. ‘A westering sun shone gold amid dark clouds over the Heads. The shipping had increased, if anything, and all that had been intriguing to me seemed magnified.’

A feeling of sureness grew in him. Something was out there. It was as if, in his languid state of alertness, he was calling it up, patiently creating the right conditions for it to arrive.

And then it happened. Slowly but firmly, the line on Grey’s reel began to pull out. Slowly, steadily, potently, it slipped off the big Kovalovsky reel. Grey told Peter Williams it was like nothing he’d ever felt before, like someone with their fingers on his coat sleeve drawing him slowly towards them. Grey, who had caught thousands of fish, shook at the possibilities of this one.

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Zane Grey examining the jaws of a great white shark at his writing desk, Batemans Bay camp, NSW, 1936. Courtesy L Tom Perry Special Collections

02 Grey with catches at his Bermagui camp on the New South Wales south coast, 1936.

by TC Roughley, courtesy State Library of NSW

Time became atrophied, inconsequential, uncountable, irrelevant in the long lazy lull of the afternoon

Photo

Beside the boat the water boiled, then split to show the wide, flat back of an enormous shark

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Courtesy State Library of NSW

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The Zane Grey party arrives in Sydney, 30 December 1935.

Left to right: Gus Bagnard, Marge Bowen, Harry C Anderson, Zane Grey, Ed Bowen, Emil Morhardt.

Zane Grey with his world-record tiger shark at Watsons Bay, Sydney, 1936. Courtesy Ed Pritchard

A radiant Billy leaped forward to pull up the anchor: ‘Starts like a tiger!’

Emil Morhardt rushed to help. Peter Williams got the engine going.

Three hundred, four hundred metres of line the mystery fish took – and more – until Grey threw on the drag and struck, reeling fast and hard and repeating the action four or five times. When he finally came upon the full weight of the fish, the response was so violent it lifted him clear of his chair.

What sort of fish it was they still couldn’t tell for sure, but they knew it wasn’t a marlin. Its behaviour was changeable. For a while it went light, then it went heavy – heavy in the way of something more-than-ordinarily huge. Forced after one run to apply more drag on his reel than he’d ever done in his life, Grey thought it must be a shark, but maybe a species no one had ever seen.

With the creature taking line and Grey struggling to get it back, the fight seesawed, becoming more and more operatic as the afternoon wore on, played out just as Grey had originally envisioned, albeit with a different fish, in front of one of the world’s great backdrops. Sunset came, lighting the sandstone cliffs of the Heads and turning the sea gold-blue. And as the sky further darkened, a procession of five ocean liners passed close by, towering over [their fishing boat] the Avalon, lights glittering, all of them getting out before the shutdown of the port on Good Friday. Passengers on deck waved, recognising the Avalon and the famous man struggling with bended rod at the stern.

Just as the battle between man and fish reached a desperate stage, the revolving beam of the Hornby Lighthouse switched on, raking the Avalon ’s deck and surrounding ocean.

The sea had the slicked look that calmness sometimes brings, beautiful in the extreme and compelling

Grey, drawing on his last reserves of energy, got back more line, and when finally the leader sprang into view, men leaped to action. Beside the boat the water boiled, then split to show the wide, flat back of an enormous shark, pearl-grey in colour, with dark tiger stripes and an immense, rounded head. Grey, expecting a hideous beast, was shocked by its beauty.

Amid churning water and roaring shouts, the shark rolled, showing its white belly and opening its mouth wide enough to take a barrel before snapping its jaws audibly shut. In a deluge of splashing water, Billy Love roped the tail, the barefoot boatman instinctively using the leverage provided by the movement of the boat to his advantage.

Grey had a world-record shark.

The Last Days of Zane Grey is published by Allen & Unwin, Sydney, ISBN 9781761471452, RRP $35.00.

Vicki Hastrich is a Sydney writer and oral historian. She is the author of Night Fishing , The Great Arch and Swimming with Jellyfish

Keeping historic boats afloat

A labour of love

On Sydney’s Cockatoo Island/Wareamah, two very different historic vessels are being brought back to life under the stewardship of the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust.

THE SYDNEY HARBOUR FEDERATION TRUST (Harbour Trust) manages sites around Sydney’s foreshore that have both national and international significance. They are places of natural beauty, and also feature heritage structures and remnants from different eras. Two current projects aim to restore historic vessels. Fast Motor Boat (FMB) No 45802 Sydney (dating from 1945) served as captain’s launch on aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney (1948–1973). The ferry Fitzroy (1928) had a much humbler, workaday existence, transporting dockyard workers to and from Cockatoo Island. In their different ways, these vessels played vital roles in Australian maritime history and are now the focus of meticulous restoration efforts blending traditional craftsmanship with modern conservation techniques. There’s something deeply moving about restoring vessels like Fitzroy and FMB Sydney. You’re not just repairing wood and metal – you’re reviving the stories of the people who built them, sailed them, travelled in them and kept them alive. Every detail we preserve is a tribute to their legacy.

The Fitzroy ferry in Fitzroy Dock in June 2025 awaiting restoration, with three of the Harbour Trust’s heritage cranes behind. Image Ed Hurst

Dating from 1928, Fitzroy is one of only two remaining vessels constructed by Cockatoo Island Dockyard apprentices

Tides of time on Cockatoo Island

Cockatoo Island sits at the confluence of the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers in Sydney Harbour. It’s been much developed over the last two centuries, and it’s hard to picture the smaller, wooded island that was there before colonisation.

When you visit Cockatoo Island, there are many layers of history and heritage. You can see the dockyards overlaid on the convict history. In turn, all of that was layered onto First Nations history, as people have been living for tens of thousands of years in and around the valleys that flooded to form Sydney Harbour. When you arrive, all these layers hit you at once and it’s hard to grasp what you’re looking at. The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust’s vision is not just to preserve heritage but to make all of the layers accessible and meaningful – for everyone to enjoy and appreciate.

Janet Carding (Executive Director), Sydney Harbour Federation Trust

From 1839, the island was a convict gaol, and many of the buildings from that period survive to this day. From these beginnings, Cockatoo Island’s dockyards came to play an important role for well over a century, including as a major shipbuilding and repair facility (in use from 1857 to 1991). Cockatoo Island served the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), which was critical in enabling the Allies to fight during both world wars. By the 1960s, commercial work was declining. The last ship was built on the island in 1984; the final submarine was refitted in 1991. After 134 years, history had caught up with Cockatoo Island shipyard and it closed the following year.

Libby Bennett (Director, Heritage and Design), Sydney Harbour Federation Trust

Much equipment was removed and some buildings were demolished. Yet so much remains that the island has become a time capsule. The Harbour Trust’s master plan explains that the island’s future is in ‘telling its stories’ in accessible and interesting ways. It’s about bringing the historical people and crafts of the island to life –something which is certainly aided by the restoration of boats.

Of course, the Harbour Trust covers more than Cockatoo Island. It also runs North Head Sanctuary in Manly, Sub Base Platypus in North Sydney and the precincts of Headland Park, Mosman – Chowder Bay/ Gooree, Georges Heights and Middle Head/Gubbuh Gubbuh. The agency also manages Woolwich Dock and Parklands, Macquarie Lightstation in Vaucluse and the former Marine Biological Station at Camp Cove.

The rebirth of a navy motor boat

Dating from 1945, Fast Motor Boat (FMB) No 45802 is a 30-foot timber captain’s launch, built in England by Vosper for the aircraft carrier HMS Terrible (renamed HMAS Sydney when it was sold to Australia in 1947). It features double diagonal mahogany plank construction, making it strong and light.

HMAS Sydney operated as the flagship of the RAN and saw action during the Korean War before being modified as a fast troop transport and deployed to Malaysia. It conducted 25 trips to Vietnam between 1965 and 1972. In 1973 it was decommissioned and broken up in South Korea.

Thankfully, the vessel survived and is now the only cabined captain’s launch of this vintage surviving in Australia, making it of great historical interest (it was listed as part of the Naval Historical Collection in 1984). After an extended period out of action on Spectacle Island in Sydney Harbour, in 2000 the Harbour Trust took custody of it and moved it to be restored at Chowder Bay. The captain’s launch became a Work for the Dole project; local people received training in boat building and repair, making a significant contribution. It was at this time that the vessel was named Sydney

By 2008, the next overhaul was required, and this took place at the vessel’s new home, Cockatoo Island, by Harbour Trust restoration volunteers. The trip from Chowder Bay was made using the original Crossley engine; the term ‘fast’ motor boat no longer really applied, but the venerable machine made it eventually! That repair involved a replacement engine, overhaul of the propeller shaft and steering, restoration of the woodwork and an overhaul of the electrical system –before a major relaunch in 2010.

In 2019, its third restoration began, and after delays during the pandemic, it is now complete – with work having been carried out on the hull, engine and the interior. The main tasks that lie ahead before relaunch are the survey process and steps required to permit it to carry the public.

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Original Crossley engine from Fast Motor Boat Sydney, which was replaced after it was used to move the vessel from Chowder Bay to Cockatoo Island before the restoration that began in 2008. Image Sydney Harbour Federation Trust

02 Harbour Trust Executive Director, Janet Carding, Cockatoo Island heritage restoration volunteers and Director of Heritage and Design, Libby Bennett, stand proudly in front of Sydney at an event on 17 June 2025 to celebrate its completed restoration. Image Ed Hurst

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FMB Sydney is now the only cabined captain’s launch of this vintage surviving in Australia, making it of great historical interest

Fitzroy ferry comes home

While FMB Sydney travelled widely, the 30-foot ferry Fitzroy is genuinely an unsung hero. Dating from 1928, it was designed by naval architect David Carment and is one of only two remaining vessels constructed by Cockatoo Island Dockyard apprentices. It was built from spotted gum and fitted with a large two-stroke engine, its exhaust point exiting through the roof. The engine used ‘direct air start’ – a system that involved charging two large gas canisters with compressed air. Reversing required the engine to be stopped and run in the other direction. Coolant was circulated through a system of tubes outside the hull.

The vessel played the vital role of ferrying dockyard workers to and from the island. It was also deployed to move materials around the island.

Upon its retirement in 1963, the ferry was sold and replaced by a 40-foot workboat, also named Fitzroy The 1928-built vessel passed into private ownership, changing hands several times. It was renamed Burgundy Belle before reverting to its original name. It resided in Pittwater and underwent a series of modifications, including work in 2008 to fit a Volvo Penta 40-horsepower engine.

Remarkably coming full circle, Fitzroy was offered to the Harbour Trust and they took ownership on 24 April 2024. Fitzroy travelled back to Cockatoo Island under its own power, where it awaits restoration – hopefully in time for its centenary in 2028. What could be better than a group of volunteers playing a major part in returning to service a vessel that was built on the island to serve dockyard workers, in many ways their direct predecessors, so that we can all enjoy it?

The volunteers behind the vision

Janet Carding notes:

There are over 150 Harbour Trust volunteers with a range of different roles and talents. Across all Harbour Trust sites, they contribute over 20,000 hours per year to the organisation – they are amazing and indispensable, and we are in awe of their passion.

Volunteers are not only involved in restorations; they also staff visitor centres, carry out gardening, do conservation work and run tours, among many other things. Many volunteers have ready-made skills, such as engineering, woodworking, metalworking and welding; some have marine and automative backgrounds; others come with nothing more than a desire to help

and a willingness to learn after a lifetime of white-collar work. The Harbour Trust defines and oversees projects, procures materials, ensures safe working methods, provides induction and ensures that everything is certified. But the volunteers do the lion’s share of the work and make ‘the magic’ possible.

Ivan Miklos, a Cockatoo Island heritage restoration volunteer, explains:

The main work in the restoration of the FMB were timber hull and cabin repairs, propulsion system updates, electrical wiring renewal, epoxy resin/glass hull layout and full paint finishing.

