Signals, Issue 100

Signals

September October November 2012

Number

100

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September to November 2012 Number 100

Contents

Signals 4

3 Bearings From the director Kevin Sumption

4 Nawi – exploring Indigenous watercraft The museum’s ground-breaking national conference drew together communities and scholars

12 Boorun’s canoe Collaborative arts project revives Gippsland canoe-making

18 Seeing the land from an Aboriginal canoe Indigenous watercraft carried explorers and settlers

22 Barquentine Buster, an archaeologist’s dream NSW shipwreck uncovered by winter storms

24 The glamour of a naval visit Cover: Jamal Daniel from the Tribal Warrior Association at the opening event of our national conference ‘Nawi – exploring Australia’s Indigenous watercraft’, when canoes representing communities from many parts of Australia were launched from the museum into Tumbalong (Cockle Bay). They were returning for the first time in over a century and a half to the harbour, where they were once a common sight with their hearth fires lit. This tied-bark nawi was made during a workshop run by the museum’s David Payne in May this year, with the Tribal Warrior Association Youth Mentor Program and National Parks and Wildlife Service, at Blackwattle Bay. Photographer Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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Signals magazine is printed in Australia on Impress Satin 250 gsm (Cover) and 128 gsm (Text) using vegetable-based inks on paper produced from environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable forestry sources.

30 Seaworthy and Seachange Wharf 7 foyer’s spectacular new exhibition unveiled

35 Members message and events 40 Spring exhibitions and attractions 42 A boat called Freedom Vietnamese refugee boat Tu Do has been researched, restored and reinterpreted

50 Polly Woodside survives and thrives Melbourne’s famous barquentine reberthed

56 Tales from the Welcome Wall

Comments or questions about Signals content?

Call the editor on 02 9298 3647 or email signals@anmm.gov.au Signals is online Search all issues from No 1, October 1986, to the present at www.anmm.gov.au/signals

A Depression-era parade of high fashion unearthed from the museum’s Sam Hood Studio Collection

Charmed life of a £10 Pom

58 Australian Register of Historic Vessels New additions to this important national database

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62 Collections – Hands on heirlooms Higham shipwright tools collection

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64 Readings The last crusade; P&O 175th anniversary cruise history

68 Viewings Maritime art exhibitions around town

70 Currents Cert no. SGS-COC-006189

Transit of Venus; Halvorsen milestone

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Bearings

from the director Kevin Sumption

Personal histories among the facts and figures The Museu Maritim de Barcelona is located just off Las Ramblas in the historic port district. It tells the rich story of Barcelona’s emergence as a maritime power in the Mediterranean, from the time of its union with the Kingdom of Aragon in the 12th century. This is no ordinary museum. It is housed in the royal shipyards, the Reials Drassanes, whose origins date from the 14th century.

Within these giant Gothic naves, which originally served as the winter home to the galera – the fleet galleys, some over 50 metres long – the museum is designing a suite of new exhibitions.

Visiting in June this year, I was struck by the number of visitors from all over the world, tightly packed into the four galleries that currently remain open in the midst of a major redevelopment.

Enric García Domingo, who as head of collections and research is overseeing the museum’s exhibition plans, showed me over the building site.

While our respective masterpieces of museum buildings may be separated by centuries of architectural history, Sydney and Barcelona share a common challenge.

Both our maritime museums lie at the heart of major tourist precincts, which in coming years are predicted to experience significant growth, particularly in international tourists. In Barcelona these numbers are driven by a phenomenal cruise ship industry. In one day alone, in August 2011, a staggering 31,000 international cruise ship passengers disembarked at the main terminal.

In Sydney our cruise ship numbers are more modest. Last year, however, airlines carried over three million international tourists to Sydney, over half of whom visted Darling Harbour, home of the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Australia’s state and national education frameworks ensure that most local visitors have some awareness of key characters and moments in our national maritime story, but not surprisingly this is not the case for our international visitors. Their multitude of educational backgrounds make it difficult to ascertain

what awareness, if any, they have of Australian history. This is a challenge that curators both in Barcelona and here in Sydney are well aware of, and Enric García and I discussed at length the possibilities of creating universally accessible maritime exhibitions.

What we observed is that visitors to maritime museums often share a common set of emotional responses to the sea and its history. And while historical facts and figures will always remain important, there was a necessity to design exhibitions that connect not just intellectually, but also emotionally with visitors. One way to do this, we agreed, was to carefully incorporate travel journals, diaries, newspaper interviews and family photographs into new exhibitions. These, the most personal of accounts, allowed curators to directly connect today’s visitors with real people and events from our past. It is often in these very personal accounts that we also find strong, human stories centred on moments of conflict, greed, loss, love, pride and exhilaration.

So it is here, in the search for and display of the most personal of historical accounts, that we agreed we needed to focus our exhibitions. If successful, then we both believed our museums would be able to better connect with all visitors, regardless of their familiarity with Catalan or Australian history. 

top to bottom The Barcelona maritime museum’s magnificent replica Lepanto galley wrapped in plastic during redevelopment of its centuries-old Gothic naves.

Photographer K Sumption/ANMM Cruise ships crowd Barcelona’s port where – as at Darling Harbour – a maritime museum can lend cultural and historical context to a visitor’s experience.

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Nawi

exploring Australia’s Indigenous watercraft Worimi man Steve Brereton using palm-leaf paddles to propel his mid-north-coast gathang tied-bark canoe. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM

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During National Reconciliation Week in May 2012, the Australian National Maritime Museum hosted the first-ever national conference on the subject of Indigenous watercraft. This report by curators Daina Fletcher and Stephen Gapps, staff members on the conference steering committee, outlines the origins and scope of this important museum initiative, and what was achieved.

The name Nawi was adopted for our conference title from the Sydney Aboriginal word, recorded by early colonists, that was used to describe all manner of watercraft (including European ones). The conference must rank as one of the most successful and important events undertaken by the museum.

It brought together Indigenous elders and community workers, scholars, archaeologists and museum professionals to share knowledge and skills and the excitement of defining an important new area of national understanding.

Three days at the end of May were jam-packed with ideas, histories and futures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander canoes and rafts, revealing the growing strength of canoe cultures today and their significance in sustaining and revitalising communities. There were presentations about canoe building, cultural wellbeing and programs with

caring for country at their centre. There were connected histories of trade and transfer, inter-island travel, Indigenous guides helping explorers and settlers on the rivers, and European recognition of the importance of canoes to Indigenous culture in the colonial era. Practical demonstrations about working with bark, twine and resin, and how to fashion traditional tools, were also highlights.

The conference was conceived when curatorial staff, working to include bark canoes from a number of collections onto the museum’s Australian Register of Historic Vessels, found there was very little existing, specific scholarship on Indigenous watercraft. The history and traditions of the first Australian mariners and their watercraft were generally overlooked in the broader story of Australian maritime heritage. We also discovered that many Indigenous canoes held in museum collections were little

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left: A kalwa raft depicted in a temporary exhibition on ways of seeing watercraft – through Indigenous art, historical photography and empirical drawings – that was shown during the conference.

This photo is from a 1929 album Journey to the Buccaneer Archipelago produced by the Australian Iron and Steel Company during a mining survey in Yampi Sound, off the Kimberley coastline of Western Australia, in the lands of the traditional owners, the Dambimangari people.

ANMM Collection right: Launching one of the canoes that reclaimed the waters of Sydney Harbour for the conference opening ceremony.

Photographer J Mellefont/ANMM far right: Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner (Uncle Moogy) paddles his yuki, a single-sheet bark canoe of the lower Murray River style.

Photographer A Frolows/ANMM

understood or were under-documented.

Questions arose, too, such as whether canoes commissioned from communities in the late 20th century should be considered as artefacts or replicas.

Such questions hinted at the complexities of this area of study.

It quickly became apparent that this research project was about much more than canoes and rafts as artefacts to study.

We were becoming increasingly aware of a growing number of coastal and riverbased Indigenous communities around Australia that had begun looking at their canoe- and raft-making traditions and their social and spiritual dimensions.

These communities were exploring the knowledge of elders and re-examining historical sources, working to revive canoe-making skills and to pass on canoemaking knowledge.

The timing was right to plan a conference that would be a confluence of all these projects, to bring together canoe builders, scholars, historians, museums and community members to publicise canoe projects and to share knowledge.

The conference, we hoped, would review the historical evidence. It would highlight the diversity of watercraft, their science and industries, their strong relationship to their communities, lands and waterways – the way that each is perfectly adapted to its environment. It would explore histories of seagoing and inter-island travel, in part to inform current practice.

The conference aims immediately broadened from a simple recovery of community and historical knowledge, to promoting the importance of sharing knowledge across disciplines, across communities, across generations and across cultures. It would highlight the special significance today of canoe making in sustaining communities.

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Designer and arts administrator Alison Page, CEO of the leading cultural organisation Saltwater Freshwater Arts Alliance from the mid-north coast of NSW, accepted our invitation to be patron of the event. Alison became a lyrical advocate for recognising the strength that canoes bestowed on Indigenous cultures, both historically as technological developments that enabled Indigenous people to travel longer distances, feed more people and make more connections, and today where they can do much the same by strengthening cultural identity.

Alison asserted that watercraft ‘connect us to our ancestry, they connect us to each other, they connect black and white.

They make us stronger, they give us pride and they provide us with spiritual nourishment…’

Planning the conference became a catalyst for this dialogue. Our curator of the Australian Register of Historic Vessels, David Payne, played an important role at workshops in South Australia and New South Wales where knowledge was shared, re-learned and tested by building both full-sized canoes and smaller scale models. Some of these were funded by our MMAPSS grant scheme; two were reported in Signals No 99 June 2012, pp 12–17.

A steering committee of museum experts and Indigenous community members was assembled, and we sought the advice of senior Aboriginal figures to guide the conference. They included senior Yanyuwa man John Moriarty am, chairman of the long-established Jumbana Group, an Australian Indigenous strategy, art and communications consulting company. Invitations were issued to elders and makers of canoes, rafts and tools from around Australia. Joining academics and museum researchers from

around the country, communities from Maningrida to Flinders Island agreed to come along to share their knowledge.

The museum’s head education officer, Jeff Fletcher, worked with Aboriginal educators and regional officers in NSW and other states, to identify schools and individual teachers to participate in education workshops associated with the conference, and in performances, speeches, art and design projects.

The theme explored was ‘youth connecting with culture and canoe-based traditions’. This was to become a vital dimension to the Nawi project as Indigenous school students made models of types of canoes and rafts from around Australia, and wrote stories and speeches about their cultural traditions. Much of this was displayed at the conference, or delivered as performances.

Articulating the conference’s aims and revealing the strengths of this consultative process, the call for papers brought forward a wonderful range of collaborative community canoe, art and multimedia projects, as well as historians, archaeologists and computer science researchers. Together they revealed fresh perspectives on traditional bodies of knowledge, and built a dynamic picture of watercraft construction and research around the country, from Arnhem Land in the west to the Sunshine Coast in the east, and from Torres Strait in the north to Tasmania in the south.

The welcoming event, ‘Canoes on the harbour’, was held just after dark on Wednesday 30 May to launch the conference. It was the most visually and emotionally stunning representation of all of the strengths of this conference, carefully put together to emphasise collaboration, reconciliation and learning on a national scale.

Watercraft connect us to our ancestry, they connect us to each other, they connect black and white.

They make us stronger, they give us pride and they provide us with spiritual nourishment.

Alison Page

This event featured a diverse flotilla of canoes from different Australian traditions carrying fire on the dark waters of Sydney Harbour… once again, after a long, long absence. It was an important moment, and more than just a wonderful beginning to the conference. As those canoes glided through the still harbour waters at night, the canoeists silently and powerfully reclaimed a presence that had long-since disappeared.

It evoked what the Gadigal and Wangal people who lived around Tumbalong (Darling Harbour) had done for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. The early colonists remarked how Sydney Harbour was dotted with the lights of fires aboard canoes, carefully placed on rocks, clay or seaweed hearths. As Watkin Tench observed in 1788, ‘a canoe is seldom seen without a fire in it, to dress the fish by as soon as caught’. And as historian Keith

Vincent Smith was to remind us during the conference, bark canoes were still used occasionally on Sydney Harbour into the mid-19th century.

For our opening ceremony, National Parks and Wildlife Officer and Yuin man Dean Kelly from La Perouse, and his daughter Akira Kelly, led the Welcome to Country, lighting the fire that was to be placed on board the canoes and bringing it to the crowded performance platform on the museum’s waterfront. Dean led a procession of canoeists of different traditions and the Gubbi Gubbi musicians and performers from the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland, who performed their yuar warrai song and dance.

Over the preceding weeks and months, several communities had been busy building canoes for this event, or had brought them long distances to Sydney.

The first canoe to take a small fire on board and be launched into the basin in Darling Harbour was Ngarrindjeri elder Uncle Moogy’s yuki – a single-sheet bark canoe of the lower Murray River style, from Goolwa in South Australia. Uncle Moogy poled his canoe along with a fishing spear. He was followed by Worimi man Steve Brereton using palm-leaf paddles to propel his mid-north-coast gathang tied-bark canoe. Each canoe was from a different region, highlighting the diversity and specialisation of watercraft to their local environment. Steve Russell paddled his south-coast, tied-bark canoe.

Ezekiel Phillips and Jamal Daniel from the Tribal Warrior Association took to the water in their Sydney-style nawi; Ezekiel was paddling David Payne’s own experimental, three-metre long nawi that he had made eight months previously.

The first day of the conference was all about voyagers, art, stories, communities and the construction of all types of

Indigenous craft. Welcomes were delivered by ANMM director Kevin Sumption, conference patron Alison Page and the general manager (communications) of Reconciliation Australia, Karen Mundine. Some 180 conference delegates listened as contemporary artist Jonathan Jones opened the session ‘Voyagers, guides and artists’, speaking about how canoes and the interplay between fire, light and water have inspired his art practice. Fred Cahir from the University of Ballarat then revealed how often Aboriginal people had guided explorers and settlers across inland waterways in their watercraft.

His presentation appears in detail on the following pages. Sydney historian and curator Keith Vincent Smith introduced us to the recorded faces of historical Aboriginal figures such as Bungaree and Maroot, who were highly regarded by the early colonists for their remarkable skills as ‘saltwater boatmen’.

Morning tea in the adjacent Tasman Light gallery saw an illustrated talk alongside the museum’s Borroloola dugout canoe from the Northern Territory

by John Moriarty am, who grew up there and sailed and hunted dugong in similar canoes. The next session, ‘Sea stories and art from the north’, began with an inspiring talk by Samia Goudie, Jazzmin Bowen and Natalie Davey about saltwater stories and journeys in northern Queensland that are part of a program of community renewal. Samia brought greetings and an invitation from the Tomol people of North America who are themselves reviving canoe practices and sea voyaging on the Pacific coast. This session took us further across the north of Australia when Liam Brady and Daryl Wesley spoke about canoe rock paintings from Torres Strait and maritime rock art Signals 100 September to november 2012

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in the Wellington Ranges in Arnhem Land. Rebecca Bilous introduced the iconographic representation of Macassans, prahus and dugouts in Arnhem Land today.

The session ‘Canoe communities’ showcased a range of canoe-building projects happening at the moment.

Victorians Cameron Cope and Steaphan Paton presented their inter-generational and cross-cultural arts project Boorun’s canoe in which Gunai/Kurnai elder Uncle Albert Mullett made a canoe to pass his knowledge to his family. Their presentation is documented on the following pages. Rachael Piercy and Steve Brereton from Forster on the NSW midnorth coast discussed their gathang canoebuilding project, and then Steve Russell, Noel Lonesborough and Jim Walliss described NSW south-coast (Shoalhaven) canoe building and canoe trees, and wryly discussed the use of modern versus traditional tools.

Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner (Uncle Moogy) gave a wonderful talk about his Murray River yuki and his program called Ringbalin, which carries stories in his canoe to communities along the Darling and Murray Rivers. Gubbi Gubbi artist Lyndon Davis with James Muller and John Waldron ended the session with their Gubbi Gubbi Gun’doo Yang’ga’man canoe-making and culturebuilding project. This had begun with art installations at the Woodford and Floating Land festivals, and grew into a program recovering knowledge as the group embark on building a traditional canoe from south-eastern Queensland.

Conference delegates enjoyed the mix of academic, non-academic and practical, hands-on sessions. The first day finished with a very tactile canoe-making workshop that shared actual building skills and put tools and materials into delegates’ hands. Rex Greeno showed us how he had created a series of the remarkable Tasmanian rolled-bark canoes. Other canoe and tool makers in this session included Paul Carriage from Ulladulla Lands Council, NSW teacher James Dodd, Allan Murray and Uncle Wally Cooper from Burraja Aboriginal Centre in northern Victoria, and elder and dugout canoe maker Don Wilton from Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, at Maningrida in the Northern Territory.

At the conclusion David Payne led a canoe-building demonstration with Paul Carriage. Working together they made a two-metre-long, flat sheet of wet bark rise quickly off the table into a canoe shape as they worked through the 8

Signals 100 September to november 2012

Distribution of watercraft This map by ARHV curator David Payne was based on a concept used by others in the past, for example anthropologist Donald Thomson, to represent the known distribution of craft around the country. David has drawn scale versions from images of the exact type of craft found in each location, referencing the variations that exist within broad categories.

It should be seen as a work in progress, with recent research and information from the Nawi conference suggesting more craft to be added.

Dugouts – northern

Key to major watercraft types Rafts ­– north to west

Sewn-bark – northern and NE

Murray River bark

Double outriggers – Torres Strait

Single outriggers – Queensland

Tied-bark – south-eastern

Tasmanian rolled bark

left: The unique rolled-bark canoe of Tasmania, several of which have now been built by Sheldon Thomas. The drawing, by ARHV curator David Payne, is part of a project to develop national techniques and protocols for the systematic recording of Indigenous craft, whose irregular shapes do not well suit the standard drafting techniques of lifting lines from a symmetrical hull.

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clockwise from top left: Senior curator Daina Fletcher, leader of the museum’s steering committee, with John Moriarty am, chairman of the Jumbana Group.

Photographer J Mellefont/ANMM National Parks and Wildlife Officer Dean Kelly from La Perouse, and his daughter Akira Kelly, lighting the Welcome to Country fire that was placed on the canoes. Around him are canoeists of different traditions and the Gubbi Gubbi musicians and performers. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Schoolchildren from Alexandria Park Community School in South Sydney participate in a canoemaking art workshop devised by the museum’s education specialists and overseen at the school

by ANMM staff David Payne (centre) and Judithe Hall. The finished artworks were displayed at the Nawi conference. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner speaks about the Murray River yuki. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM

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The first day finished with a very tactile canoe-making workshop that shared actual building skills and put tools and materials into delegates’ hands

deceptively complex folding pattern, and the use of pegs and bark ties, that form the ends of a nawi.

Day two of the conference reviewed watercraft design, their historical distribution, issues arising from museum collections and new ways of recording and interpreting them. In the session ‘Mapping and modelling’, delegates watched with amazement as Ian McNiven, Thomas Chandler and Michael Lim from Monash University built up their extraordinary 3D computer model of a Torres Strait outrigger canoe moving on the sea. ANMM’s David Payne took us through the amazing variation and distribution of watercraft design across the country. Stan Florek from the Australian Museum discussed questions of historical chronology – how many thousands of years had Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples been using watercraft?