This impressive team of volunteers has recently been recognised for their work – winning a ‘Highly Commended’ award in the ‘Enduring’ category at the 2025 National Trust (NSW) Heritage Awards.

People are surprised when they learn that I was a dentist ... The crew is a wonderful collection of people. I have never heard a cross word and everyone is happy to advise and train others where appropriate. The range of skills exercised is remarkable. I can’t think of a task that is outside of our collective skill set.

Andy Moran, Cockatoo Island heritage restoration volunteer

These vessels are now the focus of meticulous restoration efforts blending traditional craftsmanship with modern conservation techniques

Cockatoo Island from the north-west in February 1944. Clockwise from left, TSS Niarana lies at the Plate Wharf; HMAS Hobart is at the Cruiser Wharf; Bataan is being fitted out at the Bolt Shop Wharf; HMAS Arunta is at the Destroyer Wharf during refit; USS Gilmer is in the Fitzroy Dock; HMAS Barcoo is under construction on No 3 slipway; the floating crane Titan lies at the Fitzroy Wharf; LST 471 is at the Sutherland Wharf; HMAS Australia is in the Sutherland Dock; and the cargo ship River Hunter is on No 1 Slipway. From the collection of the late John Jeremy

Of course, restoring a historic vessel is one thing – but being permitted to operate it and carry the public is another. The requirements before FMB Sydney can be registered with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority are complex, especially as it has never been a private vessel, so it will need to be fully ‘in survey’. Fitzroy is on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels (HV000822), which makes the process somewhat less arduous.

Once they are back in use, both vessels will be kept on Cockatoo Island: FMB Sydney on a slipway, as it was constructed to be dry for extended periods; Fitzroy will, by contrast, live in the water, as its construction means that the hull tends to shrink if dry.

Imagine a day, not too far away from now, when both vessels are available for use. It might be possible to travel to a Cockatoo Island Open Day either on a vessel that used to travel the high seas aboard an RAN aircraft carrier, or on a workaday boat built on the spot. Perhaps the boats may circumnavigate the island or even travel to the Harbour Trust’s Woolwich site. This is all possible because of the work of the Harbour Trust and its talented volunteers.

If you haven’t been to Cockatoo Island for a while, now is the perfect time to return and discover new experiences inspired by the island’s rich dockyard history.

David Attenborough’s plea for the ocean

A milestone event on World Ocean Day

To mark World Ocean Day 2025, the ANMM secured a grant to offer free screenings at maritime museums worldwide of the documentary film David Attenborough: Ocean, in partnership with the International Congress of Maritime Museums. By Jasmine Heffernan.

‘If we save the seas, we save ourselves.’

– Sir David Attenborough in Ocean

AMID THE EBB AND FLOW of global environmental and political affairs, museums offer a space for communities to engage with various forms of human expression and historical transformation. Above all, museums are repositories of stories and cultural heritage, continuously adapting to the contemporary world as dynamic institutions of education and inspiration. Maritime museums are uniquely positioned to represent the ocean identity and landscape of their locale, becoming leaders in nurturing environmental empathy and empowering visitors with messages of hope for

the global future. To nurture hope is to also support related organisations in achieving their aims in ocean engagement and awareness.

The theme for the 2025 World Ocean Day, ‘Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us’, was perfectly heralded by Sir David Attenborough’s latest documentary –and perhaps his magnum opus – David Attenborough: Ocean. Premiering globally on 8 May, exactly a month before World Ocean Day and the landmark UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, the documentary urges government bodies to enforce the protection of at least 30 per cent of the global ocean by 2030 – a substantial increase from the current figure of less than 3 per cent.

Playing a greater role than simply that of narrator, in Ocean Sir David leads audiences through his case for hope, with a certitude that the ocean sustains life and is our greatest hope against climate catastrophe. While the documentary flourishes in bringing the playful and magical wonder of underwater realms into focus, it is equally successful in bringing to light appalling episodes of destruction. Following vibrant shots of coral reef oases is neverbefore-captured footage of bottom trawling, a largescale industrial practice that transforms ecosystems once teeming with life into desolate, barren landscapes. And scenes of bycatch, hauled onto ships by the tonne to be then discarded as waste, project a harrowing vision of unregulated overfishing and its indisputable effects on ecosystems and local communities.

But no David Attenborough documentary ends with despair. The chance for recovery is witnessed on-screen within one of the largest marine protection areas in the world, Papahānaumokuākea, a 2,200-kilometre stretch of coral islands in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Such optimistic images of marine protection areas are the crux of the film. Ocean renders what was once hidden in the deep sea visible to an international audience, the message to viewers equally hopeful and daunting: the ocean can recover faster than imaginable, but only if we act now.

The documentary’s timely release provided an opportune moment to propel ocean awareness on an international scale through museum-led World Ocean Day programming. The Australian National Maritime Museum requested permission to organise free screenings at maritime museums worldwide, and subsequently secured a grant from Minderoo Pictures to enable this aim. Twenty-three museums, from Finland to Hong Kong, participated in this global first, collaborative screening event, achieved in partnership with the International Congress of Maritime Museums (ICMM).

An outdoor screening of David

The ocean can recover faster than imaginable, but only if we act now

Housing centuries of exploration stories, knowledge, culture, and artefacts shaped by the sea, maritime museums anchor us to the past and grant insight into the future of our ocean. Maritime museums around the world are supported through the ICMM as a centralised point of contact. An enduring network of maritime museums, diverse in language and locality, further strengthens universal objectives towards ocean engagement and sustainability.

The World Ocean Day screening was a milestone event that demonstrated the strength of international collaboration and unity between maritime museums in supporting the future of our ocean.

Jasmine Heffernan is the museum’s Curatorial Assistant, Ocean Futures.

The museum wishes to thank Minderoo Pictures and the International Congress of Maritime Museums for their support.

Participating museums

AIMS Museo Maritimo, Philippines

Åland Maritime Museum, Finland

Albany’s Historic Whaling Station, Australia

Australian National Maritime Museum, Australia

Bass Strait Maritime Museum, Australia

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, USA

Hong Kong Maritime Museum, Hong Kong

Maritime Museum of San Diego, USA

Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Canada

Maritime Museum Tasmania, Australia

Mary Rose Trust, UK

Museu Marítim de Barcelona, Spain

Mystic Seaport Museum, USA

National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich, UK

New Bedford Whaling Museum, USA

New Zealand Maritime Museum, New Zealand

Promotori Musei Mare, Italy

Seaworks Maritime Precinct, Australia

South Street Maritime Museum, USA

The Tall Ship Glenlee, UK

Vancouver Maritime Museum, Canada

Western Australian Museum, Australia

Attenborough: Ocean in the central courtyard of the Museu Marítim de Barcelona. Image courtesy Museu Marítim de Barcelona, Spain

A flotilla of model ships

Expo 2025

THE ANNUAL EXHIBITION of the Sydney Model Shipbuilders Club brings together modelling clubs from across New South Wales. This year’s expo, the 11th, will take place in Sydney on 18 and 19 October, and is sponsored by the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Last year’s event was great success, with more than 400 visitors, over 40 exhibitors and nine participating clubs. A great variety of models will be on display this year. Some are built for exhibit only; others can be sailed by radio control. Models made from kits will join others that are ‘scratch built’, meaning constructed from original plans or their maker’s imagination. The models are created from a great variety of materials – wood, metal, plastics, printed resin or even paper – and range in size from a Titanic that is almost two metres long to a tiny 10-centimetre model of HMS Sirius, the lead ship of the First Fleet. Sirius is depicted anchored in Port Jackson in 1788, with its boats alongside ready to row to shore. Ships in bottles always fascinate visitors, and the collection this year includes Titanic sinking, historically accurate with its front funnel collapsed and smoke still emanating from the two middle funnels. The ship has somehow wiggled its way into a whisky bottle supported on an old sailor figurine, and the sea has been angled to compensate for its slope. Mike Kelly will be on hand to demonstrate how he managed to do it.

Each of the exhibiting clubs has a different focus. Many members of the Sydney Model Shipbuilders Club build models of historic sailing ships –HM Bark Endeavour, HMS Victory and clipper ships

are popular choices, while smaller subjects include the schooners that serviced the Australian coast until the early 20th century. Other modellers choose more modern vessels: the fishing trawlers that operated out of Sydney Harbour between the wars, or more exotically, a Chinese junk.

Our sister club in Canberra always makes the trip northward, and among the models they will be bringing is Chindwara, a postwar refrigerated cargo ship of the British India Line, modelled in harbour and about to sail.

Task Force 72 build all of their models 72 times smaller than the real thing, hence their name, and sail them together at regular events. Ships of the Royal Australian Navy are favourites, although many modellers choose warships of World War II as subjects.

The plastic modelling clubs, the Australian Plastic Modellers Association and the International Plastic Modelling Society, show both scratch-built models and those made from kits. Throughout the exhibition, modellers will demonstrate the techniques of their craft. They are happy to answer questions about their methods and to encourage new people into the hobby.

After the show closes at 3.30 pm on Sunday, we will draw a raffle and present awards to the models that visitors have chosen as their favourites. The venue, the Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, has ample parking as well as multiple food outlets. Children of all ages are welcome, and our exhibitors always enjoy talking to them. It makes a great day out and entry is free!

When and where

10 am–8 pm Saturday 18 October

10 am–3.30 pm Sunday 19 October

Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, 115 Liverpool Road, Ashfield, Sydney FREE ENTRY

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

01 Visitors to last year’s event admire the models on display.

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The 2025 expo will feature this model of a Chinese junk. Images courtesy Anelia Bennett

Some models are built for exhibit only; others can be sailed by radio control

Foundation update

Thanking donors, remembering valued supporters

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM FOUNDATION is the museum’s philanthropic arm. With oversight from the Foundation Board and Museum Council, the Foundation offers a transparent, trusted avenue for donors to make a lasting cultural impact.

Thanks to the incredible generosity of individuals, families, businesses and our broader donor community – including Chair’s Circle members and Ena Sanctum supporters – the Foundation continues to support the museum’s vital work: acquiring culturally significant objects, conserving our historic fleet, supporting research and delivering educational programs.

A special thank you to everyone who contributed to our 2025 end-of-financial-year appeal. With your support, two exciting initiatives are now well under way:

• the display of the early 1800s boat found during the excavation for the Barangaroo Metro station (see article on page 68); and

• the delivery of the Museum in a Box outreach program, bringing hands-on maritime experiences to aged care homes and community centres across the country.

Notable additions to the collection

19th-century figurehead of a First Nations woman

One of the most significant additions to our collection this year is a rare early-19th-century ship’s figurehead depicting a First Nations woman – one of only two figureheads of an Australian First Nations person known to exist, and the only one representing a woman. Acquired with the support of the Foundation and the National Cultural Heritage Account, this extraordinary object now sits proudly within the National Maritime Collection.

Manager of Indigenous Programs Matt Poll and Senior Curator Daina Fletcher are currently researching the figurehead’s origins, with possible links to vessels including Taree (1834), Yarra Yarra (1837) and Truganina (1839). More than an example of maritime decorative art, it is a powerful cultural artefact, offering insight into early Australian identity and colonial boatbuilding.

Jenny Wren

Thanks to the generous support of the David and Jennie Sutherland Foundation, the museum obtained Jenny Wren, a 28-foot (8.5-metre) gaff-topsail cutter designed in 1892 by pioneering naval architect Walter Reeks. Believed to be the last surviving Reeks-designed racing yacht, Jenny Wren offers a rare window into a pivotal era of Australian yacht design. Jenny Wren is now moored longside SY Ena on the museum’s Heritage Pontoon, and both vessels remain operational on Sydney Harbour, a testament to the enduring impact of donor generosity.

Major gift honours First Nations legacy to pearl shell industry

We are proud to acknowledge a substantial donation from museum Ambassadors Christine Sadler and Peter Dexter AM in support of the Luggerbort Project.

This important initiative captures the stories of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and South Sea Islander elders who worked aboard pearl luggers and in the marine harvesting industries from the 1860s to mid-20th century, often under harsh and exploitative conditions.

Their experiences will be preserved through a series of photographic portraits by acclaimed Palawa artist Wayne Quilliam and through recorded oral histories, ensuring their legacy is honoured and remembered for generations to come.

In memoriam: honouring two remarkable supporters

We are deeply saddened by the passing of two Chair’s Circle members and long-time generous supporters of the museum:

• Commander Peter Poland OAM, a Royal Navy veteran, historian and conservationist, who brought HMS Zest into Sydney in 1968 and was a strong advocate for education and access to the arts.

• John Jeremy AM, naval architect, yachtsman and former CEO of Cockatoo Dockyard, whose passion for maritime heritage shaped the preservation of Cockatoo Island. Their enduring belief in cultural stewardship, storytelling and maritime history continues to inspire us. We extend our heartfelt condolences to their families.

Your gift keeps history alive

As we enter the 2025–26 financial year, your continued support is more important than ever. Every donation –large or small – helps shape the future of the museum. Together, we can preserve and share Australia’s maritime heritage in ways that inspire, educate and connect communities across the country.

Monica Connors, Foundation Manager

There are a number of ways you can donate:

• Online at sea.museum/donate

• By direct deposit: BSB 062 000 Account Number: 16169309 with your surname as reference

• Or by phone to the Foundation Office on 02 9298 3777.

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A 19th-century ship’s figurehead representing a First Nations woman, from the National Maritime Collection, on display in the Under Southern Skies gallery with support from the ANMM Foundation and the National Cultural Heritage Account. Image Katie Vajda/ANMM 02

Shipwright Hannah Hansen and shipkeeper Amy Spets fit a new awning to protect Jenny Wren Image Jeff Hodgson/ANMM

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Message to members

Join us this spring for a wide variety of events and activities, including an expanded tour of the Maritime Collection.

AS THE WEATHER WARMS UP, we’d love to see you for some of our new events. As well as our author and speakers talks, our popular tour of the National Maritime Collection been expanded to include exclusive access to the museum’s Ship and Boat Models Store as well as the Conservation Laboratory.

The next outing in our Meet The Neighbours series takes us to Marine Area Command headquarters in Balmain, the home of the Water Police. We’ll also be back on the water with our members harbour cruises on the museum’s magnificent steam yacht Ena and historic pearling lugger John Louis. Dates for these trips will be confirmed soon and we will provide more information in our regular monthly events email.

We hope to see you at the museum again soon.

Best regards,

Matt Lee Manager – Members and Volunteers

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 below.

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

A special tour takes us to Marine Area Command, Balmain – headquarters of the NSW Water Police. Image Janine Flew/ANMM

Author talk

One Free Woman with Jane Smith

2 pm Sunday 14 September

Hannah Rigby was a poor Liverpool seamstress, a prisoner and a serial thief. Exiled from her homeland, oppressed by poverty and rigid social mores, used and discarded by a series of men, she became an ‘exemplary’ servant – and a single mother determined to keep her family together.

One Free Woman tells the true, compelling story of the only female convict to stay in Moreton Bay when the penal settlement closed – and who notoriously served three separate sentences of transportation.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase and to be signed by the author.

Free for all attendees

Book launch

Giants by Jem Cresswell

2 pm Saturday 4 October

Over a five-year period, photographer and filmmaker Jem Cresswell took more than 11,000 images of one of nature’s largest mammals – the humpback whale –in Tongan waters.

In Giants , Cresswell selects the most striking of these images to document the awe-inspiring behaviours of the humpback whale in a powerful combination of photography and storytelling.

Free for all attendees

Author talk

1945: The Reckoning –Phil Craig in conversation with Chris Masters

2 pm Sunday 12 October

Phil Craig talks about his new book on the final, dramatic acts of World War II.

As the fate of the world was decided, so too were those of the British, Dutch and French empires. From the haze of nostalgia emerge many uncomfortable truths – but also a humane and balanced exploration of what victory in the Second World War truly means.

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

Free for all attendees

Speakers talk

Pirate tales

2 pm Friday 19 September

There are many fictional pirates, but what were real pirates like? Find out about pirates through history, from Vikings to Barbary Corsairs, Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, Blackbeard and female pirates like Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Presented by Pam Forbes and Greg Jackson, from the museum Speakers Group.

$10 / Free for Members. Enter promo code MEMBER

British sailors boarding an Algerian pirate ship, by John Fairburn. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Public domain/ Wikimedia Commons

Book launch

Australia’s Coastal Wars by Dr Tom Lewis

2 pm Saturday 11 October

For the first time, acclaimed military historian Dr Tom Lewis OAM uncovers the full scale of World War II’s forgotten battles along our coastline.

From German surface raiders laying deadly mines to Japanese submarines prowling offshore and enemy aircraft launching hundreds of attacks, the war on the coast stretched across thousands of kilometres and came much closer to home than most Australians ever realised.

Free for all attendees

Author talk

Be(Wilder) with Darryl Jones

6 pm Tuesday 14 October

Acclaimed urban ecologist Darryl Jones explores how people around the world interact with wildlife. He spends time with bearded pigs in Borneo, rock ptarmigans in the Arctic and conservationist farmers in the Snowy Mountains. Along the way, he asks some big questions. Is it possible for farming and conservation to work together? How can urban landscapes be redesigned to enhance biodiversity? And can birdwatching help save the planet?

Free for all attendees

Be(Wilder) cover art courtesy NewSouth Books

Free open day

Splash & Swing: 40s festival

10 am–4 pm Sunday 19 October

It’s 1945 and the end of World War II has been declared. Step back to a time of celebration, romance, reuniting with loved ones and the wonder of a world free of war.

Whether you’re a music lover, a 40s cosplayer, a history buff, or simply looking for a great family-friendly day out, this weekend of music, dance, nostalgia and fun offers something for everyone.

Join us for Jitterbug and Lindy Hop workshops, ‘make do and mend’ tutorials, swing sounds from the Royal Australian Navy Big Band and much more.

Speakers talk

HMS Edinburgh and the lost gold

2 pm Wednesday 22 October

A fascinating and hair-raising story about the recovery of more than five tonnes of Russian gold bullion, which sank in the bomb hold of HMS Edinburgh in 244 metres of ice-cold sea off Murmansk in 1942.

Hear about the ground-breaking 1981 salvage that recovered 431 of the 465 ingots – worth more than £160 million in today’s terms – and set a world record in deep diving that stands to this day. Presented by Gillian Lewis from the museum’s Speakers Group.

$10 / Free for Members. Enter promo code MEMBER

Book launch

Pilbara by Judy Nunn

6 pm Tuesday 28 October

In the late 1800s, widower Charles Burton arrives in the forbidding Pilbara with his three young children. They’ve travelled from the lush Yorkshire Dales on a mission to save their family’s sheep and cattle property. Rebuilding the fortunes of Burton Station will ask everything of Charles and his children, particularly daughter Victoria.

Join master storyteller Judy Nunn for a stunning tale about loyalty and survival, in a place where faint hearts will not last.

Free for all attendees

Image courtesy HarperCollins Australia

Speakers

talk

The Australian navy in Antarctica

2 pm Thursday 13 November

Richard de Grijs tells how, after World War II, the Commonwealth government sought to establish a permanent base in the Australian Antarctic Territory and assert sovereignty. For their expedition vessel, they overhauled an old polar favourite, MV Wyatt Earp. Its crew turned a potential disaster into the navy’s first and only successful polar research expedition.

$10 / Free for Members. Enter promo code MEMBER

Wyatt Earp (with aircraft Polar Star) seeks a take-off field in the Antarctic Archipelago, 1936–39. ANMM Collection ANMS1445[080]

Meet the Neighbours tour

Water Police HQ, Balmain Friday 21 November

Join us to explore the Water Police headquarters at Camerons Cove, Balmain East. Opened in 2004, replacing facilities in Pyrmont, it comprises the Marine Command Area complex and marina.

New South Wales has a large and busy coastline and expansive system of waterways. The Police Marine Area Command’s responsibility extends to all coastal areas of the state to 200 nautical miles out to sea. The services it provides are similar to those carried out by land-based police, including crime prevention and detection and search and rescue.

Join us on this exclusive tour of the site and its vessels and see what’s involved in keeping our harbour, coastline and waterways safe.

Price and time to be confirmed; please check Eventbrite or our website for details

Special expanded tour

Inside the Maritime Collection

10.30 am alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays

Our popular tour of the National Maritime Collection has just been expanded to include exclusive access to the museum’s Ship and Boat Models Store.

Now you will be able to examine scores of amazing models representing navy, commerce, sport and exploration, from the early days of sail through to the 2000s. See shipbuilders’ marvellous half-block models used to determine hull design details, and models of famous and infamous vessels, such as schooner America, after which the America’s Cup is named; Flinders’ Investigator ; Darwin’s Beagle; legendary clipper Cutty Sark; HMAS Sydney (I); SMS Emden; container ship Tampa and an incredible 1800s model intricately made from mutton bones by POWs of the Napoleonic War – and so much more.

You will also have the chance to explore more than 100 other historic large and small objects. Wearing white cotton gloves, you can handle a 400-year-old legendary ‘piece of eight’ and other iconic salvaged coins and historic artefacts, including a delicate hand-embroidered map of James Cook’s famous voyages, attributed to his wife Elizabeth.

The tour finishes with a visit to our Conservation Lab to see first-hand some of the current work in progress.

$35 / $25 Members. Enter promo code MEMBER

Tampa model in the Ship and Boat Models Store. Image Jasmine Poole/ANMM

Special event

Sensory-friendly days

8.30–11.30 am Sundays 28 September, 12 October, 16 November

Enjoy a comfortable environment for kids and adults with a variety of sensory differences.

On sensory-friendly days, our new exhibitions and activity areas open extra early or late for a quieter experience and are modified to suit people on the autism spectrum and visitors with a range of differing abilities.

Our trained staff and volunteers will be on hand to assist with access and to facilitate creative activities.

For our spring sessions, we’re offering early access to all our newest exhibitions and one of our vessels (HMAS Vampire or Duyfken), an underwater drone workshop (suitable for visitors 7+ years) and our special activity areas for guests with sensory differences.

Adult or child $12 / free for children under 4 and members or companion card holders

Young guests enjoy a specially modified sensory-friendly session. ANMM image

Special event Members Anniversary Lunch

11.30 am Saturday 29 November

Join the museum’s Director, Daryl Karp AM , for pre-lunch drinks and canapes followed by a three-course meal by award-winning caterers Sydney Restaurant Group at our annual Members Anniversary Lunch. It’s a chance to catch up with old friends of the museum and meet new ones, and to hear from a special guest speaker, whose name will be confirmed soon.

We hope you can join us for this special event. Please check our website for updates and further details.

$135 Members / $155 non-members

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60

Until 19 October

This world-renowned exhibition, on loan from the Natural History Museum in London, is now in its 60th year. It features exceptional images of fascinating animal behaviour, spectacular species and the breathtaking diversity of the natural world. Using photography’s unique emotive power to engage and inspire audiences, the images shine a light on stories and species around the world and encourage a future of advocating for the planet.

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

is the most prestigious photography event of its kind, providing a global platform that showcases some of the best photography talent from around the world. Launched in 1965, today the competition receives entries from 117 countries and territories all over the world, highlighting its enduring appeal.

sea.museum/wildlife-photographer

Twist and Jump by Jose Manuel Grandío (Spain) depicts a stoat hurling itself about in a fresh fall of snow. © Jose Manuel Grandío / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Ultimate Depth

Now showing

There is only one world ocean, and it covers 70 per cent of the planet. Ultimate Depth: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea invites you to experience and understand our ocean, so together we can help to protect it. Join us as we dive in to experience each zone, encounter extraordinary creatures and uncover the cutting-edge technologies that reveal their secrets and their hidden world.