The second session, ‘Islands, reefs and outriggers’, had archaeologists Bryce Barker and Mike J Rowland speaking about open-seas trade and transfer on the Great Barrier Reef. Theresa ChelepyRoberts, a Darumbal senior curator from the Queensland Museum, presented an overview of the museum’s communityengagement project of constructing a traditional walba raft from the Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Session three, ‘Canoe collections’, was a lively dialogue between museum representatives from across Australia highlighting the watercraft in their collections and discussing issues of provenance, documentation and interpretation. This discussion picked up one of the questions that inspired the conference – whether watercraft commissioned by museums in the late20th century, long after they had ceased

to be part of a community’s daily tool-kit, should be classified as replicas or genuine artefacts? The consensus was that these craft represent the contemporary cultural traditions of the canoe makers’ communities – including the impulse to preserve such skills – and as such should be considered artefacts, ensuring their retention in collections and the proper recognition of their makers.

The following session, ‘Revisiting the evidence’, included papers by Kim Akerman of the University of Western Australia about watercraft from the Kimberley region, and Keryn Walshe from the South Australian Museum on scar trees in the Fleurieu Peninsula, where there is supposed to be an historical absence of canoes. Tom Gara from the South Australian Crown Solicitors Office discussed the extensive use of canoes in the lower Murray River region that continued well into the 19th century, and the government supply of Europeanstyle canoes to Indigenous Murray River communities as economic aid.

The inspiring and thought-provoking final conference session – ‘Canoe futures’ – was introduced by Shar Goodwin of the Saltwater Freshwater Arts Alliance. Fred Kelly spoke about the northern NSW Dunghutti community’s canoe-based cultural revival project targeting at-risk young Aboriginal males. Producing a traditional canoe and modern ones in wood and tin gave them working skills, as well as handing down and connecting them with cultural traditions.

Adding to the voices of elders from various communities were, importantly, those of young Indigenous people. One of many conference highlights was Year 11 student Georgette Rose of Blackwattle Bay Sydney Secondary College, whose closing address ‘Connecting to culture for the future’ won rousing applause.

The conference ended with lively discussion about the future, and agreement that there was much more to do and say. Our conference had, as a first step, brought together scholars, professionals and canoe makers, to meet and share the knowledge of watercraft projects that their communities around the country were undertaking. After two days of powerful talks, practical demonstrations, interesting historical overviews and exciting presentations, Nawi was hailed as a ground-breaking event and a huge success. It is not often that people walk away from a museum conference buzzing with excitement and demanding that it be held every year!

Among the delegates' suggestions was

an ongoing, moveable program in tandem with existing Indigenous and maritime festivals around Australia. Some suggested canoes circumnavigating the continent, from the rivers seawards.

There were calls to internationalise the program by building connections across the seas, imagining a flotilla of Indigenous craft from places around the globe!

The Australian National Maritime Museum has committed to publishing the knowledge arising from the conference, first on the website and expanding into a broader publication on Indigenous watercraft. We see a critical outcome in keeping this newly linked-up, national community of interest talking and sharing research, information and canoe developments. Consequently we have undertaken to expand the web forum to maintain these developing ‘canoe connections’.

As Worimi canoe-builder Steve Brereton of Forster offered, and we take up on behalf of everyone: Yii guuyan wuba banya, wuba Gathangguba barray. Nyiirun wuba yii guuyang, nyiirunba Gathang girrang birriwal This is a canoe made from bark, made on Gathang Country. We have made this canoe; our culture is live and strong. 

Please go to www.anmm.gov.au/nawi and watch the site for more developments in promoting this new national understanding of Australia’s unique and diverse Indigenous watercraft, and their historical and continuing importance to communities.

Nawi – exploring Australia’s Indigenous watercraft 30 May–1 June 2012 was presented in association with Reconciliation Australia, supported by National Film and Sound Archive, as part of National Reconciliation Week in May 2012.

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Nawi Boorun’s canoe

‘Boorun’s canoe’ is a collaborative arts project reviving the traditional practice of bark-canoe making in Gippsland, Victoria.

Aboriginal artist Steaphan Paton and photographic artist Cameron Cope based the project around the transfer of traditional knowledge from elders to young men.

This article is a transcript of their session at the Nawi conference in May, when they spoke and screened a video and photographic presentation.

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Boorun the Pelican, our Gunai ancestor, came to Gippsland carrying a bark canoe on his head. Canoes are part of our story of who we are and where we come from.

I want to respect my ancestors by continuing the tradition of canoe making and safeguard it for future generations

As an Australian of European descent, and a photographic artist, this project was about making a connection with Gunai/Kurnai Aboriginal culture, and then sharing that story with the public in a responsible and visually interesting way.

Aboriginal artist Steaphan Paton

Photographic artist Cam Cope

Steaphan Paton afloat on the canoe that is an essential part of his people’s traditions, their creation story. Photography by Cam Cope

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Senior Gunai/Kurnai elder Uncle Albert Mullett, a master craftsman, taught his grandson Steaphan Paton and other young men in the family to build a bark canoe, with knowledge that was passed on to him from his uncles and elders.

It follows a tradition that has been practised for many thousands of years

by Gunai/Kurnai people. In a close collaboration with Uncle Albert and the extended Mullett family, Cam Cope has produced a series of powerful images that capture vital elements of cultural pride, intergenerational knowledge and the canoe-making process.

Steaphan and Cameron won a City of Melbourne arts grant to fund the project and their work has since been acquired by the Melbourne Museum for its permanent collection. The project has become the major NAIDOC exhibition in Bunjilaka, the Melbourne Museum’s Aboriginal Cultural Centre, July–November 2012.

Steaphan Paton: Welcome everyone, I’m a Gunai Monaro Ngarigo man from Victoria. I want to pay my respects to the Eora people, the traditional owners of this country we are meeting on today.

And all the elders who have travelled here today, and the Aboriginal community who are here today.

Where I’m from, Boorun is the pelican, so he is integral to our story of who we are, and where we come from. Boorun travelled down into Gippsland, down across the mountains to Gippsland Lakes.

He was carrying a canoe on his head and the whole time he was travelling he heard this tapping on the top of the canoe.

He couldn’t figure it out until he got to Port Albert and put the canoe in the water, and out came a Musk Duck which was a beautiful woman, and they became mother and father of all Gunai people.

That’s our story of where we come from.

With this project we wanted to bring the idea of that intergenerational knowledge and pass it on. It was passed on to Uncle Albert Mullett, my Pop, who can’t actually be here with us today.

He sends his greetings. That knowledge was passed on to him by his elders in the traditional way, not from a book or an archaeologist. It’s from a traditional owner, the person who has this knowledge. That’s what this project is about. This is about teaching young boys the knowledge that they should know. Now I’ll introduce you to Cameron, he was my collaborator in this project.

Cam Cope: Thanks Steve, and before I say anything I’d also like to acknowledge the Gadigal people and the Eora Nation, 14

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There's not many people in the State who have the knowledge, it’s very important to pass it on and these things have to be passed on to the younger generations.

Senior Gunai/Kurnai elder Uncle Albert Mullett

and any elders who are present, and thanks to everyone for coming as well.

What a gathering, with all the ideas, and stories coming together, it’s pretty cool.

My name’s Cam Cope, and I’m from Gippsland. Steve and I actually went to school together. I’m a European Australian and the reason I got involved in this project is that, growing up in the country, I always felt there was a bit of a lack of connection in the community between European Australians and Indigenous Australians. I was always curious about the history of the region and about Aboriginal culture. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the absence of acknowledgement of Aboriginal presence and place in Gippsland.

To get some idea of the colonial history of our region, it took me as a young adult to go to university and enrol in a unit of Australian Aboriginal history. It was a great course, run by Bain Attwood at Monash University, and very eye opening, but it didn’t bring me any closer to finding out who the traditional owners of Gippsland are. So, for me as a European Australian, this project was about connecting with Aboriginal culture, respect and getting involved. The process has been enriching and allowed me to feel more comfortable with my own identity, in the way that I live together with Indigenous people in Australia, with people I respect.

We’re going to show you a bunch of photographs that I’ve taken with Steve and his family, while they made a traditional canoe, and we’re also going to show a short video. Unlike the other presentations there are no maps from us today, but Gippsland is the southeasternmost region of mainland Australia.

There are lots of mountains and rivers and lakes, so canoes are an important feature of Indigenous culture.

Uncle Albert (speaking from the video): Cherry Tree track is a very significant area. Old fellows camping here and spearing fish and hunting ducks. About five months ago, me and my eight grandsons went out and picked a tree to make the bark canoe. Today is a special occasion for us, for me and my grandsons, we’re launching a stringy bark canoe.

We’ll pour the water in, and see if it’s going to leak. If it’s going to leak… we’ll just plug it as it goes.

I went to school for six months of my life, and I said, ‘Nuh’, I need to go and learn from my own people. I need to know things that are important to me as an Aboriginal boy, as a young Aboriginal man. I wanted to know about Lake Tyers, I wanted that knowledge and I paid respect at all times to those elders. I spent a lot of time around the fire learning.

It’s so important that I teach my grandsons, so that when my time is up and I’ve gone, and my great grandsons, they will carry that on. That’s through our Mullett family. Young Gunai men are learning, and they will be able to teach that in their time, when they get to be older men. So it’s very important in my family. I feel very proud of those grandsons of mine. It’s teaching them about respect, and about learning about their culture, and don’t be ashamed of it. Be proud of who they are, young Aboriginal men, and they have a duty over time, to carry on what I’m doing now, so the story’s never going to end.

I think stories of Boorun come from the west, carrying his bark canoe on his shoulder, carrying down the great lake to Port Albert, and he could hear this tapping on the canoe, and when he put the canoe down, it was Musk Duck, so they are the creators of the Gunai people.

Steaphan Paton (speaking from the video): My Pop told us that this area, it’s a cultural place. It’s got stories attached to it. There’s so many rivers and lakes around here, that canoe is an essential part of our traditions and crafts, and things we should be paying our respect to, this culture and living it.

With Gunai people that canoe is a vital part of our creation story. One of the things that Pop always says to us is you can’t get this from a book, you have to get out there and do it, and it has to be taught by an elder who knows this stuff.

And that’s always been the way... working with Pop to actually make a bark canoe

previous pages 12–13: Traditionally the old fellas kept a fire in the boat for fishing at night.

Using bark-lit torches, they kept a small fire to relight torches or cook the fish. We do the same when we go spear fishing. The old fellas are definitely there watching us. above: Prying off and collecting the bark is the most intense stage of the process. It requires everybody to work together carefully. top right: Pop [Uncle Albert Mullett] makes sure that the bark is coming off the sapwood effectively. centre: Heating the bark sheet over a fire gives the material plasticity for folding it into shape. right: Pop gets involved with a hands-on demonstration of the finer details. Most of the time he just directs.

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This significant project shows the strength and pride in cultural knowledge being passed through the generations in southeastern Australia, along with the vital importance of maintaining and teaching culture within the community.

Caroline Martin, Bunjilaka, Melbourne Museum

top: Pop shows us trees that are right for spear sticks, like his elders showed him. left: This is the moment before the canoe first touches water. This is the first working bark canoe in the water in Gippsland for over 100 years.

I am confident it will float.

is reviving a tradition that was slowly getting lost. Having him come and share his knowledge is pretty special, I think.

That vessel is holding our past, the mother and father of all Gunai people.

It’s a vessel that’s going to carry us into the future as well, carry on these traditions and crafts and knowledge and things like that. Bringing it out here and actually using it in the water, the feeling that you get is kind of a deep respect, and better understanding for your country and for your elders who are teaching you this stuff. This is about family, and this is about knowledge, and passing that knowledge on. (Film ends) Steaphan Paton: I hope you enjoyed that.

Now we’ll go through some of the pictures that Cameron took in the actual building of the canoe, and talk about some of the process and stories that came out of that.

Maybe I’ll just say, there’s a lot of people talking about breathing life back into community and culture, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to awaken and instil into people some sort of spirit, and culture. I hope for my brothers and cousins, that they take that knowledge on and use it. Pop was talking about respect and instilling respect into them. I hope that that helps them in their general life, and being a young Aboriginal person.

When we built the canoe, it took over a year to make. Well, it took about a weekend to actually build it, but we had to wait until we had everyone around to go and float it and get everything ready.

Because in the middle of our project, Melbourne Museum came along and wanted to help out and make this film.

So all of that threw a spanner in the works for our timelines, but that’s great.

We floated it earlier this year in January, but we actually built it the previous year in spring.

Cam Cope: I might just add, I first came to this project from a bit of a naïve perspective. I spoke to Steve about the possibility of doing a project like this.

I wanted to connect with Indigenous culture in my own region, and when we talked about making a canoe, my initial reaction was to document the process; I guess to have a white man’s way to look at it. But the more we spoke about it, the more the focus was on the process, which is a powerful part of [Indigenous] identity, and cultural pride. This was also privileged information passed down between people, and as such we decided it was not appropriate to just take that knowledge and present it as a ‘how to’

or guide. So with these photographs I’ve more focused on the people, and the story and the pride of it, showing respect to who they are. I’m not trying to own what’s going on. I think the great thing about our project was we had an open and respectful dialogue that allowed us to find the right way to work together.

Steaphan Paton: On the day of making the canoe, Cam was really good at getting in among the action and getting up really close, and capturing what was happening.

So there are some really beautiful shots of people doing stuff, working together to tie up the ends of the canoe. We ended up getting the clay off the road to plug the ends, it was really good clay.

Cam Cope: That was one of several times I put the camera down and got involved.

And there’s probably a few photos that I missed because my hands are covered in sticky resin. But I managed...

Steaphan Paton: On the day we floated it, it became a family event. We had a BBQ, and Pop took us out into the bush and showed us how to make some spears.

As he was taught, at that same place – the Cherry Tree Track in Gippsland, which is just near Lake Tyers. For all the boys, everyone has done this stuff a little bit on their own, and everyone’s got a bit of a knack for working with wood. It goes throughout our family, we’re a family of artists. But to get that hands-on knowledge and guidance from an elder, to show you how to do this stuff… you’ll never forget that knowledge.

Cam Cope: We’d better say a couple of thanks. To the Gunai/Kurnai Land and Waters Corporation, the City of Melbourne who originally gave us the grant, the Melbourne Museum who helped us out a lot, the Bunjilaka Culture Centre who have acquired the canoe and gave us the licence to use the images, and the space for a four-month exhibition.

Bunjilaka is redeveloping their permanent display and this project will be part of that. We’re also hoping to get a book published by Museum Victoria. Thanks too to Parks Victoria, the Mullett family and the Australian National Maritime Museum for this conference. 

Transcription by ANMM volunteer Jill Saffron, of a presentation and video, Boorun’s canoe produced by Museum Victoria, at Nawi – Exploring Australia’s Indigenous watercraft conference held 30 May–1 June 2012

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Nawi Seeing the land from an Aboriginal canoe

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Slowly and peacefully he took us over the dead water of the little inlet we were in

Perhaps one of the most under-valued contributions Aboriginal people made in colonial times was guiding people and stock across the river systems of Australia.

Dr Fred Cahir of the University of Ballarat draws on archival records, mainly from south-eastern Australia, to demonstrate how Aboriginal canoes and ferrying expertise regularly aided explorers and settlers.

Detail from View on the upper Mitta Mitta, tinted lithograph after an oil painting by E Von Guerrard.

Published by C Trodel, Melbourne Album Office 1864. Reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Australia. NLA an8810990

Aboriginal trackers attract stellar attention in non-Indigenous literature, history books and more recently film, thanks in large part to Rolf de Heer’s The Tracker and Phil Noyce’s Rabbit Proof Fence. The tracker, without a doubt, is a fascinating figure in Australian cultural history. By comparison, the Aboriginal guide’s place in Australia’s wider consciousness has largely been sidelined. Yet perhaps one of the most under-valued contributions Aboriginal people made to the 19th-century colonial economy was the one of guiding explorers, miners, travellers, drovers and stock across the inland river systems of Australia using their canoes. This afforded them the most efficient and safest mode of river pilotage, particularly in remote areas where no other means of transportation was available.

In a sense, then, the tracker has gained a critical following that has been denied the Aboriginal guide and his canoe.

Yet as Henry Reynolds has pointed out in his seminal work Black Pioneers (Penguin, 2000), it was Aboriginal guides who smoothed the moments of colonial crisis, often articulating an economic limit to non-Indigenous occupation and a philosophical/spiritual understanding of the land.

Explorers and drovers utilised Aboriginal ferrying expertise on a constant basis. Short references in diaries relating the great value of encountering Aboriginal guides on inland waterways are not uncommon. Thomas Blyth is typical, having kept a diary on the goldfields of Bendigo and Ballarat in 1852, with fragments relating his contact with Aboriginal people: ‘Proceeded about 3 miles and camped near a gentleman with two blacks… Crossed the Campaspe taking the horses and cart through the R[iver] and paying a native with a canoe to cross our goods.’ (NLA manuscript) The occurrence of floods stymied many travellers and made traveling a misery.

In the Orbost district, an Aboriginal named Joe Banks rescued a sick nonIndigenous man during the floods by ‘making a canoe out of a sheet of bark from the roof and placing the sick man in it, swam through the turbulent waters, towing the canoe and its helpless occupant to safety.’ (Personalities and Stories of the Early Orbost District, Royal Historical Society of Victoria, 1972) At Moe in eastern Victoria, one overlanding party ‘afraid to cross the creek on account of the flood and having eaten all their provisions’ received succour from an Aboriginal guide whose prodigious bush skills the travelers depended upon.

Before dark a black gin came over in a canoe from the accommodation hut on the other side of the creek, having heard the travellers cooeeing. They told her they wanted something to eat, but it was too dangerous for her to cross the water again that night. A good fire was kept burning, but it was a wretched time. It rained heavily, a gale of wind was blowing, and trees kept falling in all directions. Scott, the hutkeeper, sent the gin over in the canoe next morning with a big damper, tea, sugar, and meat, which made a very welcome breakfast for hungry travelers… they resolved to try and cross the creek at all risks, preferring to face the danger of death by drowning rather than to die slowly by starvation… Scott was obliged to accompany them to the next stations for rations. He left the gin behind, having no anxiety about her. While he was away she could feed sumptuously on grubs, crabs and opossums.

George Dunderdale, The Book of the Bush…, 1870

Hubert De Castella, quoted in Australian Squatters (Melbourne University Press 1987), describes Aboriginal people guiding large numbers of people, cattle and supplies across the Murray River in the 1850s. ‘Crossing the Murray, which is half a kilometre wide at that spot [junction of the Murray and Darling], Signals 100 September to november 2012

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A party of diggers joining a native encampment, tinted lithograph. Published by Read & Co, London 1853. Reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Australia. NLA an8930053

was a large number of savages, [who] were camped on the river banks and had boats ready to help the travelers cross.’

De Castella described the aplomb and adroitness with which the risky task of guiding people, stock and supplies across was often accomplished, much to their amazement.

Other contemporary observers noted how traversing the Moorabool River in southern Victoria was a hazardous affair without highly skilled Aboriginal guides to ferry their goods across.