Make your own deep-sea creature and release it into the midnight zone, then end your adventure in the deepest reaches of our ocean, the hadal zone, where you can investigate the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER , the submersible that took James Cameron to these extreme depths in 2012.

sea.museum/ultimate-depth

Persuasion

Until 5 October

Vengeance, fear, allegiance, loss, the home front and the fighting spirit, portrayed in the dramatic art of World War II propaganda posters from the USA and Australia.

Supported by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund.

sea.museum/persuasion

Image Jasmine Poole/ANMM

Secret Strike: War on our shores

Now showing

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

To commemorate this historic milestone, a temporary exhibition focuses on the 1942 Japanese midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour. Secret Strike: War on our shores features the stern section of the midget submarine M22 and voice pipes from HMAS Kuttabul. The exhibition explores the raid and includes historic images of the aftermath of the attack and first-hand accounts of the impact it had on ordinary people’s lives.

Please note, Secret Strike: War on our shores is located in Wharf 7, adjacent to the main museum building, and is not open on weekends or public holidays.

sea.museum/secret-strike

Ur Wayii (Incoming Tide)

From 11 September

Torres Strait artist Brian Robinson uses painting, printmaking, sculpture and design to illustrate the region’s mythology, cosmology and spirituality. Robinson, who grew up on Waiben (Thursday Island), incorporates contemporary icons taken from video games and Hollywood movies to reflect on Islander history, humour and love of fishing.

sea.museum/incoming-tide

Frozen Witness: Aurora’s polar voyages

From 25 September

Voyage back in time to the early decades of Australia’s Antarctic exploits and the journeys of SY Aurora. Generously supported by Charlotte Fairweather through the ANMM Foundation, the exhibition features the expeditions of Ernest Shackleton and Douglas Mawson – and the remarkable story of a wooden vessel pitched into the icy unknown.

SY Aurora photographed by Frank Hurley from within a cavern in the shelf-ice of the Mertz Glacier Tongue, Antarctica, December 1913 (detail). Image National Library of Australia

sea.museum/frozen-witness

Dark Victory

From 26 September

The story of Operation Jaywick, the secret commando raid on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour in September 1943, and its unforeseen consequences. Jaywick stunned the Japanese military with its audacity and success. Not believing that the Allied military could be responsible, they immediately suspected the civilian population, and a wave of arrests, torture and executions followed.

sea.museum/dark-victory

War brides, grooms and babies

From 16 October

War splits families apart and throws people together. We explore stories of wartime marriages through objects from our collection, including the ‘stars and stripes’ jumper knitted by Audrey Capuano on her voyage to a new life in the USA, and a pressed gardenia corsage, memento of a wartime romance in Melbourne.

This project is supported by the museum’s USA Bicentennial Gift Fund.

sea.museum/war-brides

Ocean Photographer of the Year 3

From 8 November

The Ocean Photographer of the Year competition is a celebration of our beautiful blue planet, as well as a platform to highlight the many plights it is facing. Ocean photographers – amateurs and professionals alike – are invited to submit their most impactful imagery to be judged by a panel of ocean photographers, editors, and museum and gallery curators. This exhibition presents the winning 118 ocean images.

Bajau fisherman, Selakan Island, Malaysia. Image by Ipah Uid Lynn, winner of the Female Fifty Fathoms portfolio award. © Ipah Uid Lynn/Ocean Photographer of the Year

Touring exhibitions

Mariw Minaral

South East Centre for Contemporary Art, Bega, NSW

From 26 September

This beautiful exhibition brings together some of the finest examples of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait Islander) artist Alick Tipoti’s unique and intricate linocut printmaking practice. Also on display are some of his award-winning sculptural works, contemporary masks and film.

Maza Mawa (Wapiya) 1 by Alick Tipoti. ANMM Collection 00055478 reproduced courtesy of Alick Tipoti and licensed for use by the museum

Cats

& Dogs All at Sea

Jervis Bay Maritime Museum, Huskisson, NSW

Until 30 September

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.

James Cameron – Challenging the Deep

Queensland Museum Tropics, Townsville, QLD

Until 26 October

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

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

Brickwrecks – sunken ships in LEGO ® bricks

Chatham Historic Dockyard, UK

Until 15 November

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

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

For information regarding all touring exhibitions, please see sea.museum/touring-exhibitions

The World Remade

The

80th anniversary of the end of World War II

To mark the end of the war in the Pacific, the museum is delivering a series of programs, events, activations and exhibitions under the banner The World Remade Look out for this logo to discover our objects and stories.

sea.museum/WWII-80-years

At the Home Island Museum, an image recently went on display of the Cocos Shire team sailing in a jukong race. Crew member Nek Fasha poses next to it.

All images David O’Sullivan unless otherwise noted

A week in the Cocos Atoll

A distinctive maritime culture

Almost 3,000 kilometres from the Australian mainland lies the Home Island Museum, a unique and little-known collection showcasing the heritage of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. By David O’Sullivan.

Jukong races often occur around important cultural holidays such as Eid

THIS YEAR I TRAVELLED to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands as part of the Indian Ocean Communities (IOC) program run by the Western Australian Museum (WAM). This remote grouping of 27 islands has fallen under Australia’s federal mandate as a territory since 1955. Only two of the islands, Home Island and West Island, are populated, and their 600 inhabitants primarily identify as Cocos Malay. The cultural practices of this community have, unsurprisingly, a strong maritime alignment. Boatbuilding and sailing are central to life on the islands, and documenting their legacy and ongoing practices was a particular focus for my trip.

The history of boatbuilding here can be traced to the Scottish trader Captain John Clunies Ross, who surveyed the then-uninhabited islands in 1825. The island atoll group had been sighted prior to this by Captain William Keeling in 1696, and was charted by James Horsburgh in 1805. Clunies Ross was the first to conduct any activity on land, digging wells and planting fruit trees. The first settlement was established in 1826 by Alexander Hare, a business rival of Clunies Ross. Hare brought in enslaved Malay, Chinese, Papuan and Indian people. In 1827, following Hare’s departure, Ross returned and began a coconut plantation. A large majority of the Malay population brought over by Hare were engaged in this business; they were paid in the Cocos rupee, a currency used until the late 1970s.

Clunies Ross also brought his experience as a whaler and whaleboat builder to Cocos. His new environment was very different from his native Shetland Islands, to the north of the Scottish mainland, forcing him to respond to a marine landscape defined by shallow coral reefs. His answer is what is known on Cocos Keeling today as the jukong. This can be seen as a modified whaleboat design, heavily built to be stable in rough weather, but with a shallow draught so the vessels could easily navigate the reefs in and around the Cocos lagoon. They were – and still are – built at lengths of 14–18 feet (4.2–5.4 metres).

Over subsequent decades, Clunies Ross family members took increasing influence in their boatbuilding practice from the Malay population on the islands, and this resulted in the construction of vessels in a hybrid European–Cocos Malay design. The Home Island Museum has three such vessels on display, the centrepiece being the 32-foot (10-metre) Ready, built in 1898 by George Clunies Ross, grandson of John. It was built as a working cargo vessel, its primary purpose being to transport coconuts and timber from Pulu (North) Keeling Island to Home Island. Notably, Ready travelled to North Keeling following the battle between HMAS Sydney and SMS Emden on 9 November 1914, salvaging material from the beached German cruiser.

Another of George Clunies Ross’ boats on display is his namesake GCR . Built in 1911, it was used as a recreational vessel by the Clunies Ross family. Its design is very impressive, with a beamy carvel hull of teak and finely detailed metal work among its distinguishing characteristics.

The third vessel on display at the museum is a smaller jukong named Buah Hati. This was built in 1974 and has been recently masterfully restored by a local Cocos Malay craftsman. Both Buah Hati and Ready are built primarily of geronggang (ironwood), a timber species unique to Cocos Keeling and Malaysia. Many jukong were made at people’s homes, each broadly following similar design characteristics, but some with slight personal modifications, often made to seek advantage in jukong racing.

01

Ready, built in 1898, is an example of the hybrid European–Cocos Malay design approach that evolved in Cocos Keeling during the early 19th century. Ready is one of three vessels on display at the Home Island Museum.

02 GCR is carvel planked in teak and was named for George Clunies Ross, the builder of Ready, above.

The history of boatbuilding in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands can be traced to the Scottish trader Captain John Clunies Ross

The jukong can be seen as a modified whaleboat design, heavily built to be stable in rough weather

01

Jukong cross section by George Clunies Ross, 1891. Courtesy Cocos Shire Collection

02

The Chula Shed, adjacent to the Home Island Museum, provides space for vessels to be maintained and restored.

My colleague and I took detailed measurements of each vessel and formulated a line drawing for Ready. We also took numerous photos of the three vessels and generated preliminary 3D photogrammetry models. Such methods will help to further understand what design approach George Clunies Ross and the early Cocos Malay boatbuilders might have taken with each vessel.

I was further interested to learn about how jukong have been worked on, and sailed, to this day. Next to the Home Island Museum is a building called the Chula Shed, which has been converted into a larger workshop for maintenance and restoration of jukong and other historic vessels. Once a drying shed for copra (coconut) as part of the Clunies Ross business, it is now a communal space for Cocos Malay tradespeople, who have recently built support cradles for the jukong to help with long-term preservation.

During my visit I was also lucky enough to conduct several oral histories with locals. Bidi Abodin is one local who regularly sails on a jukong with a group of other young Home Islanders. He spoke to me about his upbringing on Home Island and the specifics of crewing and racing:

Depends on the size of the jukong [for crewing] and the wind conditions. Usually we have four, but with a bigger sail and strong conditions we add another to make five. We have the skipper on the tiller, the second in charge of the mainsail, a guy in the middle to help upright the jukong every now and then, and the two guys in front to control the jib.

Jukong races often occur around important cultural holidays such as Eid, the end of the month-long fasting of Ramadan. Teams commonly comprise family members or people who work in similar areas. During our trip an excellent photograph was put on display at the Home Island Museum of the Cocos Shire jukong team sailing in a race. One of the crew members proudly posed for a photo next to the image.

The Ayeesha lifering is another highly significant object recently put on display in the museum. This 116-year-old lifering was donated by descendants of crew from the Emden. It was originally from the 119-foot (29-metre) topsail schooner Ayeesha, which was sailed by Emden survivors from Direction Island to Padang in Indonesia. Ayeesha was scuttled in Padang harbour and the lifering salvaged, after which the Emden survivors travelled onwards to Yemen by sea, and then Turkey by land. The voyage of the Ayeesha is a lesser-known account from World War I, and WAM is working with the Home Island Museum to develop the display further.

Like many museum collections in remote locations, the artefacts on Home Island face environmental risks. Home Island is characterised by hot, humid, damp conditions almost all year round. Its museum is constantly air conditioned, but high levels of salinity in the air outside the museum have caused issues with building maintenance. A recent report by the Western Australian and federal governments also highlighted the risks posed to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands by rising sea levels and catastrophic events. This report is currently under review and has brought into question future disaster planning for the Home Island Museum collection.

On 6 April 1984, Cocos Islanders voted in a referendum to end feudal control of the islands by the Clunies Ross family, after which the islands became part of Australia. This anniversary is celebrated annually as Act of Self-Determination Day. Many Home Islanders are proud of being part of Australia, but they would like to see more investment in the welfare of the people who live in this unique atoll community. Here’s hoping that further exposure of the significant heritage collections and broader cultural landscape of Home Island will help to achieve this goal.

David O’Sullivan is an Assistant Curator in the Maritime Heritage Department of the Western Australian Museum.

Preserving our shared maritime histories

Highlights from the Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme 2024–25

The story of Australia’s maritime heritage is held in diverse and exciting collections across the country. Outreach Program Coordinator Liam McGeagh shares some success stories from our grants program, which helps our colleagues in Australian institutions to share these histories to maximum effect.

THE MARITIME MUSEUMS OF AUSTRALIA Project Support Scheme (MMAPSS) is the Australian National Maritime Museum’s grants program, which provides funding, support and professional development to maritime heritage institutions across Australia. As a national cultural institution, it is our role and our privilege to help these institutions manage their significant collections and tell the story of our shared maritime history. MMAPSS is one of the most important ways we fulfil this duty.

Established in 1995, this program has awarded more than $2.61 million for upwards of 565 projects and 93 museological training opportunities. MMAPSS-supported programs include restoring and managing historic vessels, redeveloping or re-creating exhibition displays, updating interpretation of heritage sites, creating educational materials and digital resources and providing training through the Maritime Museum Administrators’ Course.

Guests at the opening of the Portland Maritime Museum’s Nyamat Mirring gallery.

Image Damian Goodman, reproduced courtesy Portland Maritime Museum

As a national cultural institution, it is our role and our privilege to help other institutions manage their significant collections and tell the story of our shared maritime history

01 Interior of the National Trust of South Australia (Willunga Branch) exhibition Cargoes, Wrecks and Rescues . Reproduced courtesy National Trust of South Australia (Willunga Branch)

02 Maritime Museum Tasmania volunteer Jonothan Davis archiving the maritime photographic collection. Reproduced courtesy Maritime Museum Tasmania

The 2024–25 funding round supported a wide variety of projects, including exhibitions that shed light on exciting aspects of maritime history, archival-grade storage for fragile cultural materials and fixtures to help preserve historic vessels. The following are some of the successful projects from this round.

Portland Maritime Museum (Glenelg Shire Council), VIC Nyamat Mirring gallery

The Portland Maritime Museum recently celebrated the opening of its new Nyamat Mirring gallery, co-curated with representatives from Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation. Supported with funding from a MMAPSS grant, this gallery tells the story of Gunditjmara connection to Sea Country through material culture, artworks and stories presented via video and text. A special highlight is its focus on the continuation of traditional aquaculture practices, which have been in place for thousands of years.

Does your organisation care for objects or collections of significance to Australia’s maritime heritage? Do you have an idea for a project, or an interest in attending our Maritime Museum Administrators’ Course? Applications for the next round of MMAPPS funding will open in early 2026. Check our website for further information at sea.museum/en/about/grants-andawards/mmapss, or contact the MMAPSS Coordinator via mmapss@sea.museum.

Maritime Museum Tasmania, TAS Rehousing the maritime photographic collection

Maritime Museum Tasmania holds a large collection of photographic material, spanning a 160-year period across the 19th and 20th centuries. These images capture crucial moments in Tasmania’s maritime history, particularly within Hobart. Scenes include huge crowds at regattas, troops embarking on transport vessels, schoolchildren crossing the river by ferry, and goods such as whale oil, apples and timber awaiting loading onto international cargo ships bound for Europe. With MMAPSS funding, Maritime Museum Tasmania rehoused a significant portion of this collection into archival-grade materials, which will ensure its protection for the long-term benefit of the community.

National Trust of South Australia (Willunga Branch), SA Cargoes, Wrecks and Rescues

The National Trust of South Australia’s Courthouse Museum plays host to the MMAPSS-funded exhibition Cargoes, Wrecks and Rescues. This tells the story of five vessels wrecked south of the Onkaparinga River and explores key themes in South Australia’s history, including immigration, colonial consumerism and coastal trade. The exhibition includes artefacts from the wrecks of Star of Greece, Nashwauk and Tigress and combines static displays with online resources accessible to a wide audience.

Established in 1995, MMAPSS has awarded more than $2.61 million for upwards of 565 projects and 93 museological training opportunities

Boomerang under sail in 1905, during a voyage to Tasmania. Photographer unknown, reproduced courtesy Sydney Heritage Fleet

Sydney Heritage Fleet, NSW New awnings for Boomerang

Boomerang is a wooden schooner of Edwardian design and styling, built in New South Wales in 1903. It is one of the few surviving vessels designed by Walter Reeks, a notable figure in Australia’s shipbuilding history. Boomerang is also present on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels (HV000001). With MMAPSS funding, Sydney Heritage Fleet installed a new set of awnings to provide this vessel with ongoing protection from the elements.

Queensland Maritime Museum, QLD Making Waves

The exhibition Making Waves, developed by Queensland Maritime Museum with the support of a MMAPSS grant, profiles significant achievements in Australian sailing and rowing. It highlights the stories of intrepid mariners such as Kay Cottee, Jessica Watson and Jesse Martin, and includes displays about the evolution of navigation. The project continues to grow and will soon feature an interactive display outlining the epic voyages undertaken by subjects of the exhibition.

2024 Maritime Museum Administrators’ Course

A group of ten staff and volunteers from maritime heritage organisations in Western Australia, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales were welcomed to the Australian National Maritime Museum for the 2024 Maritime Museum Administrators’ Course. This week-long professional development experience allows attendees to work with ANMM staff to develop museological skills and increase standards of practice for the care and management of their organisation’s collections. Karyn Bugeja of the Amazon 1863 Project commented:

To have the opportunity to take part in this funded course has been invaluable. I cannot imagine anywhere else I could have received such an amazing experience, so educational and so enlightening.

The Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme is funded by the Australian Government through the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts.

Be part of a once-in-a-lifetime effort to reconstruct Australia’s oldest known colonial-built vessel.

Buried beneath Sydney for over two centuries, this remarkable boat was rediscovered in 2018 during excavation for the new Barangaroo Metro Station.

Offering unprecedented insight into early life in the colony, it is one of the most significant maritime archaeological finds in Australia this century. Now, 300 carefully preserved timber pieces await reassembly at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

We Need Your Support

This pioneering project marks Australia’s first full reconstruction of a colonial-era vessel – and we need your help.

Your tax-deductible donation will directly support the research, exhibitions, and education programs that will bring its story to life for generations to come.

Archaeologists delicately excavate the long-buried colonial vessel in situ at Darling Harbour, uncovered during Sydney Metro construction works. Kieran Hosty/Australian National Maritime Museum for Sydney Metro

The Barangaroo Boat

An early colonial vessel successfully conserved

In late 2018, during archaeological survey and excavation of the site for the new Sydney Metro station at Barangaroo, an exciting discovery was made: an early clinker-built boat, some 9 metres long with a beam of 3 metres. Heather Berry and Benjamin Wharton detail its conservation.

View of conservation facility, with tanks containing Barangaroo Boat timbers, 2020.

All images Silentworld Foundation/Sydney Metro unless otherwise noted

The species used in the Barangaroo Boat were not uncommon to the period and are employed in timber boatbuilding to this day

THE VESSEL CURRENTLY KNOWN as the ‘Barangaroo Boat’ is a rare example of a Britishstyle craft built with Australian timbers that has been successfully excavated and conserved.1 A large collaborative team of archaeologists and conservators, including Cosmos Archaeology, Casey & Lowe and International Conservation Services, excavated the vessel. Sydney Metro then engaged Silentworld Foundation and York Archaeological Trust to carry out its conservation. Ian Panter, of York Archaeological Trust, visited the warehouse space set up by Sydney Metro to house and conserve the boat in late 2019. Working with Silentworld Foundation and staff from the Australian National Maritime Museum, he wrote a condition report on the timbers and created a treatment plan to stabilise the wood, completed by Silentworld Foundation in mid-2024. The boat was to be conserved using the polyethylene glycol method of shipwreck conservation, which has been used to great effect on many northern hemispherebuilt ships, including Mary Rose, Vasa and Batavia

Pretreatment and treatment

The Barangaroo Boat, although found on land, was waterlogged, which dictated its treatment. It was stored wet in a refrigerated shipping container while conservation arrangements were made, and once removed from its protective moist wrappings, the timbers were stored in tanks of water at the Sydney Metro conservation facility. After cleaning and photography, the timbers were scanned using a structured light scanner, which captured three-dimensional images of each timber. These were then annotated to mark their man-made and natural features, in what is known as the annotated scans method. 2

After these stages were complete, conservation treatment could begin. The boat had been largely fastened with iron nails; this was known because, although no iron fasteners survived, over time they corroded, impregnating the timbers with iron. As the Silentworld Foundation team had the benefit of both Ian Panter’s experience and the advice and lessons learned from previous shipwrecks treated in this manner, a very important step was added to the conservation program – that of chelation, which is the chemical removal of iron from the timbers. This avoids acidification and degradation of the wood that can be caused by polyethylene glycol interacting with iron in the timbers. 3 After soaking in a 5 per cent solution of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid disodium salt (EDTA) and tap water for up to a week, the timbers were manually cleaned once again, and iron corrosion product could be observed being washed out of the timbers.

Consolidation of the timbers then began, using a waterbased solution of polyethylene glycol (PEG) molecular weight 4000. The solution penetrates decayed cells, which stabilises the structure, acting as scaffolding. Then, when the water is removed by freeze-drying, the PEG wax is left behind. It mitigates cracking, warping and shrinkage of the timbers.4

Concentrations of 5% weight/volume (w/v) of PEG were added to each tank at three-week intervals, until a total concentration of 35% w/v was reached. In total, approximately 10 tonnes of PEG were added across the three treatment tanks. The tanks were covered with heavy plastic so that the solution would not become contaminated, and a broad-spectrum biocide was used to prevent mould and fungal growth on the surface of the tanks. The timbers remained in this solution for 22 months, until testing concluded that the PEG had sufficiently penetrated the timbers.

The next and last stage in the conservation process was freeze-drying, which required the timbers to be snap frozen and transported to Melbourne. Steamatic was contracted to perform the freeze-drying, as they have the largest freeze-dryer in the southern hemisphere, which could encompass the longest Barangaroo Boat timbers.

The timbers were freeze-dried in two batches, separated by dimensions and element types – all planks were dried together, and all frames were dried together. The results were very good and marked the first time that the polyethylene glycol freeze-dry method has been used on Australian archaeological waterlogged timbers.

Polyethylene glycol solution penetrates decayed cells, which stabilises the structure, acting as scaffolding

Timber identification

Iron staining on the surface of the boat’s timbers (here, the sternpost) indicates that it was fastened with iron nails which have since corroded away.

02

Sternpost after treatment with EDTA; note the reduction in orange and red colour compared with image 01. (The white staining in image 02 is due to later PEG treatments and is easily removed.)

During the initial excavation stages, timber identification was carried out on select timbers to determine whether the boat was made from Australian or European species. Dr Jugo Ilic, of Know Your Wood, returned results indicating that the 78 initial samples sent were all native Australian hardwoods. But, with some 300 pieces in the Barangaroo Boat assemblage, and many different species identified across element types, it was determined that all timbers (where practicable) would have to be identified. The results revealed that there was a large spread of timber species, with 13 individual species being identified overall. However, some broad commonalities could be applied to the element types. For example, the majority of the plank species were Eucalyptus botryoides and Eucalyptus saligna, while most of the larger frames were Corymbia maculata and Banksia species.

While there did appear to be some overlap between the level of degradation of a timber and its species (for example, the several Banksia species represented tended to be softer and more degraded), ultimately there was little difference in the final conservation outcome across all timbers. Although the boat was undoubtedly built by skilled tradesmen, the wide range of species used, which may at first appear haphazard and unskilled, is an example of opportunistic construction style utilising available timber by its characteristics and shape. The species used were not uncommon to the period and are employed in timber boatbuilding to this day.