Charles Sievwright wrote in June 1840: ‘where from the state of the roads and rivers, I got them [Wathawurrung guides] to render essential service to settlers and travelers, whose provisions must have been lost, and progress stopped but for their timely aid. The servants of Mr Murray at Colac, and the Surveyors who were proceeding to Portland Bay, can bear testimony to the skill and safety with which their provisions and equipment were transported across the Nar-ra-hil [Moorabool River], in a bark canoe, when without such assistance they must have remained some weeks upon its banks ere the river subsided. (From R Wrench & M Lakic, Through Their Eyes 1994) Government surveyors made extensive use of Aboriginal guides. C J Tyers on his surveying expedition of the road from Geelong to Portland in 1839 testified of their usefulness. Tyers wrote of Tommy, a Wathawurrung guide, with more than a little annoyance, for Tommy was quite active in haggling the conditions of his employment, telling Tyers he would agree to come along on the condition that he rode a horse and be given a gun. Tyers was keen to take up Tommy’s offer as ‘Tommy would be very useful in giving us the native names of 20

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rivers and hills’. On the Morrabool River Tyers had more reasons to be thankful for recruiting Tommy who negotiated the employment of ‘several black fellows to make a canoe for the purpose of transporting the luggage to the opposite side of the river.’ (From M Cannon The Crown, the Land and the Squatter, Historical Records of Victoria, 1991).

Many travellers, such as Alfred Howitt who conducted geological research in Gippsland in 1875, also depended on their Aboriginal guides to construct and pilot vessels for ferrying them across rivers, and entrusted them to deliver vital stores and provisions to forward positions.

He wrote: I wanted to examine a long portion of the Mitchell River which runs through horizontal strata and which are almost unknown, I therefore sent up two blackfellows ‘Long Harry’ and ‘Charley Boy’ under the care of a trustworthy man to Tabberaberra station at the head of the Gorges. Here they made two bark canoes by the time I arrived from Crooked River and the following morning we started on our voyage… Long Harry [sat] behind with a piece of green wattle bark in each hand about 6 in. by 12 in. which he used as a paddle… The other canoe contained Charley and the provisions for three days.

From B Attwood A Life together, A Life Apart, 1994

At Murray River crossings into Victoria, numerous miners overlanding from New South Wales and Adelaide shared the same experience. On a journey from Adelaide to the Victorian digging, J H Walker’s party employed a party of ‘blackfellows’ to ‘drag a horse out of a morass’ and take their women folk, their dray ‘and all your things’ across

several rivers by ‘canoes which are very useful, made out of a log hollowed out.’

(Memoirs of Joseph Henry Walker, State Library of Victoria manuscript).

J H Trevena recorded in his ‘Reminiscences of a Journey to the Victorian Diggings’ how a party of miner families were paddled across by Aboriginal people in canoes, and their bullock drays pulled across by Aboriginal people on the opposite bank.

At the Campaspe, Ovens and Serpentine Rivers there are numerous references from gold miners who required Aboriginal assistance from guides for ‘taking the horses and cart through the R[iver] and paying a native with a canoe to cross our goods.’ (T Blyth Diary, National Library of Australia) The timesaving aspect of employing an Aboriginal guide was not lost on Hubert De Castella, when crossing the Goulburn River.

De Castella, on his way to the Bendigo goldfields, found the Goulburn had been swollen over-night by a rain storm.

Went up to them and speaking to the most intelligent looking I offered him a shilling if he would make a boat and take me across. My offer was immediately accepted and taking off his possum skin which was his only clothing my man asked me to dismount so that he could take my saddle. ‘Make the boat first’, I told him.

‘Canoe sit down alonga water’, he replied with a cunning smile, which meant that he already had one available by the bank…

Slowly and peacefully he took us over the dead water of the little inlet we were in…

‘Be careful of my saddle when we get to the other side’, I said, because the edges of the boat were not two inches above water level. ‘All right, everything’s right’, he replied.

Crossing the Murray, which is half a kilometre wide at that spot, was a large number of savages, [who] were camped on the river banks and had boats ready to help the travelers cross

Many parties were circumspect about the ‘primitive constructions’ at which they were entrusting their lives but there appears to be no record of them capsizing.

One such fear-filled traveller was Edwin Middleton who in his Description of the Life and Times in Victoria in the 1860’s by a Young Colonist relates that he ‘crossed the Murray in a native canoe, a sheet of bark nearly flat. I did not return in it, for l did not relish it, too many blackheads bobbing up and down quite close to us. I fully expected [the canoe] to be upset when they caught hold of the canoe, clamouring after tobacco.’

A G Pierce, gold miner turned photographer, noted that the: natives aided us in fording the Serpentine and getting our [photographic] supplies across in their canoes. These boats are of the most primitive construction, being nothing more than a large strip of bark cut to the correct size, with pointed ends, from the eucalyptus tree and dried in the sun, and shaped by a cross stick in each end.

The heat of the sun naturally curls the bark and produces a rude boat.

Knocking about: being some adventures of Augustus Baker Pierce in Australia, Shoestring Press, 1984

Judging by some accounts, the assistance of Aboriginal guides when fording rivers was not merely time saving or achieved with an ‘uncommon neatness’, as Thomas Woolner described his observations of two Aboriginal people crossing the Ovens River in his undated diary in the National Library of Australia.

Gold-seekers such as Samuel Mossman, Thomas Banister and others, attested that it was only with the assistance of an Aboriginal guide that their party survived the Murray River crossing.

We had some difficulty in fording the back-water course of the river, which we were compelled to do in consequence of the accident to the bridge; and unless we had had the assistance of a native, who directed us which way we should incline when we were in the river, we might have failed in safely getting over.

Australia visited and revisited: a narrative of recent travels and old experiences in Victoria and New South Wales, National Trust of Australia (NSW), 1974

Similarly Joseph Lingard’s 1846 Narrative of the journey to and from New South Wales contains much evidence of forming strong relationships with Aboriginal people in the Genoa region of New South Wales, noting on many occasions the benefits he accrued from entering into reciprocal relationships and being piloted on Aboriginal canoes.

On another occasion Lingard wrote: ‘The black man made me a canoe that would hold three of us as a present. I went from one Island to another… on shooting excursions as there were thousands of ducks, sometimes with a black man, and at other times with a black woman to row the canoe’ Squatters and townsfolk too of inland Australia were dependent on Aboriginal canoes to get them out of perilous situations. Squatters such as Frederic Godfrey described in about 1851 how rivers such as the Loddon, in central Victoria, were prone to flooding and how one year ‘All the country on both sides of the Loddon was flooded, and the wagons could get no nearer than four miles from the homestead, so supplies had to be brought in by bark canoe.’

(Quoted in F Stevens Smoke on the Hill, Bendigo, Cambridge Press 1969) Reminiscences about the fabled Aboriginal canoe continued into the 20th century, though it is interesting to note how the spotlight of nostalgia shines brightly on the stoic white pioneers. An obituary in the Mornington Standard (27 January 1917) is a vivid example of how Aboriginal people’s ingenuity and consummate skills have been hijacked. The obituary of a ‘District Pioneer’ relates the perilous journey of a family who were the first to overland a mob of cattle from Namoi in New South Wales and how ‘hemmed in by flood on one spot for three months’ called on ‘those qualities of initiative and resource characteristic of the Australian, and making the ANZAC of a soldier, the admiration of the world.’ The obituary goes on to describe in vivid detail how ‘the family proudly points to large articles of furniture ferried across the rivers Lachlan, Murrumbidgee and Murray in aboriginal canoes of bark’. Moreover, the white pioneering family, not the Aboriginal builders and pilots, even after this admission, is lauded for its ‘wildest resourcefulness and generalship of no mean order’. 

One day a lot of blacks came down the River Genore in their canoes quite naked, men, women and children; I soon got very intimate with them; as there were abundance of fish here, I brought some hooks out of my luggage and put the natives into the way of catching fish with the hook, which pleased them greatly. They made lines for themselves from the bark of a tree, they went into the inland water in their canoes… The blacks brought us plenty of fish every night, as much as we could do with.

Dr Fred Cahir is a senior lecturer and Indigenous Studies coordinator at the School of Education and Arts, University of Ballarat. This is an edited extract from his paper ‘Seeing the land from an Aboriginal canoe’ which will be published in full in future proceedings and publications of the conference Nawi – exploring Australia’s Indigenous watercraft.

Pastoralists such as F R Godfrey were struck by the usefulness and utilitarian nature of Aboriginal canoes, especially noting in his journal the debt owed to the Aboriginal water carriers who rescued ‘two tons of trussed hay in a fine canoe made by the blacks’ on one occasion in September 1852. He adds: ‘The Aboriginals were often sent across by canoe for urgently needed goods – flour, tea, sugar, tobacco and the like, which were loaded onto waiting drays.’

(Reflections from the Kinypaniel, Fernihurst District History Committee, 1992) Others such as James Dannock also attested to their indispensability when crossing the Murray. Dannock, suffering badly from dysentery, and not responding to Aboriginal medicines, entrusted his life to some Aboriginal people who got him across the Murray.

I took bad with the dysentery and the black lubras kindly got me wattle gum and when l did not get better they said 2 days that fellow go bung [dead] so l thought l had better clear out and got the blacks to put me over the river in a canoe Autobiography, NLA

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Barquentine Buster an archaeologist’s dream

Recent winter storms have exposed the sturdy remains of a Canadian barquentine wrecked at Woolgoolga on the New South Wales mid-north coast nearly 120 years ago.

Australian National Maritime Museum archaeologist Kieran Hosty examined the wreck and writes of its survival.

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Home to the largest Sikh and Punjabi population in regional Australia, Woolgoolga on the New South Wales mid-north coast is known for its annual Curry Festival, for bananas and blueberries... and now, too, for the barquentine Buster, a Canadian-built three-master of 310 gross tons wrecked on the town beach during a summer storm in 1893. Its solidly built lower hull of timber and iron has been preserved beneath the sands for well over a century, and was exposed when winter storms stripped away several metres of beach this year. In July I travelled to Woolgoolga with Dr Brad Duncan from the Heritage Office of the NSW Department of Planning, to inspect and record the site.

In the late 19th century, Woogoolga (which would gain an extra ‘l’ in its name in 1966) was the heart of a sugar, timber and sawmilling district that thrived when the government built a 1,557-foot-long (475-metre) jetty in 1891. Timber mills, connected by bullock tracks, tramways and light rail to the densely forested Jesse Simpson Ranges, serviced an insatiable demand in Brisbane and Sydney for grey gum, white mahogany, tallowwood, grey box, turpentine and Australian cedar.

In only a few years, millions of feet of railway sleepers, sawn timbers, piles, logs and palings were being exported and Woogoolga was rivalling Coffs Harbour as the principle shipping port on this section of the coast. It was even considered – for a short time – suitable for overseas trade.

Although Green Head just to the south gave the Woogoolga jetty some protection, the roadstead was open to storm-driven seas and swells from the east and north, making the loading of timber difficult if not impossible at times. During such conditions, waiting vessels could tie up at one of the offshore moorings until they could come alongside the jetty.

Although steam shipping was dominant by this time, a huge fleet of sailing ships – often relatively small and

run by independent companies or even individual owners – crisscrossed the globe, transporting a variety of bulk and relatively low-value cargoes in competition with the more prestigious and costly steamers. One of these was the barquentine Buster, launched in Nova Scotia in 1884 but now Australian-owned, which departed Sydney for Woogoolga in mid-February 1893 to load timber for various New Zealand ports. The little ship arrived safely at Woogoolga but due to the blustery conditions could not get alongside the jetty, putting down two anchors and running hawsers to one of the offshore moorings to wait it out.

Unfortunately over the next few hours conditions deteriorated rapidly, and early on the morning of Friday 17 February the port anchor cable parted, followed shortly afterwards by the starboard cable. For the next nine hours Buster rode out the waves, moored by its hawsers to the mooring buoy, but shortly after 7.00 pm a huge sea struck and first one, then the other, hawser parted. In driving rain Buster was blown through the breakers, crashing onto the beach stern-first with its bow slewing towards the south. The crew, seeking safety from the breaking seas, climbed into the rigging. Dawn found them wet, cold, shaken but safe, and now high and dry on the beach a mile or so north of the town.

Although the vessel had not broken up in the surf it proved impossible to refloat, and after several attempts was given up as a total loss. After the salvage of whatever could be retrieved – masts, rigging and presumably some of its timbers – the sand slowly covered the hull’s remains until only a few of its timber frames and iron riders poked above the surface of the beach. In severe winter storms over the last 119 years, the sand covering Buster has been scoured away from time to time, revealing an amazing jumble of wellpreserved timbers.

Through the eyes of an archaeologist, however, this jumble can take on new meaning and offer insights into late 19th century wooden ship construction.

The first sight of Buster, lying just below the high water mark, metres away from Woolgoolga’s Lakeside Caravan Park, reveals what appears to be the bow of the 129 foot-long (39.31-metre) hull facing north, with several rows of timbers running south towards the smooth curve of a stern. But looks can be deceiving.

Generally, in 19th-century timber shipbuilding, the lower down in the hull you go, the blunter or rounder the bow becomes as it takes on the shape of its

bow or cant frames. The stern becomes finer and narrower as it runs back towards the rudder. A quick inspection confirms the correct position of the bow and stern. Examining the copper sheathing nailed to the hull planks to protect against marine organisms, we observe that the overlap of the copper sheets faces the stern. Then there is the presence of the anchor chain locker at the southern end of the site. So the bow still points south, as it did when the barquentine first grounded.

The rows of timber also take on a more ordered appearance. They are the remains of the port and starboard lower floors and first and second futtocks, which build up the frames (or ribs) of the vessel.

They’re sandwiched between the inner and outer planking and secured by numerous fastenings. Running almost the entire length of the site are several massive timbers some 11 inches (280 mm) wide by 12 inches (304 mm) high, sitting on top of an even larger, partially exposed timber. What we see is the keelson or the internal keel of the vessel. Sitting astride it at regular intervals are the mast steps, which originally supported the barquentine’s three timber masts.

Buster was massively built.

Usually vessels of 350 to 400 tons have floors and futtocks approximately 10 inches (254 mm) square. Buster’s are 12 inches (304 mm) and the space between the futtocks is negligible, presenting an almost solid wall of timber.

The internal planking – called ceilings – also has an average thickness of at least eight inches (200 mm), which is more than three times the thickness recommended by American Lloyds.

Besides its massive construction the vessel is substantially fastened. Its outer and inner planking is secured to the frames by regularly spaced timber pegs called treenails, copper-alloy nails and occasionally spaced iron bolts.

The presence of iron could be a surprise given the significant corrosion problems that occur if iron bolts come into contact with the copper sheathing – until you realise that the iron bolts only occur above the copper sheathing. They are used to secure iron straps called riders to the internal planking.

The oversized timbers, thick ceiling planking and iron riders are all indicative of North-American construction and the use of softer timbers such as Oregon pine, also known as Douglas fir. However, although Buster was strongly built, there are also several indications that construction at this Canadian yard was

In driving rain Buster was blown through the breakers, crashing onto the beach stern-first

a little hurried at times. A number of the floors and futtocks are jointed end-to-end rather than being scarphed together – an overlapping joint that’s much stronger but slower to make. We also observed places where the shipwrights either missed the frames when driving home the fastenings, or drove the fastenings through the edge of the planking, or neglected to put a fastening into the frame or outer plank altogether.

As a maritime archaeologist, the wrecks I explore usually lie submerged and wholly or partially buried under deposits of sand, coral and rock. To get the opportunity to visit an exposed site such as this one is a great experience.

It’s a testament to the craft of Canadian shipbuilding, and to the preservative nature of the sand that covers the site for most of the year. It’s also a testament to the people of Woolgoolga, who are proud of their maritime heritage and are eager to protect the site for future enjoyment and study.  above: Iron reinforcing straps called riders can be seen rising above the ceiling planks at right – the ship’s port side. Other ironware remnants include parts of bilge pumps. In the centre of the photo a mast step rises from the keelson. left: Barquentine Buster exposed by winter storms on Woolgoolga Beach, its pointed stern facing the camera. Photographer K Hosty/ANMM

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The glamour of a naval visit

While researching the museum’s collection of some 10,000 maritime photographs taken by Samuel J Hood, who worked in the first half of the 20th century, curatorial assistant Nicole Cama encountered these stylish women portrayed during a Dutch naval visit to Sydney Harbour during the Great Depression.

In cape and a big, natural straw hat, a member of the fashionable younger set poses for Samuel J Hood’s glass plate camera on board HNLMS Java in Circular Quay, with the Australasian Steam Navigation Company’s landmark tower and the incomplete Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background. The subject may be Miss Deetje Andriesse … but if readers can identify any of the subjects of these photographs, please contact the museum to share your knowledge! All photographs from the museum’s Samuel J Hood Studio Collection

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thousand people took a tour of the vessels during their nine-day sojourn.

A who’s who of Sydney, including politicians, high-ranking naval officers and diplomatic dignitaries attended special events hosted in honour of Rear Admiral Kayser and his officers. Amid all the ceremonies and diplomacy, the Rear Admiral highlighted the political and economic motives behind the visit, saying in a speech at the Millions Club: The soundest foundation for trade between nations is a sense of friendship and mutual esteem. No nation can be considered as absolutely self-supporting… You have to export your products to fortify the welfare of your country… You are passing through difficult times, but I do not doubt that you will overcome them with your Australian enterprise and courage. SMH 8 Oct 1930

It’s 10 October 1930. The Great Depression has taken hold and Australia is faced with what Professor L F Giblin, Despite this mention of tough economic later Commonwealth Statistician, times, however, the accompanying lavish terms ‘the menace of catastrophic balls, luncheons, dinners and tea parties, unemployment’. It would reach 32% according to the newspapers, showed ‘no within two years. On this cool spring day evidence of depression’. The first official at West Circular Quay, however, no such event held to honour the Dutch visitors signs of economic turmoil are present was a musicale at the Royal Sydney Golf on board the Royal Netherlands Navy’s Club in Rose Bay. Consul-General and HNLMS Java. Sydney’s finest socialites Madame Teppema greeted guests in the have arrived for a fancy afternoon tea hosted by Dutch Rear Admiral C C Kayser, drawing-room, which was ‘decorated with clusters of poppies and bowls of the Dutch Consul-General Petrus Ephrem primroses’. The next event was held on Teppema and his wife Madame Carmen the Royal Packet Navigation Company’s Teppema. Samuel J Hood, a well-known SS Nieuw Holland; with its ‘coloured Sydney-based photojournalist, captures a spectacular parade of fox furs, cloche hats electric lights’, decorative flags and ‘trails of red and orange flowers’, it provided the and frocks of crêpe de Chine worn by the wives and daughters of Sydney’s elite. But ‘perfect setting’ and lit up Circular Quay.

The following evening, the newly who are these fashionable ladies and why appointed Governor of New South Wales were they photographed?

Sir Philip Game and his wife Lady The Royal Netherlands Navy’s light Gwendolen Game hosted a ball. It was cruisers HNLMS Java, Eversten and reportedly ‘the most brilliant seen at De Ruyter sailed into Sydney Harbour Government House for several years’, on 3 October 1930, marking the fleet’s with ‘flood lights in bright green and soft first visit to Australian shores. Adding to pink’ illuminating the building’s façade the excitement of the nearly completed and Royal Botanic Gardens, and flowers Sydney Harbour Bridge, the visit stirred of all varieties adorning the hallways and significant public interest. The Sydney function rooms.

Morning Herald (SMH) claimed several

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left: Visiting light cruiser of the Royal Netherlands Navy, HNLMS Java, berthed in Circular Quay in October 1930. Java was designed in 1913, launched in 1921, and would be lost in 1942, sunk by the Japanese in the Battle of the Java Sea. below: Dutch Consul-General Petrus Ephrem Teppema and his wife Madame Carmen Teppema (at left) in the receiving line next to visiting Dutch Rear Admiral C C Kayser. Those he’s greeting are believed to be Lady Annie Riddle, wife of Sir Ernest Cooper Riddle, Governor of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and her daughter Miss Enid Riddle.

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wives who claimed the spotlight. Who Finally, the scene switches to the event wanted to know about the diplomats captured in Hood’s photographs – when Italy’s Donna Grossardi wore black afternoon tea with the Dutch Rear printed silk and Madame Fay of Norway Admiral aboard Java. An orchestra played while guests were greeted on the quarter- ‘was the last word in smartness in a black flat crepe suit’? From the younger set, deck by the Rear Admiral and the Miss Deetje Andriesse wore ‘ivory Teppemas. The younger guests danced embroidered romaine, which was tightthroughout the afternoon on the upper fitting, and had a skirt flaring from the deck, and tea was served in ‘buffet fashion’ with sumptuous Dutch cakes and knees’ with ‘a big natural straw’ hat. Miss Nancy Bavin, one of the ‘Premier’s pretty biscuits. This was followed by ‘one of the daughters’, ‘was in orange and white largest dances of the season’ on board printed chiffon with a natural-toned Baku HMAS Australia hosted by the Royal hat’. Miss Pat Baird ‘was smart in a bottle Australian Navy’s Rear Admiral, Edward green moire frock, which had a double R G R Evans. flared skirt and a flowing cape’ and Miss Pomp and ceremony were the way Anne Jamieson ‘looked delightfully cool of things at these events, but media in a green and fawn printed crêpe de attention was focused on the female Chine suit and a small fawn straw’. guests. Naval balls were hosted as These fashion-focused articles a symbolic diplomatic gesture; however, appeared in sections designed exclusively they provided the opportunity for for female eyes. The column ‘Jottings of members of the ‘younger set’ (debutantes the Week’ in The Australian Women’s and single women) to represent their Weekly (AWW) was brought to readers by family’s name in style. The guest list a masked woman under the alias of Miss featured the Lady Mayoress Hilda Marks, Midnight. Some newspapers explicitly sister of Sydney’s Lord Mayor; Mrs Elsa Evans, wife of an RAN Rear Admiral; Mrs demonstrated their exclusivity with daily social sightings, featuring in the SMH and Hannah Lloyd Jones, wife of Charles The Sydney Mail under sections titled ‘For Lloyd Jones, heir to the David Jones Women’, ‘Women’s World’ and empire; and Madam Carmen Teppema, a former professional violinist whose father ‘Feminine Topics’. These sections presented tailored topics for those was the mining magnate Guillaume D concerned about anything from Delprat. Most of them are pictured in the accompanying photographs by Sam Hood. household management to baby welfare and physical culture.

Against this backdrop of politics and These articles reflect a time of cultural diplomacy, these women showed off the and social change in the way women were latest developments in 1930s fashion. perceived. Though a woman remained an They displayed what newspapers termed object of fascination, her presence in the a shift in fashion ‘consciousness’, with newspaper illustrated a fixation not just a move from the ‘mannish’ styles of the on her clothing but her sense of style.

1920s to ‘modern’ trends, which favoured Young women like Pat Baird, Nancy ‘the slender figure’ and a more feminine Bavin and Deetje Andriesse were socially mode of dress. Hilda Marks, an designated arbiters of taste. These articles ‘essentially feminine woman of culture’ also reiterated a cult of youth rather with a penchant for Bohemianism, different from our own, the sense that tobacco and shingled hair, wore a green there existed only a brief window of printed crêpe de Chine frock and a beige opportunity to make an impression and Baku hat. Mrs Elsa Evans, who was become an established part of Sydney’s known as ‘the belle of Christiania’ before ‘social set’. she was whisked away by her husband This is demonstrated by the fact that from her ‘Northern fairyland’ of Norway, ‘was most attractive in a honey wool crêpe Deetje, Pat and Nancy all carved their own niche after their debuts and went de Chine ensemble, trimmed with honeyon to pursue their own callings. Deetje coloured fur, and a small beige hat’. graced the art world as one of the most Hannah Lloyd Jones, whose home in Woollahra was a popular setting for social fashionable among the younger set, was painted by the famous artist Thea Proctor, events until the 1970s, wore a chiffon went abroad to study and came back frock with art deco jewellery and fox fur. an accessories designer. Pat Baird was Carmen Teppema wore ‘a shady black one of Sydney’s amateur actresses, was Baku’, ‘a black morocain, which had an engaged by 1932 and received the Queen ivory jabot’ and held a bouquet of pink during her 1954 Royal tour. Reports carnations as she greeted her guests. of Nancy Bavin’s social outings became Though dignitaries from Japan, commonplace. In 1929, she caused a stir Norway and Italy attended, it was their

Against this backdrop of politics and diplomacy, these women showed off the latest developments in 1930s fashion

and introduced a ‘new and charming fashion’ to Sydney, when she made her debut at a naval ball with a ‘tiny black cat pasted on her right cheek’. She would go on to publish ‘two columns of her facetiousness’ in London’s Punch magazine, was ‘captured by some big, bad wolf of an Englishman!’, actually Scottish, and ran a school in Surrey for over 40 years.

In addition to stories of romance and fashion, social reporting revealed a tendency to veer away from the dismal economic reality of the Depression and create an uplifting, fantasy-like alternative.

Lydia Gill wrote about her experience as a young woman in her book, My Town: Sydney in the 1930s, published in 1993.

Gill recalled the large amounts of time spent looking and rarely buying, and when a social event did come along, she was often forced to borrow items in that all-important 1930s fabric-ofchoice, crêpe de Chine. This ‘was a time for home sewing and good dressmakers’ and women did what they could to get by during a period known simply as Depression.

In reality, these high-fashion narratives did not represent the experience of most Sydney women, but perhaps ‘the silken swish of taffeta and satin’ was what fascinated audiences.

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They became poster girls for lavish events, particularly those hosted on naval vessels, as newspapers maintained that nautical occasions appealed to the ‘feminine heart’

The social-pages provided the means for readers to live vicariously. They communicated an elaborate escapist fantasy and positioned it among advertisements selling not just a fashion trend, but an idea of the ‘modern woman’, free from the economic constraints of the Depression. As Lydia Gill mentions, people ‘did not advertise adversity’ and there was still a sense that, though times were rough, every special occasion called for a ‘spray’ or bouquet of flowers and the necessity for your frock to match your hat.

Dress essentially was, as it still is, a form of individual expression. Clothes then as now defined people, and a woman’s status as a trendsetter was contingent on the way she wore her clothing. These articles and photographs are from a time when fashion excess, such as fox furs and ostrich feathers, were considered the hallmark of sophistication and no item of clothing demonstrated individuality better than the hat. All kinds of hats, from Baku, toque, cloche to Balibuntal, appeared in these articles as the essential item of clothing.

Despite this, the ‘modern woman’ conformed to a standardised image of femininity. This is colourfully reflected in the SMH report of Derby Day, held at Randwick racecourse the day after the fleet arrived. It was noted that this race day marked a shift in fashion, again showed little sign of Depression and even the ‘plainest gowns displayed a costly simplicity’. The opening lines describe this ‘tremendous change’ in fashion and what follows is a detailed analysis of the fabric, design, length and pattern of frocks along with the various types of millinery witnessed on the lawn: The fashions of 1930 are not unbecoming to the average woman… they have a certain simplicity and cut which make 28

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them acceptable to all… Some of the colour schemes were bright, and bizarre, but there was a decided vogue for navy, black, and brown. SMH, 6 October 1930 On another page appears ‘Fashion’s Latest Idea’, an article on the shoulder cape which had many devotees, with an accompanying image of three seated women all wearing a cape over their frock and an obligatory straw Baku hat.

This uniformity has made positively identifying the women in Hood’s photographs an enormous challenge.

This was not just because there were so few clear images published but because the descriptions contained in these newspaper reports, though specific down to the type of fabric a woman wore, focussed on outfits that were inherently generic and paid little attention to a woman’s distinct physical characteristics.

Samuel Hood’s photographs of the various ships and boats that plied Sydney Harbour have appeared often enough in Signals and elsewhere. Sydney Cove was often abuzz with activity and excitement, with people drawn by the constant stream of ferries, merchant ships and naval vessels berthing at Circular Quay. But magnificent as Hood’s ship portraits are, his fine fashion portraits offer a glimpse into another aspect of Sydney’s maritime history. These portraits add a human element to an event that previously only existed in newspaper print. Eighty-two years on, through painstaking research and detailed physical descriptions, we can now put names to these faces and investigate their stories.

Atmosphere is a term that is often used but is not always present in a photograph; the Hood photographs reproduced here, however, convey atmosphere beautifully.

He captured elements of the visit and the people who attended the social events in

ways that are rarely seen in early photography. When he snapped the Harbour Bridge he placed people and maritime events within the scene, creating a sense that the harbour really was the lifeblood of the city. These images reflect a flamboyance that was so characteristic of the time. At the very least, it confirms current romanticised perceptions of what the late 1920s represented: freedom, vitality, lavishness and an inevitable postwar high which followed what the Governor’s wife Lady Game had termed the ‘black cloud of horror’.

Each woman, though connected to an important male figure, cultivated her own persona and represented what was seen as Sydney’s elite. Their presentation to the press was carefully considered and orchestrated, and they were often listed and ranked according to their husband’s or family’s political status. They became poster girls for lavish events, particularly those hosted on naval vessels, as newspapers maintained that nautical occasions appealed to the ‘feminine heart’.

With each thread, bead and sequin, the women on Java added a touch of glamour.

Some of these fashion pioneers were: Deetje Andriesse, who introduced ‘evening pyjamas’ to Sydney society functions; facetious Nancy Bavin, an animal rights activist and vivacious member of the younger set; and Hilda Marks who had ‘laughter in her eyes’ and ‘could dress in four languages’. Sydney’s leading newspapers vigorously illustrated their stories, creating a sense of the allure and excitement of the time. Lydia Gill’s closing words describe this nostalgic romanticism more fittingly: ‘Sydney was a great town in the 1930s. It was my Sydney… I wish you had been there with me. Perhaps you were.’ 

clockwise from opposite: Mrs Hannah Lloyd Jones, centre, on board HNLMS Java with her husband, Charles Lloyd Jones, right.

Mrs Elsa Evans, formerly a Norwegian belle and now married to RAN Rear Admiral Edward Evans, formerly 2nd-in-charge of Scott's Antarctic expedition. She is wearing fur-trimmed, honey wool crĂŞpe de Chine.

Mrs Donna Adelaide Grossardi, wife of Italian Consul-General Antonio Grossardi.

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Seaworthy and Seachange Wharf 7 Maritime Heritage Centre

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Signals 100 September to november 2012

After a recent facelift the Wharf 7 Maritime Heritage Centre, adjacent to the Australian National Maritime Museum’s exhibition building on Darling Harbour, is truly coming into its own. Senior curator Daina Fletcher writes about a seachange that helps to interpret our historic Pyrmont site.

Design elements of the Wharf 7 foyer display include a floating frieze of historic harbour photographs by William James Hall, and a timberslat wave wall referencing traditional structures such as harbour baths. The figurehead was carved for Sydney Heritage Fleet’s 1874 barque James Craig by marine artist and sculptor Dennis Adams, transformed by Indigenous art students.

Photography by A Frolows/ANMM

The Wharf 7 Maritime Heritage Centre was initially conceived as a major museological venture back in the 1990s to partly solve collection storage challenges for the Australian National Maritime Museum, and also to provide behind-the-scenes access to its facilities.

Importantly, it was also designed to house a collection of small craft and marine engines, workshops and staff from Sydney Heritage Fleet (SHF), a community not-for-profit organisation with whom we have a long and close working partnership.

Today more than 135,000 historic objects are kept in the building. It houses an extensive public research facility, the Vaughan Evans Library, two historic boat and engine restoration workshops, a conservation laboratory, and the collections and administrative staff of both organisations, ANMM and SHF. Moored alongside is the 1874 tall ship, the James Craig, one of only four restored sailing barques left in the world, owned and operated by SHF, and the ANMM’s lightship Carpentaria.

Our Wharf 7 building stands on a former cargo wharf with railway goods tracks that has supported a succession of industrial sheds, and was built over water and land reclaimed from a once-thriving Indigenous fishing ground. Our four-level building was designed as an architectural tribute to the magnificent ‘timber cathedral’ style of Sydney Harbour wharves built in the early 20th century, and that survive in Woolloomooloo Bay, Walsh Bay and nearby Jones Bay. As well as ANMM and SHF, its top level is leased for an income stream to a tenant, currently Google.

Since it opened in 1999, Wharf 7’s cavernous foyer has shown SHF’s collection of small boats and engines.

Over the years there were efforts to make it more than just a publicly accessible storage area, but until recently it remained a rather haphazard display that didn’t do either of our institutions justice.

A recent full rejuvenation of the Wharf 7 foyer has recognised it as our shopfront, with the core functions of the building promoted as its foundation and interpretive framework. The revitalised Wharf 7 is today a testament to the strength of the relationship between our two heritage organisations, ANMM and SHF – one of Australia’s most enduring maritime heritage partnerships.

The project to rejuvenate the foyer has been several years in planning, developed by a team led by ANMM curators Daina Fletcher and Megan Treharne, together with SHF representatives. We worked together to realise the best that both institutions could offer to enhance a visitor’s experience of the broader maritime museum site, its buildings and wharves. The curatorial and design concept was developed by 2011 and later that year, SB Projects, a design and construction consortium, was appointed to refine the project and complete the installation.

Today a visit to Wharf 7 rewards visitors with displays that trace aspects of both the history of, and the work currently undertaken on, this important maritime site. It takes visitors behind the scenes for an up-close, in-depth view of its inner workings. They can explore the displays in the foyer and then take a tour behind the scenes to watch historic boat, engine and artefact conservation projects in progress in the workshops and conservation laboratories.

The Australian Register of Historic Vessels (ARHV) is an online database developed by ANMM in association with SHF that promotes surviving craft of significance to Australia’s history, and their relationships with their communities. The ARHV provided the perfect conceptual backbone for the foyer’s interpretive fitout. It allowed us to communicate both institutions’ shared interest in historic craft, to showcase the strengths of both collections – especially in relation to small boats and engines – Signals 100 September to november 2012

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clockwise from near right: Putt putts, oars and propellers on the Wharf 7 mezzanine, with some of Sydney Heritage Fleet’s collection of Australian-made marine engines.

Sydney Heritage Fleet’s 1924, snub-nosed 18-foot skiff Yendys, near the foyer entrance.

Ben Lexcen’s 1:3-scale tank test model of America’s Cup-winning 12-Metre yacht Australia II from the ANMM collection. It helped him perfect his legendary winged-keel design.

At left is ANMM’s Taipan, Ben Lexcen’s revolutionary 18-foot skiff of 1959. At right is Sir William ‘Bill’ Northam’s Olympic gold-medal winning 5.5 Metre Barranjoey, of the Sydney Heritage Fleet collection.

and provided space for some of the gems of ANMM’s small-boat collection not on public view in the museum. We also recognised that we needed to mark and explore the history of the site – its lyrical and muscular nuances.

The fitout is divided into three themes.

Seachange shows the changing face of Pyrmont, Darling Harbour and the Barangaroo site across the water, with artefacts from wharf labourers, wonderful David Moore Pyrmont photographs and an interpretation of an Aboriginal midden to recognise the Gadigal community who inhabited this place, a rich fishing area renamed Cockle Bay by European settlers.

Seaworthy is a selection of iconic boats of Sydney Harbour and special gems of national significance listed on the ARHV. Putts-putts, oars and propellers presents rowing shells, motorboats and Australian marine engines that reveal much about Sydneysiders’ deep connection to their waterway.

So from a list of over 50 Sydney Heritage Fleet vessels of various classes, types, uses and ages, Megan Treharne selected 16 archetypal craft of Sydney Harbour to reveal the diversity of sail training and racing dinghies. These include Moths, Sabots, VJs, dinghies, 16-foot skiffs and rowing shells, a waterman’s skiff of the type that carried goods and people across the Harbour, alongside putt putts and runabouts. These craft can be explored in a research station on the ground floor where visitors can surf the ARHV and the National Maritime Collection to find out more, to unlock the fascinating stories of the people and communities represented by them.

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While the ARHV together with the ANMM and SHF collections provide the conceptual framework for the display, it is Sydney Harbour itself that is very much its focus. ANMM designer Aaron Maestri developed a clever scheme to reinforce this as a context for the boats, in two major elements. The entire ground floor is framed by a large, floating curved frieze of historic photographs by William James Hall, of Sydney Harbour in the era before World War II. It shows sailors, spectators, passengers, naval cadets, surf life savers and more, on all manner of boats jostling on a harbourscape of headlands, islands and cultural landmarks, including the newly built Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The second element is a timber-slat wave wall around which the boats are placed. Its construction recalls Sydney’s harbour structures, its timber baths, piers, walks, buoys and navigation markers.

Together these elements give the vessels and the Wharf 7 building context, reinforcing its role as a national showcase for maritime history, yet also recognising its location in the harbour city.

Yendys is Sydney spelled backwards, and is one of the stars of the display: an incredible, snub-nosed, heavily canvassed open 18-foot skiff named for the waterway it crossed. This gem from the SHF collection greets visitors as they enter the Seaworthy display. It’s just as impressive as it was back in the heyday of 18-footer racing in the 1920s and ’30s, when it sailed with its mountains of sail, red anchor emblem and crew of up to 15.

Yendys was built by Charlie Hayes at Careening Cove in 1924 for Norm

Blackman to race with the Sydney Flying Squadron, designed with a controversial snub nose in a bid for superior speed and handling. Dubbed a rule cheater, it took some argument before Yendys was allowed to compete... alongside another champion from that era, the 1919-built Britannia raced by Balmain shipwright ‘Wee’ Georgie Robinson. Britannia is in the main museum building, suspended fully rigged, its Red Ensign emblem blazing on its mainsail.

In Wharf 7, Yendys is set in its design, construction, technological and racing context, displayed alongside training and racing dinghies, smaller skiffs of the open-boat type including the 16-footer Rival, and a more modern 18-footer from the ANMM collection. This, the famous Taipan from 1959, was equally if not more controversial in the history of the sport than Yendys. Taipan was designed by the young tearaway Ben Lexcen (then known as Bob Miller) and built at Norman Wright’s shed in Brisbane, Queensland.

Super-lightweight and streamlined, the plywood planing hull needed only three crew rather than the four crew normal at the time. Taipan was fast and competitive yet so different to conventional skiffs that during the 1960 world championships in New Zealand, Lexcen was forced to cut holes in the fore and aft deck to comply with committee rules. Although not crowned champion, Taipan was regarded as the outstanding boat of the contest.