There was a large spread of timber species, with 13 individual species being identified overall

01

Digitally reconstructing the hull by positioning the individual 3D-scanned planks on a negative mould created from the onsite photogrammetry.

02

View of the boat excavated with ceiling planking intact.

Image Benjamin Wharton for Sydney Metro, 2018

In 2025, Sydney Metro, Silentworld Foundation and York Archaeological Trust accepted the National Trust NSW Heritage Award for Objects for the conservation of the Barangaroo Boat in the Objects and Interiors Category.

Re-scan overlay

To determine the effect that the conservation method had on the timbers, the team at Silentworld Foundation re-scanned a representative sample of Barangaroo Boat timbers after the freeze-dry phase was concluded. They were looking for cracking of the timbers, warping and twisting, increase or decrease in the angles and shape of both frames and planks, and overall shrinkage –all common effects of the PEG and freeze-dry treatment method. 5 What was not known, however, was the effect on Australian species. While visual inspection revealed no undue cracking and damage, a more concrete and quantifiable method of measuring was required to determine total change, so the same scanner and methodology were used to re-scan and analyse 32 timbers – 16 frames, 13 planks, the sternpost and two small elements.

The results showed a uniform low shrinkage rate across all timbers – an expected effect, as freeze-drying removes water from waterlogged cells. Therefore, the timbers changed very little from before to after conservation, and the types of change were anticipated.

Digital reconstruction

As well as enabling assessment of ‘before and after’ changes in the conserved timbers, the 3D scans could be reassembled digitally. Using the on-site photogrammetry conducted during excavation in 2018 as a base, the components of the boat could be laid down: first the frames, then the internal and external planking, and finally the keel components, until the boat was re-created as found.

Each timber was individually identified in the model and grouped according to its component type, for example: ‘floor frames’, ‘futtock frames’, ‘strake 1 of internal starboard planking’. This enabled the model to be navigated in layer groups, so that the user can virtually rebuild the Barangaroo Boat in the sequence of its construction or can view the boat in different combinations that would not otherwise be possible – for example, seeing just the framing and the keel components together.

There are a number of potential future uses for such a model. A digital reconstruction can assist in the physical reconstruction of the boat or as a basis for a 3D-printed model, or can be presented online to allow researchers and the public to access a digital 3D model of the vessel.

Conclusion

The Sydney Metro project to conserve the Barangaroo Boat has been a five-year process which, while following an established protocol, has thrown up many challenges and further questions, owing to the novel nature of the materials being conserved. Australian archaeological waterlogged timbers have not previously been treated in this way on this scale, and this conservation treatment, and its outcomes, are fertile ground for researchers. At present, the authors of this paper are undertaking postgraduate research, with Heather Berry studying comparative methods of conservation of Australian waterlogged archaeological timber, and Benjamin Wharton studying boatbuilding in the early Australian colonies. Both are using the Barangaroo Boat as a case study and inspiration.

Conservation of the Barangaroo Boat has now concluded, and the vessel is ready for display and possible reconstruction, aided by the 3D scans and digital reconstruction.

1 For more information about these early stages of excavation and pre-treatment monitoring, see Signals 136, ‘The Barangaroo Boat: archaeology and conservation of an early colonial vessel’ and silentworldfoundation.org.au/projects/barangaroo-boat/

2 The annotated scans method was developed by Thomas van Damme of Ubi3D, who came from Belgium to teach it to the conservation team.

3 Sandström, M, F Jalilehvand, I Persson, I Gelius and P Frank (2001). ‘Acidity and salt precipitation on the Vasa: the sulfur problem’, 8th ICOM-CC WOAM Conference, Stockholm, 11–15 June 2001.

4 Grattan, DW and RW Clarke (1987). ‘Conservation of waterlogged wood’ in C Pearson, (ed), Conservation of marine archaeological artefacts . Butterworth, pp 164–206.

5 Broda, M and C Hill (2021). ‘Conservation of waterlogged wood –past, present and future perspectives’, Forests , vol 12.

Heather Berry is a maritime conservator and research assistant at Silentworld Foundation. Benjamin Wharton is a maritime archaeologist with the Australian National Maritime Museum.

A fleet of change

Japan’s maritime history in postcards

The museum’s Vaughan Evans Library holds several collections of maritime postcards, including a striking historical series by Japan’s Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK Line) from the early 1900s. Linda Bretherton has revealed some of the stories within them.

A REMARKABLE POSTCARD COLLECTION in the museum’s library offers a poignant glimpse into a bygone era. Offering more than mere visual appeal, it reflects complex narratives spanning from the 1600s to today. Blending traditional Japanese aesthetics with images of a growing maritime empire, these postcards reveal the evolution of Japan’s international trade, travel and cultural identity.

Isolation and reopening: Japan’s maritime transformation

In 1636, the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate enacted Sakoku, a policy of national isolation that banned ocean-going shipbuilding and restricted Japanese citizens travelling overseas. Aimed at preserving internal stability and cultural traditions, it effectively impeded foreign influence. Before this, Japanese vessels had sailed across Southeast Asia and possibly as far as northern Australia.

This isolation ended with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853, when his technologically advanced US fleet revealed how far Japan had fallen behind the West. In response, Japan began lifting restrictions – permitting shipbuilding and the purchase of foreign vessels – and opening to trade. A commercial treaty with the USA followed in 1858, and by 1862, Japanese citizens were allowed to travel abroad.

Global trade and the rise of NYK

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, an American firm, entered Japan in 1867, marking a shift in Pacific trade. The Meiji government took power in 1868, embracing modernisation and international engagement. From 1870 onward, Japan launched initiatives to develop its national fleet, culminating in the establishment in 1885 of the semi-government-owned Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK).

The Meiji era (1868–1912) ushered in sweeping political, economic and social reforms, propelling Japan into the global community.

Postcards and cultural exchange

Japan’s national postal system was introduced in 1871, followed by postcards in 1873. Initially government controlled, postcards were modelled on Austria–Hungary’s plain, typographic style. By the 1880s and 1890s, illustrated (and later photographic) postcards gained popularity in Europe. Japan followed suit.

In 1900, the government relinquished control over postcard design, encouraging Japanese artists to shape the medium. This coincided with growing Western interest in Japanese aesthetics and a domestic embrace of Western influences. Postcards became a dynamic blend of traditional motifs and innovation. Mass produced and visually rich, they became a promotional tool, conveying a modern Japanese identity.

01

On 9 May 1906, the Evening News reported that Kumano Maru had arrived in Sydney from Yokohama. It was later lost near Takamatsu, Japan, on 10 June 1927.

02

The reverse of this postcard boasts (in English), ‘The sun never sets on the NYK flag. 150 vessels 875,000 gross tons. Regular service from Japan to Europe, America, Australia, India, China and all other parts of the world.’

On 24 January 1944, Yasukuni Maru was hit by two torpedoes from US submarine USS Trigger. It sank within five minutes with the loss of 1,188 people. Only 43 survivors were recovered.

All images from ANMM Postcard Collection. Photographer Jasmine Poole/ANMM

Japanese immigration and the Australia Service

Following an 1881 treaty with Hawaii and further negotiations in 1884, NYK became involved in Japanese emigration. By the early 1890s, NYK expanded its routes to support emigration to Australia.

Delayed by the Sino–Japanese War of 1894, the regular Japan–Australia service was inaugurated with SS Yamashiro Maru in 1896.1 It was soon joined by Omi Maru and Tokio Maru. As trade and labour migration –particularly for Queensland’s sugar industry – increased, these were replaced by more advanced vessels: Kasuga Maru, Futami Maru, and Yawata Maru Futami Maru, wrecked in 1900, was replaced by Kumano Maru in 1901.

While Japan’s maritime ambitions grew, Australia halted ‘Oriental’ arrivals with the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act (becoming known as the ‘White Australia policy’). The museum’s Dr Peter Hobbins has noted that:2

Japanese ships and crews were regular visitors to Sydney’s Quarantine Station from the 1890s, embodying combined fears of Asian immigration and the growing role of steamships in the spread of deadly diseases such as smallpox.

However, minor amendments to the Act during the early 1900s softened its impact on Japanese citizens.

In 1904, all three Australian Line vessels were requisitioned for the Russo–Japanese War (1904–05), as was the ‘super passenger liner’ Nikko Maru, which had been built for the Australian service.

Pride and propaganda

Between 1904 and 1906, Japan’s Ministry of Communications issued five postcard sets celebrating victories in the Russo–Japanese War. Initially featuring collotype photos of ships and war trophies framed in designs inspired by Art Nouveau and the ukiyo-e genre, the focus later shifted to portraits of military and political leaders.

Japan’s triumph over Russia sparked national pride and elevated its global status, especially among British colonies such as Australia, where public opinion was largely positive. The postcards – cheap, popular and widely distributed – became a powerful tool of patriotic propaganda, with people queuing for hours to buy them.

Rising Japanese prowess, however, soon triggered Western anxiety. Tensions with the USA, Japan’s annexation of Korea (1910–11) and fears of naval and economic competition soured sentiment. Postcards in the museum’s collection, originally souvenirs from NYK ships, may have become politically sensitive as views shifted.

From trade to conflict

In August 1914, Japan joined the Allies and declared war on Germany. NYK, Japan’s leading shipping company, played a key role in transporting troops, equipment and supplies across the Pacific and Indian oceans, supporting Allied logistics. After the war, its fleet shifted focus to luxury passenger and cargo services.

01

Mishima Maru, under the later name Aki Maru, became one of the infamous ‘hell ships’.

02

On 25 November 1913, the Sydney newspaper Daily Commercial News and Shipping List reported that ‘a brilliant gathering’ had assembled on board Tango Maru the previous afternoon, ‘and spent several hours wandering around the tastefully-decorated decks, admiring in every way the fine vessel which had been drafted into the Australian service’.

NYK’s service continued despite the growing enmity between Australia and Japan. Trade between the two countries grew in the 1920s, before declining in the 1930s due to the Great Depression and preferential trade agreements favouring Britain.

By World War II, Japan had turned against the Allies. NYK’s ships were requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army and converted into auxiliary warships, hospital ships and transport vessels. Of its fleet, only 37 ships survived, with 185 lost in military operations.

The ‘hell ships’ and Montevideo Maru

Some of the vessels were used to transport Allied prisoners of war (POWs) being relocated for internment. The POWs called them ‘hell ships’.

Montevideo Maru, launched in 1926 by Japanese shipping company Osaka Shosen Kaisha, became the first such vessel sunk by the US Navy. On 1 July 1942, the submarine Sturgeon torpedoed it, unaware it carried more than 1,000 Australian POWs and captured civilians, none of whom survived.

The ship’s wreck was found in April 2023. It lies at more than 4,000 metres – deeper than RMS Titanic

The discovery expedition, a collaboration between Silentworld Foundation, Fugro and Australia’s Department of Defence, included scientists, maritime archaeologists (including museum staff) and naval experts. 3

Tracing the legacy of NYK and its global reach, the images on the postcards – depicting ships that no longer sail – reflect a complex history of cultural exchange, international trade, wartime conflict and postwar collaboration. More than simple snapshots, these postcards serve as visual records of the world that shaped, and was shaped by, the vessels they portray.

1 Japanese ships often include the word maru (丸), meaning ‘circle’ and signifying protection, completeness and a sense of preciousness.

2 Hobbins, P, U Frederick and A Clarke, 2016. Stories from the Sandstone: Quarantine Inscriptions from Australia’s Immigrant Past Arbon Publishing.

3 See Signals no 144 for more about Montevideo Maru

Linda M Bretherton is a Sydney-based researcher, writer and curator, with an interest in bringing archives to life through storytelling.