More than 20 years later Ben Lexcen was to design the equally controversial winged keel on the 12-Metre Australia II, ‘the secret weapon’ that in 1983 was to wrest the America’s Cup from the

The display of the site’s history will be a focal point for exploring the broader history of Pyrmont and Sydney’s industrial waterfront

Americans after their 132-year stranglehold on the contest. Lexcen’s experimental approach to design can be seen in the winged end-plates attached to Taipan’s rudder and centre-board, which foreshadow the extraordinary innovation of Australia II’s famous winged keel that was credited with the historic America’s Cup win.

Here in Wharf 7 you can see one of the controversial tank test models that were made to refine the winged keel for Australia II. Designed by Ben Lexcen, in association with the Netherlands Ship Model Basin, the model is one of several 1:3 scale hulls built during the design development of Australia II. The Dutchpine models, 6.65 metres long, were sheathed in fibreglass and painted a highgloss yellow with black grid lines so that the wave patterns could be easily observed when filmed underwater.

It is one of this museum’s design and sculptural gems.

Australia’s first splash in international competition is represented by SHF’s Barranjoey, the 5.5-Metre deep-keel yacht raced to Australia’s first Olympic gold medal in sailing by local Sydney sailor Sir William ‘Bill’ Northam at the Tokyo Games in 1964. Northam had the yacht built to a design by American naval architect Bill Luders, at Jeff Clist’s Balmain yard, just a few kilometres from where it is displayed today. Northam christened it Barranjoey in slightly misspelt homage to the lighthouse near his northern beaches home. He was 59 years old when he skippered James Dick Sargeant and Peter ‘Pod’ O’Donnell to gold medal glory.

A colourful character, Northam’s sense Signals 100 September to november 2012

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The revitalised Wharf 7 is today a testament to the strength of the relationship between our two heritage organisations, ANMM and Sydney Heritage Fleet

of fun made him a popular sporting figure. As he reminisced about receiving his gold medal, ‘There had been a lot of celebrating, I had great difficulty standing on the dais.’

Design innovation and pushing parameters to pursue sporting, national and even personal goals are also represented in Wharf 7 in the display of Lot 41, the customised double kayak built for James Castrission and Justin Jones to cross the Tasman Sea in 2007.

When the pair made landfall at Nganotu beach on New Zealand’s North Island in January 2008, they became the first Australians to successfully paddle from Australia to New Zealand, overcoming the notoriously rough passage. Their adventure, which they called ‘Crossing the Ditch’, is chronicled and explored through display of the boat as a time capsule, with photographs taken, provisions, tools, equipment and personal comforts carried.

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Their voyage came less than 12 months after the death of solo adventurer Andrew McAuley who disappeared, presumed drowned, within sight of New Zealand’s South Island on the same crossing.

Other highlights of the downstairs displays include a figurehead commissioned for SHF’s James Craig from the late marine artist and sculptor Dennis Adams, as an interpretation of the lost original. The historic three masted barque, viewable alongside Wharf 7 from the foyer windows overlooking the waters of the entrance to Darling Harbour, is open for tours and is sailed regularly in the harbour and offshore. It’s guided now by a newer figurehead because Adams’s 300-kg white beech work was found to be too large and could not be installed. The Adams figurehead sat in SHF stores until 2006 when it was transformed by Indigenous art students during an Artonwater exhibition at Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Gallery.

The schoolgirl artists, including Nyarn Mumbulla, applied an Indigenous motif from their shared cultural background, reframing the figurehead as a powerful statement about our history.

A visit to the mezzanine upstairs takes visitors to displays about competitive rowing and pleasure craft. The elegant 19th-century rowing skiff of noted philanthropist Dame Eadith Walker represents the elite end of the spectrum.

The use and increasing democratisation of the harbour for those who didn’t live on its shores or own craft is represented by the 1913 waterman’s skiff Kate and the later motorised boats such as the 1930s Shevill-built launch Little Nipper and the runabout Florinda, used by Sydney Harbour boat hire business H C Press

up to the 1970s. The Australian ingenuity introduced with the boat designs downstairs is further reinforced upstairs with a display of an array of Australianbuilt engines from the SHF collection – outboards and inboards, including the famous Chapman Pup, the most popular and affordable Australian-made small boat engine from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Guided tours will run regularly to provide access to these upstairs displays, to the boat and engine workshops, object stores, and the library and conservation laboratory, while the display of the site’s history will be a focal point for exploring the broader history of Pyrmont and Sydney’s industrial waterfront. Visitors can roam the ground floor of the Wharf 7 foyer freely.

The Wharf 7 interpretive program will soon become an important part of ANMM’s broad palette of offerings to increase visitors’ enjoyment of the Pyrmont, Darling Harbour maritime precinct. As it develops it will become a must for those visitors who want to know more, about collections and collections management, about historic vessels, about engines, about conservation and the activities of both the ANMM and SHF in caring for and unlocking the stories of these historic artefacts.  The author would like to acknowledge the curatorial work of former ANMM curator Megan Treharne in this article.

above: On display at Wharf 7 are selections from the ANMM collection of early Australian recreational boating magazines held in the Vaughan Evans Library.

Members News Model-making Member David Phillips has re-rigged this rare Chinese model of a Yangtze River junk, which has been donated to the Members by its owners (also Members) for display in the Members lounge.

Photographs by D Fenton/ANMM

below: Senior curator Lindsey Shaw, another of our founding staff members, with Members-program lecturer and author Dr Ian Pfennigwerth RAN (rtd). right: No 1 October 1986; far right: the first Signals masthead, published March 1989.

Signals turns 100!

A special thank you to those hundreds of Members who completed a survey about Signals that we sent out with the winter issue in June. As promised, we drew two of your names from a very big hat… and the winners are John Norris of Victoria and Len Graff from NSW. We’re sending you $100 vouchers for the museum’s retail outlet The Store, for your choice of maritime gifts or books.

We really appreciate your feedback about Signals, the museum’s quarterly journal which you receive as a benefit of membership. Your responses will help us to ensure that we deliver you a magazine that you really enjoy. It was heartening to see such positive comments about Signals, its style and content... and even its name.

You can rest assured that you will continue to receive Signals as a quality, illustrated magazine posted to you each month… although we do plan to provide the option of an electronic version for those who prefer that. We will strive to incorporate some of your worthwhile suggestions into future editions. And the next glossy paper issue will come to you with a stylish new look, too.

This is the 100th edition of Signals, which was born as a four-page newsletter in October 1986 shortly after the first staff were recruited by the Australian Government

to build a new national maritime museum.

The Signals masthead was launched in March 1989 by its current editor, Jeffrey Mellefont, one of a small number of founding staff who have made this museum their life’s work. Signals has grown into the world’s leading maritime museum journal, and it’s read all around Australia and internationally as well.

A big welcome to all our new recruits and welcome back to the crew who have renewed memberships for another exciting year. The lucky winners of last month’s new and renewed Memberships draw will soon receive their gift certificates in the mail.

This month renewing Members will have a chance to win a family Whale Watching Tour with Bass and Flinders Cruises.

Spring is a time to get out and about, so we have planned lots of outdoor activities for you... details on the following pages.

Our popular Titanic exhibition will close with a farewell family Edwardian picnic to that Sydney Harbour gem, Rodd Island. Many thanks to NSW National Parks & Wildlife for their support with this event. Spring is also the time for walking so our Meet the Neighbours program will take to the streets of Pyrmont to explore the changing nature of our area, and we will take a trip to Balmain to tour the Water Police Base.

Di Osmond Acting Members manager

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left: McKilliam Family Collection, ANMM

Members events Members events Calendar Spring 2012 September Wednesday 12

History Week seminar: Titanic threads: elegantly Edwardian

Sunday 16

Family fun day: Talk Like a Pirate Day

Sat 22 – Sun 7

Holiday-time: Kids on Deck – Dragons, dreams and dragnets

Sunday 23

Special family event: Edwardian picnic at Rodd Island

Wed 26 – Thu 27 Family cooking workshops: Pho-tastic Sunday 30

Members in conversation: Shiela Bowtle underwater Group portrait at a picnic

October Thursday 4

Tour: Garden Island naval heritage and lunch

Fri 12 – Sun 14

Classic & Wooden Boat Festival

Thursday 18

Pyrmont walk: Know your neighbourhood

Sunday 21

Author talk: David Hill: The Great Race

Wednesday 24

Cruise & tour: Visit to Quarantine Station

Saturday 27

Dining-in Night: Vampire weardroom dinner

Sunday 28

Members in conversation: Peter Plowman shipwrecked

November Thursday 1

Exclusive: John Hannan maritime art collection exclusive visit

Sunday 4

Welcome Wall: Unveiling

Sunday 4

Members in conversation: John Papenhuyzen

Sunday 11

Author talk: Robert Macklin’s One false move

Thursday 15

Meet the neighbours: Water Police base in Balmain

Sunday 25

Exclusive: Members anniversary lunch

Corporate Members The program provides Corporate Members privileged entry to the museum’s unique environment for corporate hospitality.

Three membership levels each provide a range of benefits and services: Admiral three-year membership $10,000 one-year membership $4,000

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Commodore three-year membership $5,000 one-year membership $1,850 Captain three-year membership $1,800 one-year membership $700

Captain Memberships Asiaworld Shipping Services Pty Ltd Australia Japan Cable Ltd Defence National Storage-RPA Google Australia HMAS Creswell HMAS Kuttabul HMAS Newcastle

Signals 100 September to november 2012

HMAS Vampire Association Maritime Union of Australia (NSW Branch) Maritime Mining & Power Credit Union Maruschka Loupis & Associates Penrith Returned Services League Sydney Ports Corporation Regimental Trust Fund, Victoria Barracks Royal Caribbean & Celebrity Cruises Svitzer Australasia

History Week seminar Titanic threads: elegantly Edwardian 6–8 pm Wednesday 12 September Join designer and head of costume at NIDA Fiona Reilly, and author and historian Inger Sheil, in this lively History Week seminar inspired by our exhibition Remembering Titanic – 100 years. Discover the process of designing costume for film and theatre productions, enjoy a parade of belle époque fashions similar to those worn by passengers. Enjoy light refreshments and an after-hours viewing of the exhibition.

Members $18. Guests $20.

Bookings essential 9298 3655 or online www.anmm.gov.au/events

Family fun day Talk Like a Pirate Day 11 am–3 pm Sunday 16 September Join Talk Like a Pirate Day celebrations at the museum: dress in pirate costume, follow a treasure trail around the galleries, enjoy a swashbuckling family film and get your pirate face painted on. Visit Kids on Deck to decorate a pirate hat, make a bandanna, a treasure chest or a mermaid shadow puppet.

5–12 years. Members FREE

right: A Frolows/ANMM centre: J Mellefont/ANMM far right: Sheila Bowtle photograph

Learn Vietnamese puppetry

Fantastic pho for families

Angler fish at Bare Island

Spring holidays 22 September–7 October Free holiday activities for Members

Family event Edwardian family picnic at Rodd Island

Afternoon tea in the lounge Members in conversation Shiela Bowtle

11 am – 3.30 pm Sunday 23 September

3–4 pm Sunday 30 September

Don some Edwardian splendour, pack your cucumber sandwiches and freshen up your picnic napery. It’s a day for boaters, blazers, ringlets, whites, lace and parasols – think Titanic and Downton Abbey! Enjoy a cruise to Rodd Island for a delightful picnic day with prizes for best dressed, portrait photos, hat-making and traditional garden games including croquet, chess, boules and sack, egg and spoon or three-legged races.

Experience Sydney’s underwater wonderland from the perspective of our own scubadiving enthusiast Shiela Bowtle. A keen diver worldwide since 1997 Shiela has a wealth of underwater experiences to share through spectacular photographs and slides.

Holiday-time Kids on Deck Dragons, dreams and dragnets 10 am–4 pm (hourly sessions) daily during school holidays Create your own beautiful paper lanterns, dragon puppets and lotus flower sculptures while you discover amazing true stories of journeys to freedom. Learn about Vietnamese culture through art making and interactive games and be inspired by our Vietnamese fishing boat Tu Do (Freedom) that carried refugees to safer shores.

5–12 years. FREE

For kids on holidays Cabinet of curiosities touch trolley Journeys by sea 11 am–12 noon & 2–3 pm daily Touch wonderful and curious objects from our education collection and discover their mysterious past.

FREE

BOOKINGS AND ENQUIRIES Booking form on reverse of mailing address sheet. Please note that booking is essential: online at anmm.gov.au/membersevents or phone (02) 9298 3646 (unless otherwise indicated)

Adults and children 5–14 years.

Member family $100. Guest family $110 (includes 2 adults and up to 4 children).

Additional adult/child $25.

Bookings essential: 9298 3646 or email members@anmm.gov.au

Noodle know-how!

Family cooking workshops: Pho-tastic 4–6.30 pm Wednesday 26, Thursday 27 September Join a professional chef and learn how to create a delicious Vietnamese noodle dish to taste and take home. Test your culinary skills with cooking challenges and mystery ingredient games then enjoy a familyfriendly interactive tour and learn the story behind our refugee vessel Tu Do.

FREE

Tour Garden Island naval heritage 10 am–1.30 pm Thursday 4 October Experience a behind-the-scenes guided tour of Garden Island heritage precinct with representatives of the Naval Historical Society of Australia. Visit the secure precinct, the HMAS Kuttabul Memorial, chapel and heritage buildings including the original boatshed and the top of the Captain Cook Dock. You will then have the option of taking a self-guided tour of the RAN Heritage Centre.

Members $27. Guests $32.

Includes guided tour and light lunch at the Salt Horse Café in the RAN Heritage Centre.

Catch the 10 am ferry from Circular Quay to Garden Island

Ages 5–12 years and adults.

Members $20. Guests $25.

Bookings essential: 9298 3655

or email members@anmm.gov.au before sending form with payment.

All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change.

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Classic & Wooden Boat Festival in spring

Flinders and Baudin meet off South Australia

Dining in officers’ wardroom on Vampire

Happy hour in the lounge!

Classic & Wooden Boat Festival

Author talk The Great Race: The race between the English and French to complete the map of Australia

Naval tradition

4–5.30 pm Friday–Sunday 12–14 October The Classic & Wooden Boat Festival sails its way to the museum for two days of lively entertainment, competitive boatbuilding, gorgeous boats, great activities, competitions, music, displays and a whole lot more! Check our website for more details. After a busy day at the festival come and relax in the Members lounge over wine and light refreshments.

FREE

Spring walk Pyrmont walk: Getting to know the neighbourhood 9.30 am Thursday 18 October Meet at the museum for coffee in the Members lounge then join your guide Alan Graham for a guided walk exploring the history and changing face of our local area, Pyrmont. Trace the chequered history of Pyrmont, once the centre of Sydney shipping and manufacturing, and learn how it evolved into the urban hub it is today.

Members $25. Includes light lunch afterwards

EMAIL BULLETINS Have you subscribed to our email bulletins yet? Email your address to members@anmm.gov.au to ensure that you’ll always be advised of activities organised at short notice in response to special opportunities.

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Signals 100 September to november 2012

2–5 pm Sunday 21 October On 8 April 1802 in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicholas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to find out if the east and west coasts, 4,000 kms apart, were part of the same island. Author David Hill tells the story of the harrowing three-year voyages of Baudin and Flinders from diaries and first-hand accounts. The skill and determination of these exceptional mariners led to ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ becoming Australia.

HMAS Vampire wardroom dinner 7–10 pm Saturday 27 October Pass the port at our exclusive Dining in Night with special guest Rear Admiral Simon Harrington ably assisted by his son, Lieutenant Barton Harrington.

Enjoy an evening of fine food and RAN traditions with roots in the Royal Navy.

Cocktails and canapés on deck followed by a three-course meal.

Members $120. Guests $165.

Dress: black tie. Bookings essential as places are limited: 9298 3646

Afternoon tea in the lounge Members in conversation Peter Plowman

Members $25. Guests $30.

Book signing by author, Coral Sea wines and refreshments.

Bookings essential: 9298 3644

3–4 pm Sunday 28 October

Visit Cruise and tour of Quarantine Station

No bookings required

9.30 am–4 pm Wednesday 24 October Uncover the fascinating history of the Quarantine Station, its buildings and surrounds through an in-depth guided tour. Hear personal stories of passengers quarantined and the dedicated staff who lived and worked on site. Bring a picnic lunch to enjoy in the scenic surrounds of North Head National Park. Travel is by fast ferry from the museum’s wharves.

Members $59. Guests $65.

Bookings essential: WEA 9264 2781 or online at www.weasydney.com.au

Maritime researcher, writer and popular speaker talks about growing up in Bermuda, shipwreck at 12 and a love of great ocean liners.

Lecture and art tour The ship in art 9 30 am–1.30 pm Thursday 1 November This is a rare opportunity to inspect one of the country’s finest private maritime art collections, featuring many great Australian and international marine artists past and present. Maritime artist Stan Stefaniak talks about 200 years of this artistic tradition; morning tea in the Members lounge is followed by a chartered bus trip to view the magnificent private gallery and collection of connoisseur and publisher Mr John Hannan.

Members $40. Guests $45. Bookings essential as numbers limited: 9298 3644

far left: J Mellefont/ANMM centre: John Alcott ANMM collection left: ANMM photograph

Members events

right: A Frolows/ANMM centre: courtesy the publisher far right: Courtesy Water Police

Welcome Wall unveiling ceremony

Courage under pressure: meet the author

Latest generation of Water Police cruiser

Public celebration Welcome Wall unveiling ceremony

Special Remembrance Day

From 10.30 am Sunday 4 November

Ceremony starts 10.40 am Sunday 11 November

Special visit Meet the neighbours Water Rats: Australia’s oldest Police Force

The Welcome Wall at the Australian National Maritime Museum honours all who have migrated from countries around the world to live in Australia. New panels of names are unveiled twice a year. The ceremony includes guest speakers and entertainment.

All are welcome to join us FREE

Afternoon tea in the lounge Members in conversation John Papenhuyzen 3–4 pm Sunday 4 November Meet John Papenhuyzen, volunteer guide at the museum, and hear fascinating stories from his rich and varied career.

Born in Holland, this Dutch Merchant Navy sailor ‘swallowed the anchor’ when he met his wife in Perth. John’s family is remembered on the Welcome Wall. Dutch treats will be served with afternoon tea.

Bookings not required

BOOKINGS AND ENQUIRIES Booking form on reverse of mailing address sheet. Please note that booking is essential: online at anmm.gov.au/membersevents or phone (02) 9298 3646 (unless otherwise indicated) or email members@anmm.gov.au before sending form with payment.

All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change.

Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the Armistice ending World War I (1914–18). Each year the museum is proud to hold a special ceremony beside the celebrated WWII commando boat Krait.

Please join us for the minute of silence at 11 am.

Remembrance Day author talk One False Move: the Mine-Busters’ Story 2–4 pm Sunday 11 November In WWII, five naval officers – one Englishman and four Australians – battled terrifying odds to defeat Hitler’s ‘secret weapons’ – parachute mines – on land and beneath the seas of Britain and Europe. The Australians all won the George Cross and became successively Australia’s most decorated naval war heroes. Robert Macklin, author of 21 books of history and biography, is introduced by one of the heroes’ descendants: Alexander Downer.

Members $25. Guests $30.

Coral Sea wines and refreshments.