Japan’s maritime history in postcards

To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the museum’s Vaughan Evans Library is displaying Movement is Convenient: Japan’s maritime history in postcards . It is located on level 2 of Wharf 7, adjacent to the main museum building, and is open from 9 am to 3.30 pm Monday to Thursday (closed on weekends or public holidays) until 20 December. Please ask at reception on the ground floor for access.

National Monument to Migration

Celebrating journeys to a new life

ON SATURDAY 10 MAY, families gathered at the Australian National Maritime Museum for a day filled with pride, reflection and emotion. This recent unveiling added 501 inscriptions to the growing monument, with 690 names representing 61 countries represented on its bronze panels. Among them were additions to the general panel, plus a dedicated section honouring those who migrated from Lebanon. These names now sit alongside more than 34,400 already on the monument. Each one represents someone who made Australia home. Someone who brought with them strength, culture, history and a desire to create something better for themselves and their families.

These events are never just about unveiling names. For the families attending, it’s personal. It’s the moment a loved one’s journey is acknowledged. It’s the quiet pride of seeing their name on the bronze plaque. It’s a reminder of the sacrifices made so future generations could have more.

Every name has its own story. Some are stories of survival. Others are about hope, loss or rebuilding. Each one is different, but each one is part of the bigger picture of who we are as a nation.

We extend our deepest thanks to those who helped make this ceremony possible. In particular, we thank:

• representatives from our Welcome Wall supporters: SBS, Chief Group Services, Oz Arab Media, The Lebanese Australian, and the Australian Lebanese Historical Society

• representatives from the Big Brother Movement

• Councillors of the museum and Directors of the Foundation Board

• donors, sponsors and supporters of the museum

• and all distinguished guests, families and community members who joined us in honouring these stories.

This November, we will unveil two more panels. The first will be open to migrants of all backgrounds. The other will be a dedicated Vietnamese panel, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, and we’ll be commemorating those who made the journey to Australia since that time. Their stories, like all the others, deserve to be remembered and honoured.

Through the National Monument to Migration, these stories will never be forgotten. They are now part of Australia’s history, permanently etched in bronze for future generations to see, reflect on and celebrate.

Madina Mangal, Community Partnerships Lead

For the chance to share and record your story, register now at sea.museum/nationalmonument or by phoning (02) 9298 3777

These events are never just about unveiling names. For the families attending, it’s personal

01 Violet Torbey, donor and speaker, proudly displaying her extended family’s inscriptions on the National Monument to Migration Lebanese panel. Image Marinco Kojdanovski

Myrtle Legg, who migrated from South Africa, pictured with her Australian-born grandchildren. Image courtesy Myrtle Legg

Mutiny, espionage and jungle warfare

The genesis of our navy

WHILE NERVOUS TO REVIEW A BOOK about a subject on which I know frighteningly little, there were clues that I would have no trouble with this chosen topic. The first was that, upon leaving my copy of Anthony Delano’s The Tinpot Navy on the dining table, my dad snatched it and read it in an evening.

Delano’s new book knows that its topic is niche. My limited knowledge of the history of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) was mostly of World War II and maybe the Pacific War. The Tinpot Navy stretches the topic back 30 years, but despite the chaotic history the book attempts to channel, I need not have worried about feeling confused or left behind.

What this book does best is embody the energy and spirit of its subjects. From the first few pages, Delano’s endearing Antipodean style (ships crumbling ‘like bullybeef tins’) is a winner. I feared that the book would be a summation of ‘months of futile North Sea patrols’, but the author knows where the focus is most interesting, abbreviating and diluting the background noise of the Great War where necessary. An early analysis of the concerns that led to a demand for Australian naval independence is colloquial and certainly opinionated, but also crucial to the cohesion of that chapter. The author is very confident in his judgment calls, particularly with the bureaucratic movements of both the British and Australian navies, something likely informed by his own experience in the RAN.

The succinctness of the writing is its greatest strength and the best prevention against the book bogging down in unnecessary side-steps. Often, this succinctness is deliberately amusing; Admiral Jacky Fisher is described bluntly as ‘a hyperactive control freak with a penchant for making midshipmen dance with him’. I was unaware of some of the early events in our navy’s history, such as submarine espionage around Anzac Cove by Henry Stoker, commander of AE2, or interactions with German ships like the merchant vessel Hobart in Australian harbours at the announcement of World War I. In the potential onslaught of stories, Delano exercises firm control over what he keeps to engage and surprise the reader.

Delano also answered queries that came to me while I read. A simple explanation of navy rank competitiveness assisted greatly in understanding the positional difficulty for Commander (Acting) Biddlecombe, but sometimes the author also provides unique and unexpected details. A description of the recruitment process for the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force reveals that volunteer dentists performed 600 fillings or extractions before departure – not something I would have thought to query, but an interesting aside.

When the first battle of the book starts, the 1914 capture of Rabaul, Delano’s writing becomes extremely stylish. The simple touch of giving the full name and title of those killed or wounded on the Australian side emphasises the sense of permanent damage that war literature often

An immense standout here is the story of Guy Gaunt, who was influential in bringing the USA into the Great War

struggles to replicate, and is especially effective here given the RAN’s size at the time. Delano also emphasises certain decisions or moments as being the first or last of something, in ways you might not initially consider.

An attempt to coerce a prisoner in the jungles near Rabaul, for example, is described as ‘Australia’s first putative war crime’. Then a mention of a German prisoner made to stand on a mine while Australians passed (to ensure it didn’t detonate) is called ‘war crime number two, probably’.

An immense standout here is the story of Guy Gaunt, who was influential in bringing the USA into the Great War – he was ‘Our Man in Manhattan’, as the heading of this chapter notes. A whirlwind depiction of his life, including a period where he commanded Samoan ‘irregulars’, is a perfect change of pace. The writing in this chapter has a gently noirish tinge: public indignation humming ‘like a stretched hawser’ is a description one might more likely expect of Dashiel Hammett.

Guy Gaunt is now a favourite Aussie of mine.

The book ends with the HMAS Australia mutiny and follow-up, a rather bleak anecdote that encapsulates one sentiment of the book: that the Australian contribution to the Great War was largely under-appreciated by the powers above. The Tinpot Navy shines for its readability.

Reviewer Alex MacRitchie is a volunteer with the museum’s curatorial team.

The Tinpot Navy: The extraordinary exploits and unsung heroes of Australia’s fledgling navy during the Great War

By Anthony Delano.

Published by Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2025. Softcover, 324 pages, illustrations, appendixes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9781761472176. RRP $35.00. Vaughan Evans Library 387.50994 DEL

Rear Admiral Reginald Arthur ‘Guy’ Gaunt, ‘Our man in Manhattan’, had his roots in Ballarat. His spy network influenced the entry of the United States into World War I. Image Wikipedia

A strategic strait

The route to riches – or ruin

IAN BURNET has spent 30 years living, working and travelling in Indonesia. Dangerous Passage is his seventh book, his fifth on the maritime history of Australia and Southeast Asia – and, perhaps, his most engaging yet.

The Torres Strait is a narrow stretch of tropical sea separating Cape York, the northern tip of mainland Australia, from the south coast of Papua New Guinea. It is also one of the world’s most treacherous sea passages. Riddled with sandy shallows and coral reefs, dotted with low islands and battered by seasonal monsoons, it is subject to wild currents as white-water tides surge over sand banks and rush through narrow gaps between the islands, the vast Pacific Ocean funnelling through to the Indian Ocean in the west. I was at my home in Hobart when I opened Burnet’s new book, and at my second home in Lombok when I finished it – 5,000 kilometres away. For me that involved a day’s flight transiting in Melbourne and Bali (a good time for reading). For early European seafarers, it involved an arduous sail over many months up the east coast of Australia, taking either the inside or outside route past the Great Barrier Reef – either way a risky journey through largely uncharted waters. Then there was the Torres Strait.

The passage, once discovered, offered a shortcut from the east coast of Australia and the Pacific to the Spice Islands, what is now Indonesia, and everything to their west. But that shortcut came at a cost: the strait is littered, Burnet tells us, with the wrecks of more than 200 ships of European adventurers and explorers.

No less strategic today than in the past, the Torres Strait is the main passage between the Pacific and Indian oceans – and the realm of people smugglers, commercial fishers and offshore oil and gas explorers. It is also home to a distinct group of people with a rich culture – descendants of Indigenous Torres Strait Islanders, South Sea Islanders, Europeans, Malays, Papuans, Japanese pearlers and Australian Aboriginal people.

On a busy day, up to 30 large commercial ships, including oil tankers, transit through the Prince of Wales Channel linking the Arafura Sea with the Coral Sea, making it the only maritime chokepoint in Australian waters. The strait has obvious strategic importance to Australia, being our most active border.

Dangerous Passage begins in 1606 with the first European encounters in the Torres Strait: the Spanish explorer, Luis Vaez de Torres, came from the east on an expedition to find ‘Terra Australis’, the fabled great southern land.

The strait is littered, Burnet tells us, with the wrecks of more than 200 ships of European adventurers and explorers

In Burnet’s words, ‘The concept was magnificent –vast dominions to be discovered and added to the Spanish empire, millions of souls to be saved and brought into the Catholic faith and more riches of gold and silver.’ Torres just missed Terra Australis to the south, but became the first to navigate the strait that later bore his name.

Having heard of Torres’ trip from the Spanish on Ternate Island, the Dutch knew there must be a way through, and nearly 40 years later Abel Tasman set out to find it. He made two attempts – first sailing from the Pacific along the north coast of Papua New Guinea in 1643, and then from the west in 1644, getting as far as Cape York – but he mistook the strait for a shallow bay. It was the Englishman James Cook who first managed to follow Luis Vaez de Torres and navigate from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean via the strait – 125 years later, in 1770.

Burnet’s writing is always engaging. Combining scholarly attention to detail, matter-of-fact prose and a nose for a good story, Dangerous Passage moves at a pace. While serving up a rich history of the region, Burnet never allows detail to slow the action. As he warns us in his prologue, ‘Readers should be advised that this history will include stories of murder, mayhem, mutiny,

Dangerous Passage: A maritime history of the Torres Strait

By Ian Burnet. Published by Alfred Street Press, Sydney, 2024. Softcover, 235 pages, illustrations, bibliography. ISBN 9780645106855 RRP $35.00 VEL 387.5099438 BUR

disastrous shipwrecks, desperate voyages of survival in open boats, headhunting and hurricanes.’ Liberally illustrated with maps, artwork and direct quotations from source material, the book gives us a first-hand look at the motives, trials, challenges, frustrations, tragedies and triumphs of those explorers and adventurers over a 400-year period.

Reviewer Mark Heyward is an Australian educator who has worked for over 35 years in Indonesia. He has published numerous articles for magazines and national papers in Indonesia and Australia on education, culture, literature, travel and the arts. His books, Crazy Little Heaven: An Indonesian journey, and The Glass Islands: A year in Lombok, are both bestsellers in Indonesia.