Bookings essential: 9298 3646

9.30 am–12 noon Thursday 15 November Enjoy morning tea in the Members lounge then board our vessel for a short cruise to Balmain for a guided tour of the Water Police base and its vessels. The history of the Water Police goes back to the formation of the ‘Row Boat Guard’ in an August 1789 edict from Governor Phillip.

Learn more on this fascinating tour.

Members $30. Guests $40.

Includes morning tea, cruise and tour

Special 21st Members anniversary lunch 11.30 am–2.30 pm Sunday 25 November Book early for our special anniversary lunch with museum director Kevin Sumption, council chairman Peter Dexter and special guest speaker Ann Sherry ao, museum councillor and CEO of Carnival Cruises.

Enjoy fellow Members’ company and a delicious three-course lunch from Laissez–faire, our award-winning caterers, accompanied by Coral Sea wines.

This is a festive event not to be missed!

Members $90. Guests $105. Meet in the museum foyer

For your diary Preview: Ships and the Sea 8 December time TBC Bring the family to preview our big, exclusive summer attraction out of Finland – the ultimate hands-on learning installation that unravels the world of ships and seamanship.

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RMS Titanic leaving Southampton

P&O liner SS Maloja on 1910 poster

Rescued refugees fly South Vietnam flag

Remembering Titanic – 100 years

P&O celebrating 175 years

Escape from Vietnam

29 March–11 November 2012

17 October 2012 – 3 March 2013

13 June–14 October 2012

Titanic was to be the greatest ship afloat, shining proof of the industrial power of the modern world. The vision was shattered on the first voyage, when Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on 15 April 1912 with the loss of over 1,500 lives. To mark this centenary, the construction, disaster, rediscovery and controversy surrounding the sinking and salvage are explored.

The exhibition features original costumes and props from the 1997 movie Titanic, lent by 20th-Century Fox.

A small selection of posters, photographs and prints from the museum’s extensive P&O archive marks the 175th anniversary of the iconic shipping line in 2012. P&O has played a significant role in Australia’s maritime and immigration history since the first mail service from the UK to Australia was established in 1852.

A selection of 14 photographs from the collection of the Archive of Vietnamese Boat People documents one of the largest mass migrations in modern history – the exodus of boat people from Vietnam to South-East Asian refugee camps in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Principal partner

ADMISSION Refund of your entry fees if you become a Member during your visit!

Galleries & Exhibitions Ticket Adult $7 Child (4–15 years)/Concession $3.50 Family (2 adults + 3 children) $17.50 Members/Australian pensioners/ Children under 4 FREE Big Ticket (Galleries & Exhibitions + Vessels + Kids on Deck) Adult $25 Child (4–15 years)/Concession/ Pensioners $10 Family (2 adults + 3 children) $60 Members/Children under 4 FREE Group bookings (10 or more people) 20% discount on ticket prices FREE ENTRY to galleries & exhibitions on the FIRST THURSDAY of the month (excluding public and school holidays) P&O The White Sisters billboard, 1930s

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far left: Titanic in Photographs: Klistorner & Hall below left: ANMM Collection centre: ANMM Collection left: Archive of Vietnamese Boat People photo by Cap Anamur volunteer

Exhibitions

below: Sydney Heritage Fleet right: A Frolows/ANMM centre: ANMM photograph far right: Dennis Nona 1993 ANMM Collection

Exhibitions

The famous Taipan, Wharf 7 foyer

Aloft in Tasmania, March 2012

Naath (Dugong hunting platform), detail

Seaworthy & Seachange

HM Bark Endeavour replica

ANMM travelling exhibitions

Now open to the public

The replica of James Cook’s famous ship, His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour, has returned to go on display at the museum after her historic 2011–2012 circumnavigation of Australia, and a voyage to observe the Transit of Venus at Lord Howe Island.

The ship has reopened to the public and school groups for tours of her upper and lower decks, with cabins and living spaces authentically fitted out as they were in 1770 – just as though the officers, scientists and men who sailed with Cook had stepped out for a moment.

Freshwater Saltwater – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints

The Wharf 7 Maritime Heritage Centre foyer now houses a spectacular new display of classic watercraft – all on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels – plus engines and major artefacts, from Sydney Heritage Fleet and the National Maritime Collection.

Explore the history of Pyrmont and the nearby industrial harbourscape, placing our modern setting in its historical context.

Wharf 7 also houses the collections, libraries, workshops and offices of both ANMM and Sydney Heritage Fleet.

Guided tours will start in October.

See lightship CLS4 Carpentaria and the barque James Craig alongside.

2 August–10 October 2012 Bribie Island Seaside Museum Prints from the museum’s collection commemorate the rich living relationship between Indigenous people and water.

Vivid representations of marine life and environments celebrate the survival of these communities and their struggle for justice and land and sea rights.

Tour of the ship included in Big Ticket.

Members FREE. Check opening dates and times on 02 9298 3777 www.anmm.gov.au/endeavour

Barque James Craig

Under reconstruction

Sydney Heritage Fleet’s magnificent 1874 iron-hulled barque James Craig was recommissioned in 2000 after an awardwinning 30-year restoration – one of only four such vessels in the world that are still sailing. The ship is open for inspection daily, though please note that she sails on some Saturdays or Sundays.

Please note that one of the museum’s core exhibitions, Commerce – the working sea, has been shut down as part of a redevelopment of museum facilities.

Its themes of whaling, fishing, coastal shipping and harbours will be reinterpreted in the future. We request your patience during construction.

Joint ticketing with the Sydney Heritage Fleet. Sundays. Check www.shf.org.au for inspection and sailing details

1874 tall ship James Craig, Sydney Heritage Fleet

Signals 100 September to november 2012

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A boat called

Freedom The museum’s curator of post-Federation immigration, Kim Tao, writes about the research, conservation and interpretation of the ANMM’s unique Vietnamese refugee boat that arrived in Darwin in 1977 – a tribute to the determination of the man who built it to carry his family to a better life.

One morning I was sitting in my office when I got a phone call from the Immigration Department who said we had three more refugee boats come in to Darwin last night. I went out there, spent time on the boats and started shooting lots of black and white film. The people just looked happy to have made it safely to Australia. The photos were front page of the West Australian, The Australian, Darwin Star. The day after, all the major TV channels arrived in Darwin from down south… Michael Jensen

Refitted and prepared for display during Refugee Week 17–23 June 2012, the Vietnamese refugee vessel Tu Do (foreground) proudly takes its place with the other historic vessels of the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Photographer J Mellefont/ANMM following pages: Vietnamese refugee boats PK3402 and Tu Do (right) in Darwin, 1977.

Silver gelatin print, ANMM Collection.

Reproduced courtesy of photographer Michael Jensen

On 21 November 1977 a photographer working for the Australian Government, Michael Jensen, captured a moment in history as six Vietnamese refugee boats docked in Darwin Harbour in a single day.

In 1990 the Australian National Maritime Museum acquired one of these boats, Tu Do, to explore what was at that time one of the most significant recent themes in Australia’s maritime history – the arrival of seaborne refugees and asylum seekers. This year, following an almost decade-long restoration program, we have finally returned Tu Do to the configuration documented in Jensen’s photographs, when the vessel carried 31 refugees, including South Vietnamese businessman Tan Thanh Lu and his young family, to freedom.

The Tu Do project has yielded a fascinating personal case study of one group of refugees, as related in stories by curators Helen Trepa in Signals No 33 (December 1995) and Lindl Lawton in Signals No 72 (September 2005). But it also provides an equally interesting case study of the unique challenges faced by museums that care for large working objects such as boats.

These range from the practical challenges of sourcing materials and learning traditional boatbuilding techniques, to conceptual debates about preservation and restoration, particularly for objects that were not built to stand the test of time.

In 1975, after the end of the Vietnam War, 30-year-old Tan Lu pooled resources with three friends on the southern island of Phu Quoc and built a fishing boat specifically to escape Communist Vietnam. In doing so he would become part of one of the largest mass migrations in modern history – the exodus of the Vietnamese boat people. He called his fishing boat Tu Do, which means ‘Freedom’ in Vietnamese.

Tan built Tu Do to the design of a drag-net fishing boat typical of the island region, 18.25 metres long with a mast forward and a cabin and wheelhouse aft.

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He called his fishing boat Tu Do, which means ‘Freedom’ in Vietnamese.

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Tan initially used the boat for fishing to divert the suspicion of the authorities and to help pay for crucial supplies such as food, diesel fuel and a spare engine

top to bottom: Shipwrights Michael Whetters and Ron McJannett during extensive conservation and repair work to the vessel’s hull in 2004. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Shipwrights Tom Kershaw and Matt McKinlay prepare to paint Tu Do’s hull, 2012.

Photographer Phil McKendrick/ANMM Shipwright Tom Kershaw, apprentice shipwright Clarke Prior, apprentice boiler maker Ben Daley and shipwright and painter Teresa McKinlay dress the restored Tu Do for Refugee Week, 17–23 June 2012. Photographer Kim Tao/ANMM above right: Tu Do revisions to suit the vessel’s configuration on arrival in Darwin in 1977.

Plan drawn by David Payne/ANMM, 2011

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Signals 100 September to november 2012

He initially used the boat for fishing to divert the suspicion of the authorities and to help pay for crucial supplies such as food, diesel fuel and a spare engine.

Prior to departure in September 1977 Tan staged an engine breakdown so that surveillance of Tu Do would be relaxed.

He installed the more powerful replacement engine and his group of 38 passengers, including his pregnant wife Tuyet (27), daughters Dzung (6) and Dao (4), son Mo (2), and relatives, friends and neighbours, set off in the dark. The children had been given cough medicine to keep them quiet, but as they reached deeper water, a head count revealed that Dzung had been left sleeping on the shore. They returned to find her and the voyage began.

With gold and cash hidden about the vessel, Tu Do outpaced the notorious Gulf of Thailand pirates and landed in Mersing, Malaysia, where eight exhausted passengers were permitted to disembark as refugees. Tan had relatives in the United States, but after weeks of

frustrating negotiations with US Immigration officials, he opted to set sail for Australia with his remaining 30 passengers. Off Flores in Indonesia they rescued another refugee boat, PK3402, which had run aground, and towed it across the Timor Sea. The boats landed near Darwin on 21 November. Tan and his crew had navigated more than 6,000 kilometres using a simple compass and a map torn from the lid of a school desk.

The Lu family were transferred to Wacol Migrant Hostel in Brisbane and were granted asylum after six months.

In 1978, while at Wacol, Tan arranged to sell Tu Do to a Darwin local, who then sold it to a Cairns man in 1985.

Both owners made minor modifications to the vessel, such as removing its awning and winch, fitting rails and seating, and painting over its simple sky blue colour scheme, which Tan had originally chosen to blend into the ocean.

However Tu Do’s hull, deck and cabin structure were left largely intact by the new Australian owners.

When the museum acquired Tu Do in 1990, very little was known about the boat’s history. Its name, meaning ‘freedom’, hinted at the motives of its passengers. But it was not until 1995 that a museum curator was able to track down Tan Lu and his family in northern New South Wales. The museum brought Tan and his son Mo to Sydney, where they inspected Tu Do and provided invaluable information about its construction and original appearance.

Using this information, museum staff completed the first Vessel Management Plan for Tu Do in 2003 and commenced a program to restore the vessel to its appearance in 1977 – the most significant period in the boat’s history. It was around this time that we received the tragic news that Tan had died during a business trip to Vietnam. The restoration program took on even greater meaning – it became a way of preserving Tan’s legacy as well as documenting the arrival of the first Indochinese boat people in the late 1970s.

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With gold and cash hidden about the vessel, Tu Do outpaced the notorious Gulf of Thailand pirates and landed in Mersing, Malaysia

This was a period of great social change in Australia. The Vietnamese initially received a warm welcome from Australian authorities, and their arrival coincided with major shifts in immigration legislation, including the final dismantling of the White Australia policy that had been in place since 1901. Tu Do provides a fascinating contrast to more recent unauthorised boat arrivals in Australia, which have contributed to a growing culture of fear in both the political and public discourse. This modest fishing vessel remains a powerful vehicle through which we can examine past and present immigration debates that are a central part of our maritime history.

The Tu Do restoration program was developed by a team comprising curatorial and conservation staff together with staff of the museum’s fleet section which has the important (and very large) task of maintaining our floating collection – one of the largest and most challenging of any maritime museum in the world.

The Tu Do program was underpinned by extensive research into Vietnamese fishing boat construction and wooden boat restoration, as well as oral histories and discussions with the Lu family, interviews with subsequent owners, and Michael Jensen’s photographs of Tu Do arriving in Darwin in 1977.

The first stage of the program (2003–08) involved repairing and stabilising the hull and wheelhouse, 48

Signals 100 September to november 2012

while trying to retain as much original fabric as possible. Tu Do’s wheelhouse was removed for strengthening on shore, under cover, and the powerful Jinil diesel engine that had been installed to outrun pirates was restored with parts sourced in Korea or manufactured by museum shipwrights.

Shipwrights also removed Tu Do’s deck to access its hull structure and replaced damaged sections of the framing and planking with Australian hardwoods, which have similar properties to the original South-East Asian timbers.

Shipwrights utilised techniques that were consistent with those of the builder and its era of construction, such as using trunnels (wooden pegs) instead of nails.

Once the internal structure was sound the deck planking, restored engine and wheelhouse were reinstalled, making Tu Do the only fully operational refugee boat displayed on water in Australia.

The second stage (2009–12) involved reconstruction and repainting, and relied heavily on the visual evidence in Jensen’s photographs. Elements identifiable in the photographs included an awning over the deck, supported between the mast and cabin by a beam, tree branches and bamboo poles; makeshift timber barricades on the port side of the vessel; a trawl winch on top of the cabin; and a very basic plank toilet at the stern – nothing more than a small wooden platform enclosed by a hessian sack for privacy.

Plans were drawn up by curator David Payne to show the design and dimensions of each element, as well as its position on the vessel as determined from the 1977 photographs. Our fleet team scoured different timber yards to find replacement timbers and weathered boards, and also sourced props such as branches, bamboo, steel drums, a tarpaulin and old rope to dress the vessel. As elements were constructed and installed on deck, Tu Do’s original configuration slowly re-emerged. The final step was to return the vessel to its arrival colour scheme.

After arriving in Australia Tu Do was painted several times by its subsequent owners, and was delivered to the museum in 1990 with a white hull and a multicoloured cabin reminiscent of various South-East Asian fishing boat styles, but not the colours with which the boat arrived in Darwin. Museum conservators took paint samples to trace back the chronology to the original colour scheme.

Using these samples and information gleaned from interviews with the Lu family, we were able to construct

a detailed paint scheme for Tu Do. The Jensen photographs, although black and white, were also helpful in determining the different paint tones, while research into Vietnamese fishing boat livery provided a background to traditional trims. Once Tuyet Lu and her eldest daughter Dzung identified the correct sky blue colour from paint charts we were ready to commence painting.

Tu Do was slipped at a boatyard in North Sydney, where shipwrights painted its hull blue with a coat of red anti-fouling paint below the waterline. The vessel registration number ‘VN,KG,1062A,DC’, identifying it as a motorised fishing boat of Vietnam’s Kien Giang province, was painted on the bow. The numbers added up to nine – Tan’s lucky number.

Tu Do was then returned to the museum’s floating vessel marina, where shipwrights completed the paintwork on the deck, cabin and mast. Trim details were added, such as white beading around the wheelhouse panel frames and red on the gunwale, mast and stem. Finally, replica fuel drums were installed on deck, fishing nets were suspended from the winch mechanism and a tarpaulin was fitted over the reconstructed awning to restore Tu Do to the configuration photographed

by Michael Jensen when it docked in Darwin on a steamy November day 35 years ago.

For me it was a defining moment as I watched our fleet team install the tarpaulin, huddling beneath the low canopy as they tied up the ropes.

I imagined the conditions as Tan Lu and his crew assembled this makeshift shelter out on the open sea, having risked everything on a voyage into the unknown.

It brought home the terrifying reality of their escape and validated the museum’s rationale for restoring Tu Do. As the issue of unauthorised boat arrivals continues to dominate political and public debate, Tu Do stands as testament to the courage, hope and ingenuity exhibited

by Tan, his family and their fellow passengers. It provides museum visitors with a compelling, tangible insight into the nature of refugee journeys and their enduring impact on individual lives.

For Tuyet Lu, who still lives in northern NSW, the restored Tu Do evokes mixed emotions. When she saw photos of the boat recently, Tuyet was reminded of how grateful she was to arrive in Australia but also how sad she felt to leave her homeland for a country so far away. Above all she was reminded of her late husband Tan and their journey in a fishing boat called Freedom. 

clockwise from top left: Lu family on the deck of Tu Do in Darwin, 1977.

Left to right: Tan Lu (in white shirt), daughters Dzung and Dao (standing and sitting on hatch) and wife Tuyet (in spotted shirt). Silver gelatin print, ANMM Collection.

Reproduced courtesy of photographer Michael Jensen The late Captain Tan Lu and his son Mo revisit Tu Do at the museum for the first time in 1995.

Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Tuyet Lu on the Gold Coast in 2010. She was 27 and pregnant when she fled Vietnam. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Elder daughter Dzung Lu in 2010. She was six when she voyaged to Darwin on Tu Do. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Younger daughter Dao Lu at work in Surfers Paradise in 2010. She was four during the Tu Do voyage.

Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Mo Lu with wife Lan and son Caleb in Brisbane in 2010. He was two when the family left Vietnam.

Photographer A Frolows/ANMM Quoc Lu at work on the Gold Coast in 2010.

He was carried, unborn, by his mother on Tu Do’s voyage to Australia. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM

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Polly Woodside

survives and thrives Melbourne’s barque Polly Woodside, a fine example of a late 19th-century, iron-hulled, ocean-going trading ship, was awarded the World Ship Trust medal for achievement in the preservation of maritime heritage. Martin Green of the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), relates her controversial evolution from a cherished relic in a run-down dockland to today’s tourist drawcard in a smart urban redevelopment.  

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Maritime heritage around Australia Melbourne VIC

A real Atlantic roll on our beam kept the decks well filled with water, there were not many dry clothes aboard. I had wet ones on for 6 days

Special effects expert Aaron Beaucaire stumbles up the gangway dragging a canvas fire hosepipe. His head pokes out of an enormous blue waterproof suit. Dockside, a large water tanker is maneuvered into position opposite the ship. He gives his assistant a big thumbs up. The truck dims its lights and its air brakes hiss as they come on. He grins at us. ‘I’m going to make you one hell of a storm.’

It is a cool October night aboard the tall ship Polly Woodside in Melbourne and we are making a film about the story of George Andrews, the ship’s carpenter who sailed on her from Lyttleton, New Zealand, to Glasgow in 1904.

On Sundays he jotted his thoughts in a small red notebook: about the voyage, his fellow seamen and life as a crew member on a deep-water cargo ship. George could hardly have imagined that his modest writings would become the basis for a widescreen film shot aboard the ship 105 years later, and that his adventurous voyage would be shown to thousands of visitors at a new maritime gallery.

The wind keeping us close hauled and a real Atlantic roll on our beam kept the decks well filled with water, there were not many dry clothes aboard. I had wet ones on for 6 days.’ George Andrews’ diary, Sunday 17 April 1904

these pages: Cast and crew making the interpretive film Polly Woodside that’s screened to visitors in the Gallery Theatre. Above: cinematographer Noel Jones; opposite: Joss Gower as George Andrews struggles against the elements; bearded Andy Gischjus plays one of the ablebodied seamen. previous pages: Polly Woodside incorporated into the urban renewal precinct of Melbourne’s Docklands, adjacent a modern convention centre.

National Trust of Australia (Victoria) photographs

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Polly Woodside is special because ships like her were once commonplace: a deepwater merchant vessel that traded cargo around the globe. Now she is one of only a handful of such ships remaining in the world that reveal the story of a widespread maritime culture that has all but disappeared.

Polly Woodside is a barque – two square-rigged masts and a rear mast or mizzen with a gaff (fore-and-aft) rig – designed to be efficient, fast and economical. She required only a small crew to carry and load bulk cargoes such as coal, timber and wheat.

George Andrews’ diary remarks on the hard work this meant for the crew.

Belfast shipping magnate, William Woodside, was intent on building a fleet of merchant vessels for international trade between the United Kingdom and South American ports. Several of his ships were named after women in the Woodside family. He named his new ship Polly Woodside after his wife Marian Woodside whom he affectionately nicknamed ‘Polly’ – because, he said, she ‘talked all the time like a parrot’.

Built in Workman & Clark’s shipyards in Belfast in 1885, Polly Woodside was

designed to service the new steamship industry by carrying bulk coal from Britain to South America. The golden days of sail when tall ships raced the first tea chests across the globe from China to England, or carried the pianos and fine furniture of new settlers to the colonies, were disappearing. Steamships had been a steadily improving technology since the 1840s. Despite their relatively slow speed, their reliability and ability to sail the newly opened, shorter sea routes through the Suez and, much later, Panama canals, changed the economic balance in favor of steam.

Ironically, our film crew is almost the same size as the ship’s original complement of 14 – sailors, cook, officers and captain. In the ’tween decks area below we have set up makeshift wardrobe and makeup departments. Oriana Merullo is sewing and refitting oilskins for the cast. Some of the actors are stuntmen, some are members of local motorcycle clubs and some are student actors.

The men get fitted into waterproofs before sitting in makeup to have newly applied blisters, skin lesions, realistic beards and moustaches fitted. There are plenty of hearty growls and chuckles as they are transformed into rough, worn, red-eyed sailors.

Director Andrew Ferguson grips the monitor box with both hands, eyes glued to the screen. ‘Hey. Move to the left a mill.

We’re that close you’re falling out of frame.’ Dressed in black oilskins and mackintoshes like a group of sodden crows, each actor takes hold of a wooden bar of the capstan and tests the tension in the fist-sized rope. The camera crew braces the camera tripod. The main yard creaks as the eight sailors heave against the bars and bring tension into the line.

‘That’s it. Roll camera. Cue rain. And.. action!’ Aaron throws open the throttle on the water tanker pump and jets of water rain down on the deck. The cast almost disappear in drenching cascades in the cold night air. Aaron Beaucaire’s storm has begun.

It was the fore top-gallant. Didn’t I cling to the yard, for over a minute, I was too scared to move, the sail didn’t interest me at all but I got over it and found my way down...’

George Andrews on his first attempt at going aloft, Sunday 31 January 1904.

Polly Woodside rounded Cape Horn 16 times between 1885 and 1904 as she worked her way trading in nitrate and coal around the world. George’s Andrew’s voyage was one of her last as Polly Woodside before she was sold to New

Zealand owners A H Turnbull and Co and underwent a change of name to Rona.

She then traded mainly between New Zealand, Australia and San Francisco until 1922 while passing through a succession of New Zealand owners.

After a career as a merchant vessel tramping the oceans of the globe her world narrowed after 1925, with her latter days spent shunted from dock to dock in Melbourne’s Yarra River as a dismasted coal refuelling barge.

During World War 2 Rona served as a coal lighter in New Guinea, and finished her working life in Melbourne servicing a diminishing number of steamships.

Fortunately Polly Woodside was rescued by the National Trust, escaping the oblivion of scuttling in Bass Strait, the fate of many of Melbourne’s redundant tall-ship merchant fleet.

Her final owner, Howard Smith Industries Pty Ltd, handed over the bill of sale for one cent to the National Trust in 1968. A dedicated community of local volunteers gathered to preserve and reconstruct the ship. The project was underpinned by the expertise of past mariners, especially Captain Gerry Heyen who surveyed the ship and drew up the plans, and sail maker Tor Lindqvist who undertook the rebuilding of masts, spars and rigging. An enormous effort by maritime volunteers and enthusiasts over the next decade was supported by public and private donations, ranging from pennies collected by schoolchildren to the ambitious 71 Seamen Appeal that raised over $350,000 from the public.

After restoration Polly Woodside was permanently moored in Duke’s Dry Dock in 1978, a rare, surviving remnant of the original Port of Melbourne infrastructure.

The dock site, leased from the State Government of Victoria for the museum, had originally been in the heart of Melbourne’s original port and its associated maritime industries.

This riverside site became the home of the Melbourne Maritime Museum, which flourished amid the original factories and old cargo sheds that lined South Wharf along the Yarra River.

The Melbourne Maritime Museum quickly established itself as an important heritage attraction for maritime enthusiasts, visitors and volunteers.

It successfully ran school programs, gathered a large and enthusiastic volunteer group, ran popular community events and was held in affection by countless children and adults for its atmosphere and its exhibits of ship models and remarkable artefacts.

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clockwise from above: Shaping the visitor experience through a range of presentations, including a rotating chamber said to simulate the motion of the sea.

Polly Woodside in her later incarnation as Rona, late 19th or early 20th century, photographer and date unknown.

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But just as the nature of the maritime industry changed over time, so too did the landscape surrounding Polly Woodside’s new haven at the Melbourne Maritime Museum. Successive state governments drew up plans for the old South Wharf site and from the early 1990s Polly Woodside faced new challenges to her future.

The State Government’s vision for South Wharf was to transform the area of heavy industry, factories and cargo sheds, disconnected from the city, into an extension of the city’s business centre on the northern side of the river, and make it a natural continuation of Southbank, Melbourne’s central entertainment district, on the southern side. By 2005 the plans included Australia’s largest international convention space of 5,000-seats, multilevel shopping centres, a new 20-storey international hotel and extensive riverside restaurant strips. The whole precinct’s connecting traffic spines included 3,000 car parking spaces, walkways, bicycle paths, and a $25-million pedestrian footbridge spanning the river to reconnect both banks to a new commercial heart of sky-rise developments.

In the midst of this development was the Melbourne Maritime Museum,

a collection of original cargo sheds and historic buildings re-purposed as a museum containing hundreds of artefacts and models.

In 2006 the Melbourne Maritime Museum was closed and the site, allocated to the National Trust, was considerably reduced in size as part of the new development.

The cultural landscape, as well as the physical landscape, surrounding the Melbourne Maritime Museum was also changing. People expected museums to appear modern and lively with new technology and displays. The biggest threat to Polly Woodside’s future was being seen to be irrelevant. Visitation had steadily declined over the years and as the dry dock could not be operated, and the ship was too tall to be towed elsewhere for slipping, the long-term conservation needed to properly maintain the ship’s hull was impossible. The National Trust had to secure Polly Woodside’s future and regenerate new public interest in this old ship in a new landscape.

The main challenge was how to successfully retain the Polly Woodside and Duke’s Dock as a last vestige of the original landscape, and as a surviving link to Melbourne’s maritime heritage, in the midst of this transformed

Polly Woodside’s registered gross tonnage was 678 tons. The hull length is 59 m (192 ft), overall length 70 m (230 ft), beam 9 m (30 ft) and estimated area of sail when all sails are set is 1110 sq metres (12,000 sq ft).

environment. These challenges included resolving how to run the site as an independent, commercially profitable enterprise and as a cultural tourism destination without sacrificing the integrity of the site and ship.

Funding from the State Government and a private partnership consortium led to a key conservation measure.

At considerable expense, Duke’s Dock was re-engineered into a serviceable, functioning dry dock. This secured the future preservation measures needed to manage the ship’s hull. In addition, Duke’s Dock’s future was secured through its role as an active dry dock with a purpose.

With the exhibition area at the site considerably reduced, the Trust needed to re-frame the way the museum presented itself to the next generation of tourists, as well as regular museum visitors. A decision was made to focus the site on the story of the Polly Woodside rather than try to encompass the full story of Melbourne’s long maritime history.

The Trust faced many challenges negotiating this new environment.

There was criticism from some supporters about the change of focus and diminution of the site. There were negotiations with developers concerning

the retention of heritage values on South Wharf. There was the task of managing a major building project, dealing with engineering issues and construction companies and fitting out a new gallery with new technology on a tight budget to a tight deadline. Making a film that successfully gave visitors a sense of the real experience of the life of a mariner over a century ago was another new undertaking for a small heritage organisation like the Trust to deliver.

New ideas about ways to appeal to visitors and provide them with an engaging experience included a rotating room in which to experience the motion of the sea, a robotic sailing ship controlled by a touchscreen, crawl spaces and costumes for small children, wall-size graphics and reducing the number of objects on display to just 76 artefacts in themed areas. The Trust managed the re-interpretation of the site using Tandem Design Studio and Round Design to create an imaginative layered space of seven zones. Recently the interior of the new Polly Woodside gallery was featured in design magazine Artichoke. Despite its much smaller site, visitors to the new Polly Woodside rated the new attraction as 9 or 10 out of 10 in a commissioned market survey.

When visitors now arrive at the newly opened Polly Woodside visitor centre, their ticket of entry resembles a crew member’s Ticket of Competency.

They are given a role as a particular real crew member who once worked aboard the ship. Visitors who board the ship are greeted by the First Mate. He explains the ship as if to a new crew member and ‘shows you the ropes’. Sometimes he even asks visitors to raise the mainsail, scrub the decks or use the capstan.

And if you wind your way through the new gallery and enter the theatre that looks and feels like the inside of a tall ship, you can take a seat. There on an enormous screen you can watch the Polly Woodside’s crew at night braving a terrible storm. As they battle to turn the capstan you feel as if you are there with George Andrews one hundred and five years ago, involved in his life or death struggle. And you also know that Aaron Beaucaire, the special-effects man who promised ‘a hell of a storm’, was true to his word.  Polly Woodside and the new Visitor Centre are open from Wednesday to Sunday, situated next to the Melbourne Convention Centre off Clarendon Street, Melbourne.

Visit www.pollywoodside.com.au

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Welcome Tales from the wall

The charmed life of a £10 Pom

From the 1940s to the early 70s the Australian Government subsidised British migrants, charging them only £10 for their passage to a new home.

Welcome Wall historian Veronica Kooyman spoke to Vandra Mellers née Hoiles who sailed with her parents Norman and Enid as ‘ten-pound Poms’ on the Orient liner Otranto.

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With the scars of World War 2 etched into both the landscape and the people of Europe, many ventured across the world in search of a better life. Australia promoted itself as a young country of opportunity in need of new skills and labour. One Australian Government scheme of assisted migration was aimed specifically at the then preferred category of British citizen, and between 1945 and 1972 over one million migrants from the British Isles arrived in Australia as ‘ten-pound Poms’. Norman ‘Vic’ Hoiles, his wife Enid and daughter Vandra were one family that took a chance.

Vic Hoiles met the love of his life, Enid, as a teenager living in the town of Gravesend, in Kent, England, in the 1930s.

Only a few years later, in 1939, Europe plunged into World War 2 and, like many young men, Vic enlisted. The civilian airport located to the east of Gravesend swiftly became a Royal Air Force fighter base and Vic, who had initially joined the Home Guard, was soon attracted to the

RAF. Enid also joined the RAF and worked in the office of the local base.

The first time Vic was shot down, he was piloting a Beaufort bomber while stationed in Cairo. He crashed in the desert, right onto a German land mine, but amazingly Vic survived. Later Vic was flying a Beaufighter over Malta and the Mediterranean, attacking capital warships with torpedoes, when he lost an engine to enemy fire. He was trying to steer back to land when a German plane ‘flew right alongside for several minutes’ (in the words of a yellowing news clipping his family treasures to this day) ‘then waved… and cleared off’. The plane crashed into the sea when its other engine failed and Vic was once again lucky to survive, although the navigator was killed. ‘He had been adrift for some time,’ continues the clipping, until ‘picked up by Air Sea Rescue. Two days in hospital put him right.’

During Vic’s tumultuous war years he and Enid were married. They had their first child, daughter Vandra, in 1946.

Leaving the RAF at the end of the war, Vic was keen to gain his commercial pilot’s license. However, the training site was in Scotland and Enid was unable to stand the extreme cold weather of Scotland.

Choosing to stay in Gravesend, Vic enrolled instead in a local technical college to study architecture and town planning. Though he gained work Vic was still unsettled and the after-effects of war, such as food rationing, were still in place. The naturally athletic Vic played cricket for the local team and through this met another young couple who were considering the move to Australia. The two families decided to try their chance in a new country together and take up the offer of assisted passage to a nation promoted for its climate, space and employment opportunities.

On 4 May 1950 the Hoiles family sailed from England aboard the RMS Otranto, transiting the Suez Canal and stopping in ports including Port Said, Adelaide and Fremantle before disembarking in Sydney.

Otranto was part of the Orient Line; at the time P&O, the oldest and one of the largest cruise lines, was a significant shareholder and by 1960 Orient had become a

The museum’s tribute to migrants, The Welcome Wall, encourages people to recall and record their stories of coming to live in Australia

subsidiary of P&O. (See page 40 for details of an exhibition marking 175 years of the P&O company.)

In Australia the Hoiles family travelled to Tamworth in regional New South Wales to work on the turkey farm owned and run by their sponsor. Shortly afterwards they moved to Bullaburra in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

Vandra recalls fondly the recurrent memory of her father, who constantly ran late, sprinting down the road in the early morning towards the railway station with his tie flapping over his shoulder and his jacket half on. The train guard knew of Vic’s habitual tardiness and would leave the rear carriage door open for him to leap aboard as the train pulled away.

The isolation of the small Blue Mountains community proved a trial for Enid, now at home with two children after a son was born in Australia. Like many migrants she suffered from severe homesickness for many years, missing her family and friends with whom the only contact was by post. She wrote to her mother weekly, and the family’s first trip back to England was not until the 1970s. But Enid knew that her sacrifice allowed her children to have better opportunities and better lives than those on offer back in England.

To help combat the isolation the family once again relocated, this time to bustling Sydney where Vic soon found work as an architect of war-service homes.

He enjoyed this role until the late 1960s when he moved into a private architecture business. Enid was a homemaker with an artistic flair for china painting.

At the age of 39 Vic was diagnosed with bowel cancer, which at that time was almost certainly fatal. At this most difficult of times he retained the knack of survival that had been with him during the war. He found the one professor in Australia who had recently returned from the required surgical training in the United States, and Vic’s surgery at Prince Henry Hospital was one of the first of its type performed successfully in Australia – though not without some post-operative complications. Among these was a serious

clockwise from far left: Norman, Enid and Vandra Hoiles embark for Australia on SS Otranto in 1950.

All photographs reproduced courtesy of Vandra Mellers Flying Officer Vic Hoiles and his bride-to-be Enid Williams, inscribed ‘To my darling husband, Enid xxxxxxxx’ and dated 15 October 1942.

‘All my own work plus a Gerry land mine… 10th Feb ’43’ says the inscription on the back of this photograph of Vic Hoiles with his downed Beaufort.

Orient Liner RMS Otranto, 20,000 tons.

Golden Staph infection. His friends banded together and paid for a private nurse to care for him and ensure his full recovery.

Both children of Vic and Enid enjoyed successes that reinforced the parents’ decision to uproot their lives and move to Australia – as it did for so many migrants.

Vandra studied dress design at art school until her father was diagnosed with cancer, when she left her studies to work and help support the family. She later graduated from secretarial school, and worked in this field until she married and had her own family. Since then she has also worked as a social worker and beauty therapist.

Vandra’s brother is a pathologist who now lives on Koh Samui, Thailand. One of Vandra’s sons achieved her father’s dream.

Having heard his grandfather’s wonderful stories of flying planes from a young age, he now holds both commercial and aerobatic pilot licences.

Her father, whom everyone described as a true gentleman, survived until the

grand age of 84 and her mother, who died a couple of years ago, reached 90.

Both had the chance to see and appreciate their children’s successes. In turn Vandra honoured her parents, their vision of a new life and their sacrifices by putting their names and their stories on the Welcome Wall. Their names were unveiled on the Welcome Wall’s latest bronze panel at a ceremony in May this year. 

The Welcome Wall It costs just $105 to register a name and honour your family’s arrival in this great country! We’d love to add your family’s name to The Welcome Wall, cast in bronze, and place your story on the online database at www.anmm.gov.au/ww. So please don’t hesitate to call our staff during business hours with any enquiries on 02 9298 3777.

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Historic Australian Register of Historic Vessels

Watercraft emerge from collections Nine Indigenous watercraft from four major Australian collections were among the 19 craft approved for listing on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels when the ARHV Council met during March 2012. They demonstrate the variety and complexity of the watercraft used around Australia by pre-European communities, says ARHV curator David Payne.

Museum Victoria’s tied-bark canoe comes from the Lake Tyers district in eastern Victoria, where their use was well documented; it was registered with the museum in 1900.

See pages 12–17 for an article about a community project to build a traditional canoe of the Lake Tyers district.

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Two Western Australia Museum craft, among the new additions to the register, were quite intriguing for different reasons. Their Kimberley Coast Indigenous raft, probably acquired in 1911, is either a single-part raft, or one section of a kalwa double raft used by the Bardi and other communities in the Kimberley region. As an original craft made as part of the traditional life in that time, it is an important object to study and compare with recently made rafts of the same construction. Of particular interest is the way in which it shows the evidence of use and wear and tear on the structure. A Drysdale River Indigenous dugout canoe from the north-western Kimberley was collected in 1921 and is on display at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle.

Over four metres long, it is a large

example of its type and has an unusual feature for an Australian-made dugout: there are two planks lashed to the gunwale edge of the hull on either side, increasing the freeboard of the hull.

The South Australian Museum contributed two examples of a Northern Territory sewn-bark canoe, a type used across the northern coastline of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

Each of the pair has a crescent-shaped, slightly raked profile to the bow and stern that defined their particular style compared to other sewn canoes.

Both examples show the branches used for gunwales and frames as support structures within the bark shell.

The neat sewing of the ends is another well preserved feature.

There are also two contrasting examples of sewn-bark canoes from the National Museum of Australia collection, both acquired in 1911 from Bathurst Island in the Northern Territory

by Herbert Basedow (1881–1933), an anthropologist, geologist, explorer

www.anmm.gov.au/arhv This online national heritage project devised and coordinated by the Australian National Maritime Museum reaches across Australia to collate data about the nation’s extant historic vessels, their designers, builders and their stories.

and medical practitioner. Their bark canoes have a very distinct ‘fish-tail’ profile to the bow and stern, and are also sewn together with very neat work.

The support structure of beams, ties and branches at the gunwale edge remain intact and confirm the known details of their standard structure.

Three Indigenous watercraft came from Museum Victoria, and all three represent different regions in the state.

Their Gippsland tied-bark canoe comes from the Lake Tyers district in eastern Victoria and was registered with the museum in 1900. It comes from a region where their use was well documented.