The Providence and the Assistant required to fire at the canoes , George Tobin, 1792. State Library of NSW

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 new magazines and 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

Bill Arthur and Frances Morphy (eds)

Macquarie atlas of Indigenous Australia (2nd edition) REF 305.89915 MAC

Susan Arthure, Stephanie James, Dymphna Lonergan and Fidelma McCorry (eds) Irish women in the Antipodes: foregrounded 305.89162 IRI

Elise Baker

Women code breakers: The best kept secret of WWII 358.24 BAK

Arthur Banks

A military atlas of the First World War 940.4 BAN

Laurie Baymarrwana and Bentley James Yan-nhangu atlas and illustrated dictionary of the Crocodile Islands REF 499.15 BAY

Janet Robert Billett

The Yachties: Australian volunteers in the Royal Navy 1940–45 940.545941 BIL

Alexander R Brash and Robert W Armstrong

A whaler at twilight: A true account of whaling and redemption in the South Pacific 639.28 BRA

David W Cameron

25 April 1915: the day the Anzac legend was born 940.426 CAM

Laura Chaillie

The conservator’s cookbook: Solution preparation for the heritage professional 702.88 CHA

Anthony Delano

The tinpot navy: The extraordinary exploits and unsung heroes of Australia’s fledgling navy during the Great War 387.50994 DEL

Leon Fink

Sweatshops at sea: merchant seamen in the world’s first globalized industry, from 1812 to the present 387.5 FIN

Gay’Wu Group of Women

Song spirals: sharing women’s wisdom of country through songlines 305.89915 SON

Edmund Goldrick

Anzac Guerrillas: a World War II story of resistance, hope and humanity in occupied Europe 940.5472 GOL

David Grann

The wager: a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder 910.45092 GRA

Sturla Henriksen (trans Diane Oatley)

The ocean: How it has formed our world – and will shape our destiny 551.46 HEN

Graham S Holton (ed)

DNA: a guide for family historians revised edition 929.1072 HOL

George F Hourani

Arab seafaring in the Indian Ocean in ancient and early medieval times 387.509 HOU

Rohan Howitt

The southern frontier: Australia, Antarctica and empire in the Southern Ocean world 919.89 HOW

Bentley James, Dany Adone and Elaine Läwurrpa Maypilama

The illustrated handbook of Yolŋu sign language of North East Arnhem land REF 419.1099423 ILL

Marcia Langton

Welcome to Country: A travel guide to Indigenous Australia 305.89915 LAN

Tom Lewis

The secret submarine: A forgotten battle off Australia’s shores 940.5421 LEW

Jade Lillie and Kate Larsen

The relationship is the project: A guide to working with communities 307.760994 REL

Rebecca Linton

Crossing the bar: a history of Harrington: gateway to the Manning Valley 994.42 LIN

David Saunders

Museum lighting: A guide for conservators and curators 069.3 SAU

Max Shean

Corvette and submarine 940.5459 SHE

Mark Tedeschi

Eugenia: A true story of adversity, tragedy, crime and courage 364.1523 TED

Movement is Convenient: Japan’s maritime history in postcards is on display in the Vaughan Evans Library until 20 December 2025. See article on page 74. Image Jasmine Poole/ANMM

A modest titan of Australian yachting

Vale Hugh Treharne OAM (27 March 1943–24 June 2025)

AT THE APEX of the fist-pumping, champagne-spraying macho world of international sailing, Hugh Treharne’s modest life at the helm of many famous yachts was distinguished not by braggadocio but simply by being one of the very best racing sailors that this country has ever produced. A champion helmsman in many classes, Hugh maintained his quiet humility and dignity and simply allowed his stellar career to speak with eloquence for itself. When, after a long illness, he died on 24 June, aged 82, Hugh left Australian sailing with an unprecedented catalogue of personal achievements as a world-famous yachtsman. He was a gifted designer, a master sailmaker, a talented boat builder and – perhaps most importantly – a decent, honest, self-effacing, selfmade man whose sober, almost shy life at the pinnacle of his sport stood in inverse proportion to his astonishing achievements in international regattas.

He was in Australia’s victorious Admiral’s Cup-winning team in 1979 as the helmsman of Impetuous; the Fastnet Race in 1971 aboard Ragamuffin; the World One Ton Cup in 1971 aboard Stormy Petrel; the World Half Ton Cup in 1975; and he was the World 18-Foot Skiff Champion in 1970. He also contributed to Australia’s win in the 1979 Admiral’s Cup. Hugh was a 30-time competitor in the Sydney–Hobart Race, in which he sailed as tactician aboard many of Australia’s top yachts, including Ragamuffin, the overall winner in 1992, followed by another overall win in 1993 aboard the 40-footer Cuckoo’s Nest.

But it was his critically important role as tactician aboard the winged-keel Australia II in the historic America’s Cup campaign of 1983 with which Hugh will be forever associated. With the best-of-seven Cup series tied at an unprecedented 3–3, Australia II ’s crew were under tremendous pressure to win the final, deciding race.

More than 1,500 spectator boats crowded the 24½-mile Cup course for the historic final showdown. When, at the start, Dennis Conner’s Cup defender Liberty crossed ahead of Australia II, the match race looked to be all over bar the shouting. The wily Conner even extended what looked like an unassailable lead. But then, when all hope seemed lost for the Australians, something quite extraordinary happened. Hugh Treharne had an ace up his sleeve.

In the light and shifting breeze on Rhode Island Sound, Liberty was slowly running square toward the final leeward rounding mark, trying desperately to protect her lead under a large and unwieldy red, white and blue spinnaker. And here, Hugh’s bold tactical throwof-the-dice paid off. Although Australia II was way off to the right and well into the chop and joggle from the spectator fleet, Hugh had correctly foreseen greater pressure building in the breeze out there in No Man’s Land. Australia II flew one of Hugh’s own green-andgold spinnakers, small but beautifully cut, and steadily closed the gap until at last Australia II passed a whisker ahead of Liberty to round the fifth and final mark a mere 21 seconds in front. The Australian boat went on to win the race by 41 seconds. For the first time in its 132 years, the America’s Cup had been won by a foreign challenger. While his fellow crewmen leapt about in jubilation, Hugh sat in the cockpit, quietly contemplating his role in making sporting history.

Hugh was a 30-time competitor in the Sydney–Hobart Race, in which he sailed as tactician aboard many of Australia’s top yachts

Hugh Treharne at the helm of Quarter Ton Cup world title contender Seaply (later Seaflyer), on Pittwater, Sydney, in 1979. Photographer unknown, ANMM Collection ANMS0155[139]

02

Hugh Treharne at the family business Blue Peter Sails in the Sydney suburb of Cremorne, late 1970s. Image courtesy Treharne family

Hugh Treharne was born in Forbes, New South Wales, the youngest of three brothers. His father, David, was a highly skilled engineer who, throughout World War II, was employed in vital ship-repair work at Sydney’s humming naval dockyard at Garden Island. In 1945, David took a position as the hands-on proprietor of the Manly Boatshed in the Sydney suburb of Fairlight. The family made their home above the boatshed, and there two-year-old Hugh plunged straight into salt water for the first time – and very nearly drowned. At the age of six he built his first boat, a little timber dinghy upon which he rigged sails fashioned from his mother’s linen tea towels. Hugh and his brothers spent their idyllic childhood years exploring the harbour’s coves, bays, tides and winds until they knew them like the back of their hands.

Throughout his long life, Hugh Treharne nurtured a great respect for the power of wind and water. He was the kind of quintessential quiet achiever that so many older Australians greatly admire. His great sailing rival Dennis Conner called him ‘a good guy’.

Hugh is survived by his wife, Jeanine, and their children, Robbie, Annaliese and Samuel.

Bruce Stannard AM

Dreaming under the stars

Tunku & Ngaadi illuminates Vivid 2025

THE MUSEUM’S ROOF once again came alive during the Vivid festival to celebrate a Dreaming story from the south coast of New South Wales. The projection showcases the museum’s ongoing commitment to excellence in First Nations storytelling and aligns with the National Cultural Policy principles that First Nations arts and culture are led by First Nations. This year the museum’s contribution to Vivid wasn’t just a visual spectacle; it was a testament to the enduring strength of culture, creativity and connection.

Tunku & Ngaadi relates the eternal connection between the moon and Earth. It is told and illustrated by Walbunja and Ngarigo artist Cheryl Davison, embodying powerful themes of creation, loss and renewal.

Given powers of creation, Ngaadi thrives, while Tunku is overwhelmed. Refusing to finish his work, he is banished to the moon by the Creator, Mirriyal. Ngaadi is heartbroken. Her tears become rivers and oceans, and her shattered heart forms the waratah flower. Though forever separated from Ngaadi, Tunku’s moonlight guides Earth’s rhythms of life. Davison’s rich illustrations bring this story to life with vibrant colours and detailed depictions of the natural world.

Davison’s connection to her culture runs deep. Raised among Yuin elders, she grew up immersed in story and song. In 2018, she founded the Djinama Yilaga Choir to revive Dhurga – the language of her ancestors – through music. This choir both composed and performed the evocative soundtrack for Tunku & Ngaadi, adding a moving layer of harmony to the projection.

Tunku & Ngaad i projected on the museum’s rooftop during Vivid 2025. Image Smith Media

Studio Gilay, a First Nations-led production company known for their innovative approach to storytelling, played a crucial role in bringing Davison’s work to life. They ensured the projection was both visually stunning and culturally respectful.

To celebrate Tunku & Ngaadi, the museum hosted Sea Gathering – a free evening of light, song and storytelling filled with live performances from Djinama Yilaga, interactive activities and delicious food for the whole family.

The Sea Gathering family event enticed visitors to view the immersive animation, sound and storytelling from the museum’s newly refurbished boardwalk. More than 100,000 visitors experienced the magic of the Tunku & Ngaadi projection on the museum’s rooftop during Vivid.

It’s not too late to see the projection for yourself – visit the museum’s free Bamal Gallery daily during opening hours to enjoy a screening.

Nanette Louchart-Fletcher, Assistant Director Visitor Engagement & Learning

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

Peter Dexter AM

Daniel Janes

David Mathlin

Honorary Research Associates

RADM Peter Briggs AO RAN

John Dikkenberg

Dr Nigel Erskine

Dr Ian MacLeod

Jeffrey Mellefont

David Payne

Lindsey Shaw

Major Benefactors

Margaret Cusack

Basil Jenkins

Dr Keith Jones

Janette Parkinson

RADM Andrew Robertson AO DSC RAN

Peter Whitsed

Geoff and Beryl Winter

Honorary Life Members

Yvonne Abadee

Dr Kathy Abbass

Bob Allan

VADM Tim Barrett AO CSC RAN

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 RAN

Marion Carter

Victor Chiang

Robert Clifford AO

Hon Peter Collins AM QC

Kay Cottee AO

VADM Russell Crane AO CSM RAN

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 RAN

Anthony Gibbs

RADM Stephen Gilmore AM CSC RAN

Paul Gorrick

Lee Graham

VADM Mark Hammond AO RAN

RADM Simon Harrington AM RAN

Jane Harris

Christopher Harry

Gaye Hart AM

Janita Hercus

Robyn Holt

William Hopkins OAM

Julia Horne

Kieran Hosty

Marilyn Jenner

VADM Peter Jones AO DSC RAN

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 RAN

Bruce McDonald AM

Lyn McHale

VADM Jonathan Mead AO RAN

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

Dr Sergio Sergi

Ann Sherry AO

Ken Sherwell

Shane Simpson AM

Peter John Sinclair AM CSC

RADM Peter R Sinclair AC KStJ RAN

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

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

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

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Staff photographer Jasmine Poole

Design & production Austen Kaupe

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Australian National Maritime Museum

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

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ANMM Council

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Ms Daryl Karp AM

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Australian National Maritime Museum

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Mr John Barbouttis

Mr Simon Chan AM

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What’s in the shop?

For spring, we’ve got gear for excursions ashore and at sea, as well as interesting new books for relaxing days at home. Plus there’s plenty in store and online.

Museum baseball cap

Take home a reminder of your visit with this baseball cap. One size (adult, adjustable), 100% cotton, natural or black with embroidered logo.

$49.95 / Members $44.95

Museum enamel mug

Our gorgeous, durable enamel mugs will stand up to the toughest conditions on land or at sea! Available in orange, aqua, navy, purple and white. $14.95 / Members $13.45

Fishing multi-tool

Includes marlin spike, shackle key, screwdriver, fish scaler, hook remover, bottle and can opener, and knife. With one of these in your car, boat or picnic basket, you’ll be ready for almost anything. $45 / Members $40.50

Books

Dozens of titles to inform, delight and inspire readers of all ages! See our website for the full range.

Members receive 10% discount

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