The Yarra River tied-bark canoe was acquired by Museum Victoria in 1941, and its connection to the Yarra River indicates the most southern extent of the known area of use in eastern Australia for tied-bark canoes. Evidence from the previous owner, merchant John Buchan, suggests it was acquired by him earlier than the mid-1870s.

The Bolton bark canoe is a type known as a yuki that was used extensively on the Murray–Darling River system. It comes from the Robinvale district in northwestern Victoria and was registered into the Museum Victoria collection in 1924.

The yuki’s single-sheet construction with minimal support is unique among the

types of Australian Indigenous watercraft, and this superb example has its own individual proportions, giving it a wonderful sculptural quality.

Two more paddle steamers were nominated for the register. PS Canally was built in 1907 as a barge and was then converted in 1912 to a paddle steamer.

Built at Koondrook in NSW by R W Beer for Thomas Freeman, PS Canally worked on the Murray River until the mid-1930s, after which it became a houseboat.

From the 1950s it was abandoned for many years before being raised in 1999.

It is now undergoing restoration.

PS Enterprise was launched in 1878 at Echuca, NSW. At just over 130 years old it is one of the oldest paddle steamers in Australia and internationally. It was used on the Murray River in a variety of roles, but has now been restored and is the largest working exhibit at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. It is operated on Lake Burley Griffin and interprets the paddle steamer’s story in Australia’s history. PS Enterprise still has its original steam engine, but has a new boiler.

Idler is a 21-Foot Restricted Class yacht that was built by Charlie Peel in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1909. It is one of two sister yachts used to form rules for the first Australian national yachting class rule the 21-Foot Restricted Class.

The class was established in Victoria in 1913 and became a national class in 1921 with the aim of re-energising yachting after World War I. Idler is the only one of the pair surviving. The hull shows how its scantlings and basic proportions were

copied for the class. The builder, Charlie Peel, went on to become the principal designer for the class over its long history.

The International 12-Metre Class yacht Australia was built in 1977 in WA by Steve Ward to a design by Bob Miller (later Ben Lexcen) and Johan Valentijn, for Alan Bond’s Western Australian syndicate. It sailed in two unsuccessful Australian challenges for the America’s Cup, in 1977 and 1980. Modified by Miller for the second challenge, Australia won a race against the American defender Freedom. This win and other close results showed that the Australian team was closing the gap toward matching the American syndicates, and provided the momentum and direction needed for the successful 1983 challenge by Australia II. Defender is a trading ketch built in 1895 at Kincumber NSW. It is one of the few surviving Australian coastal trading ketches, and the only surviving vessel from its builder George Frost. It operated across Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania for most of its trading life before World War 2 and set a record passage in the late 1920s. During the war it was a transport vessel. Left idle after the war, it has since been restored and has sailed in Queensland waters as a charter vessel.

Fairy Queen is a riverboat from the lower Murray River and Lake Alexandrina waterways in South Australia, and has been associated with the region for about a century. Thought to have been built between 1910 and 1920, its early use was as a gaff-rigged fishing boat before being converted to a launch. However, from the early 1930s, under the ownership of local identity Hector Semaschko, Fairy Queen became a feature in the region, and remains strongly connected to Semaschko and his stories.

Stan is one of the 40-foot workboats built around Australia in large numbers for military operation during the Second World War. It is understood to have been built at Botterill and Frazer’s yard in Williamstown, Victoria; the exact date is not known, but is unlikely to be earlier than 1943. Stan most probably served with the Army in World War II as a workboat, and then became part of the Royal Australian Navy’s fleet, commissioned with the number AWB 441. It was paid off in 1992. In 2012 it has been restored to an original condition and Signals 100 September to november 2012

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The surviving hull of Idler, used to define rules for the first Australian national yachting class rule, the 21-Foot Restricted Class, established in Victoria in 1913. Photograph Colin Grazules.

All other photographs are reproduced courtesy of the vessel owners.

features its RAN colour scheme. It is now used as a pleasure craft on Sydney Harbour.

The double surf ski built in Sydney

by Roger Ninham in the mid-1960s incorporated features that were new to the type. Two seats built of fibreglass, a relatively new material for skis, were built into the deck instead of it being a flat surface, and a trailing rudder for better control was used for the first time. In 2012 the wooden hull, rudder and moulded fibreglass seating cockpits are all in original condition.

Originally from Perth, Ninham died quite young, but had already become well-known for his champion surfboats.

The runabout See Bee is an intriguing example of a craft built through improvisation and adaptation, a process popularised by many Australian handyman builders. It was built in the early 1960s

by Les Hodge, who fashioned the hull by adapting the fuselage from a wrecked Republic Seabee amphibious aircraft. It was used on Jervis Bay NSW by Hodge until being donated to a museum in the 1990s.

In 2012 it is on display at the Lady Denman Heritage Complex in Huskisson, NSW. The red-gum log boat is another example of possible improvisation. It comes from Wahgunyah, Victoria, in the Murray River region, not far down river from Albury/ Wodonga. There are no records of its period, builder or use; however, it is a very rare example of a regional vessel that combines elements of European colonial boat construction based around the concept of the local yuki style Indigenous bark watercraft.

The main section of the hull is intact and there is clear evidence of how the ends were planked over. It was likely used for transport over short distances, and possibly on one of the tributaries of the Murray rather than the river itself. ď Ž 60

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Idler 1909

HV000475

Builder

Peel Bros

Type

Racing yacht

Red-gum log boat 1925

HV000509

Builder

Unknown

Type

Punt

Stan AWB441 1943

HV000512

Builder

Botterill and Fraser

Type

Work boat

Kimberley Coast raft Pre-1911

HV000513

Builder

Unknown

Type

Indigenous raft

Drysdale River dugout canoe Pre-1921

HV000514

Builder

Unknown

Type

Indigenous canoe

Northern Territory sewn-bark canoe

Defender

Pre-1911

HV000515

1895

HV000523

Builder

Unknown

Builder

George Frost

Type

Indigenous canoe

Type

Trading ketch

Northern Territory sewn-bark canoe

Fairy Queen

Pre-1911

HV000516

1910–20

HV000524

Builder

Unknown

Builder

Unknown

Type

Indigenous canoe

Type

Fishing boat

Double surf ski

Gippsland tied-bark canoe

Mid 1960s

HV000517

Pre1900

HV000525

Builder

Roger Ninham

Builder

Unknown

Type

Surf ski

Type

Indigenous canoe

Bolton bark canoe (yuki)

Australia 1977

HV000518

Pre-1924

HV000526

Builder

Steve Ward

Builder

Unknown

Type

Racing yacht

Type

Indigenous canoe

PS Canally

Yarra River tied-bark canoe

1907

HV000520

Pre-1941

HV000527

Builder

R W Beer

Builder

Unknown

Type

Paddle steamer

Type

Indigenous canoe

PS Enterprise

Bathurst Island bark canoe

1878

HV000521

Pre-1911

HV000528

Builder

William Keir

Builder

Unknown

Type

Paddle steamer

Type

Indigenous canoe

Bathurst Island bark canoe

See Bee 1960s

HV000522

Pre-1911

HV000529

Builder

Les Hodge

Builder

Unknown

Type

Runabout

Type

Indigenous canoe

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Collections

Hands on heirlooms

The museum’s intern program gave two museum-studies students the opportunity to work with this important shipwrights’ toolkit that’s crossed both oceans and generations. Candice Witton of the Sydney Gallery School and Roxanne Truesdale of Macquarie University wrote this report.

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The Higham shipwright tools collection offers a window into the lives and practices of two men working at a pivotal time in maritime history. The tools have travelled across generations and oceans, bringing with them the rich experiences of wooden shipbuilding in the 19th and 20th centuries in England and Australia.

This large set of woodworking tools enjoyed a long and varied career, helping to build the famous sailing barges of the Thames and later used in the service of the Royal Australian Navy before, during and after World War 2.

The internship project at the Australian National Maritime Museum has provided both of us with the opportunity to work with the museum’s registration section on the Higham collection. As museum studies students this has allowed us to apply our knowledge in a practical setting, to extend our understanding of the museum industry and to undertake a journey of

discovery about the world of shipbuilding, as well as the personal connections imbued in this family collection.

For this project we were given the opportunity to register the Higham shipwright tools into the museum’s database. This involved creating entries in the collection management system, taking registration photographs and cataloguing objects for publication to the museum’s online collection site called eMuseum.

We also produced a research paper which assists in further developing the context and history of the tools. As we move through the collection we are uncovering more and more about the period in which these tools were developed and used, and about their owners who occupied two generations of shipbuilding history.

Thomas and William Higham were father and son, whose shipwright origins can be traced to the banks of the River Thames in London. Although steampowered vessels were dominant by the

end of the 19th century there was still a demand for heavy haulage by wooden Thames sailing barges, which Thomas Higham and his brother Charles continued to build at a shipyard near Greenwich. These versatile, shallowdraught vessels – sailed by crews of just two with a sprit-sail rig that could be lowered to pass under bridges– plied the estuaries and coasts and even crossed the English Channel to navigate the European canal network.

The tools of the shipwright were the basis of his livelihood and an invaluable asset. They changed little over time and were treasured items, often handed down from one generation to the next. William, born in 1895, followed in his father’s footsteps and Thomas passed his tools on to his son. These same tools travelled with William to Australia where they continued in use for many years.

They were donated to the museum in 2010 by William’s daughter Joan Copp During the late 19th century there were at least 160 private shipyards lining the shores of the River Thames. Yet as the production of traditionally rigged sailing ships gave way to vessels built of iron and steel in specialised ports closer to the coalfields of the north, London suffered the collapse of an entire industry, with severe social ramifications.

Serious wooden shipbuilding ceased in 1915 after four centuries of intense activity. Young William Higham made the voyage from Britain to Australia in 1920 to work as a naval architect and shipbuilder in Newcastle on the New South Wales central coast. When the Depression hit in 1929, he returned to the UK. In 1939 he was back in Australia to work at Garden Island, Sydney, seconded to the RAN according to family history.

William continued at Garden Island and retired at the age of 65, in about 1960.

Each of the tools from the Higham collection shows evidence of decades of hard work and conveys a rich sense of history, reflecting Thomas and William Higham’s careers.

The collection contains a wide range of items including adzes, caulking irons and auger drill bits, through to hand-made wood planes, held in two purpose-built tool boxes. As the tools have collected a fair bit of rust in their retirement we have been able to gently brush some of this away to better reveal the Higham’s personal touches. It was commonplace for shipwrights to place identifying marks on their tools to ensure they made it back into their rightful toolbox, and we have found the initials ‘TH’ and ‘WH’ inscribed

upon many. It is perhaps the better-loved ones which have had initials carved upon them multiple times.

Along with the owners’ initials we have also found manufacturers logos, which we have been investigating with great curiosity. Through this process we have begun to sketch out the origins of many of the tools, tracing the year and location of their production. Many were forged in the British industrial town of Sheffield, renowned for its steel manufacturing and toolmaking heritage.

While shipwright tools remained littlechanged over time in both their form and utility, the industrial revolution did bring some advances in material technology.

It is interesting to note that the Highams continued to use hand-made wooden planes well after steel-bodied planes came into prominence at the end of the 19th century. These examples give an indication of the deep-running traditions that were upheld by shipwrights.

The process of registering the tools into the ANMM collection is proving to be quite a journey for us as interns.

We have been learning not only about each tool’s function but also how to distinguish between small variations in the vast array of similar objects, particularly the many caulking irons and auger drill bits. The tools featured in the Higham set are fine examples of workmanship. Each individual artefact is fundamental and performs a specialised role in the boatbuilding process.

The Higham tools help to illustrate the history of wooden shipbuilding and so serve as a historical record.

As technology continues to change they will also act as a point of reference for the museum as it explores the evolution of naval engineering. They are fascinating because they were used at a time of great social, economic and technological change, and yet were intrinsically rooted in long-standing shipwright traditions.

What makes this collection particularly interesting are the connections between the epicentre of the maritime industry in Britain and our own maritime heartlands of Newcastle and Sydney, as well as the handing down of a legacy from a father to his son.

These tools have taught us more than we could have anticipated about the development of the shipwright industry, and provided a unique way to learn about the behind-the-scenes world of museums during our internship. Special thanks to curator Stephen Gapps who has provided the background research for our investigations. 

They are fascinating because they were used at a time of great social, economic and technological change, and yet were intrinsically rooted in long-standing shipwright traditions

above: Authors Candice Witton and Roxanne Truesdale with a selection of auger drill bits from the Higham shipwright tool collection.

Photographer A Frolows/ANMM opposite: From the collection: a brace and its auger bit, a marking gauge, a hand-made wooden plane, a plumb bob, a caulking iron, and a wooden-handled V-gouge used for outlining and sometimes decorative work. The adze-head, at far right, was used for shaping and smoothing large pieces of timber and reaching into corners.

This one is stamped ‘W GILPIN/WEDGES MILL/ WARRANTED’ and ‘PAT N 27’.

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Readings Clash of civilisations on the high seas The Last Crusade: The epic voyages of Vasco da Gama

By Nigel Cliff. Atlantic Books, London 2012. Softcover, 560 pp.

ISBN 978 1 84887 018 5.

RRP $35.00

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In 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal, around the Cape of Good Hope, up the Swahili coast of East Africa and then rode the monsoon to Calicut, a fabled emporium of India To do so, he spent four months out of sight of land in the Atlantic, possibly longer than anyone before him. It was an extraordinary feat.

Da Gama’s ships barely floated.

His seafarers had little water and less food. Their bodies were wracked by strange diseases. But this is merely background detail to the story Nigel Cliff tells in The Last Crusade.

Fifteen hundred years after Christ was born, a millennium after the fall of Rome, the world had no shortage of civilisations.

China already had 3,500 years of history behind it. In Egypt, they could remember the names of kings who had ruled 5,000 years before. The arts and sciences were blooming in the Islamic Caliphates, bankrolled by their grip on the silk and spice routes between Asia and the west.

The GDP of India exceeded that of all Europe – much of which was still in the grip of its Dark Ages, backwaters of superstition and starvation where cruelty and warlords ruled.

The story that Cliff relates is the narrative of how this changed. It is the story of the man who, more than any other, enabled what Cliff sees as the world’s first global, solely maritime empire, and in doing so laid the groundwork for 500 years of European world supremacy.

Vasco da Gama was born in 1469 in Sines, a small town on the Atlantic coast some 150 km south of Lisbon. He was, by all accounts, a bit of a thug who came to the notice of the courts for street brawling. More to the point, he also came to the notice of the king, Manuel I, for his enthusiasm in leading semi-piratical raids on coastal shipping. As Cliff tells the story, he was by no means unusual in his love of violence. When he was born, Portugal had just been wrestled from 700 years of Muslim rule. The fight against Islam was the all-encompassing national narrative. Now, with the nation back in Christian hands, the aim of foreign

policy – according to Cliff – was to take the fight to the Moors by chasing them across the sea.

When da Gama was born, the Portuguese had already been marauding off the Atlantic coast of Africa for 100 years. In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias had reached the Cape of Good Hope. In the previous decade, Portuguese spies had travelled overland to India, and far down the Swahili Coast of Africa, as far as the gold port of Sofala, (near present day Beira in Mozambique). In the process, they had unravelled the secret trade routes that were the key to Muslim economic success. These included the reciprocating annual monsoon wind systems that allowed return voyages between the east and the west.

Cliff’s proposition is that, from the time of the first voyage to India, the Portuguese were deeply ambivalent about the aims of their mission. On the one hand, it was really simple: the idea of going to India was to turn a profit.

The wealth of the Muslim caliphate would flow into Portuguese coffers. But while few in Portugal were so other-worldly that they could turn their noses up at the wealth of India, there were many for whom wealth was not enough. For such people, and they included King Manuel, the overarching aim of the voyages was to break the back of Muslim trade, thus weakening the Arab caliphates.

But there was even greater ambition.

By seeking out Christian allies, it would be possible to attack the dar-al-Islam (literally: the House of Islam, but generally used to describe the lands where Islam ruled supreme) from both the Mediterranean Basin and the Gulf of Arabia. Under twin threats from west and the south, Islam would crumble.

Jerusalem would be freed. The heresies of Mecca would be silenced. Paradise on earth would surely follow.

Vasco da Gama shared his nation’s ambivalence about the India project.

He seems to have started his first voyage eager to forge good relations with local leaders, on which trade could be based.

Under the best possible circumstances,

Now, with the nation back in Christian hands, the single aim of foreign policy was to take the fight to the Moors by chasing them across the sea

his mission would have required subtlety.

His presence disturbed the smooth flow of trade that had been a constant source of wealth for a thousand years.

But da Gama in fact was anything but subtle. Like a later crusader, his method was to use ‘shock and awe’. Terror and torture were his tools. Cliff does not spare us the horrors inflicted on his opponents.

Cliff’s book is a thundering good read.

His central character leaps off the page, larger than life. So too does the world that nurtured him. This is not so much the story of a man as of a whole way of life, and to that extent it is worth reading. I would like to have seen more information, however, on some of the technical problems faced by the Portuguese as they engaged in blue-water navigation and guided themselves to isolated oceanic islands. Cliff does not dwell on their elaboration of the Arabinvented astrolabe, or the use of improved charts that enabled Portuguese mariners to accurately register their latitude.

Nor does he spend much time discussing the ships themselves.

The caravels that pioneered the India route were a marriage between older Portuguese technologies and Arab ideas about sails and rudders. Caravels are frequently represented in modern literature as being wonderful little craft,

but an awful lot of them sank in the big seas of the South Atlantic… and Portuguese sailors could rarely swim.

Even when bigger ships -- the nau of Portugal -- became the norm, their life expectancy was not great. In the six years between da Gama’s first armada and the voyage of the first Portuguese Viceroy to India – Francisco de Almeida – close to 40 per cent of the ships that left the estuary of the Tagus never returned.

Also missing is the impact of the earthquake, tsunami and great fire that, in 1755, wiped out all the records in the libraries, archives and government agencies in Lisbon. As a result, without a lucky find in some cellar somewhere in Portugal, we will never know for sure just how the Portuguese discovered the patterns of the currents in the South Atlantic, which were so ably used by da Gama but completely missed by Dias nine years earlier. We will never know how Portuguese cartography, which must once have led the world, developed to guide its navigators. We will never know whether the Portuguese knew of the existence of South America long before they revealed it to the world. And we will never know if once, a long time ago, a Portuguese caravel sailed down the coast of Australia.  Jon Fairall is a journalist and author.

He is currently writing a book on the Portuguese empire.

A major new ANMM exhibition, East of India, Power, Trade and Australia, is currently being prepared and will open in 2013.

top to bottom: Australia’s own caravel replica – Graeme Wylie’s ‘mahogany ship’-inspired Notorious launched in Port Fairy 2011.

A piratical Vasco da Gama believed painted during his lifetime, artist unknown, hangs in the headquarters of the Lisbon Geographic Society.

A model of a three-masted caravel – the type of ship da Gama used for his first voyage – in the Museu da Marinha, Lisbon.

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Readings The sun never sets on P&O P&O captains were often recruited from the Royal Navy and they ran their ships with naval precision

P&O Cruises: celebrating 175 years of heritage

By Sharon Poole & Andrew Sassoli-Walker.

Published by Amberley Publishing, 2011.

Softcover, illustrations, 192 pp.

ISBN 978 1 4456 0596 1. RRP $65.00

In 1844 the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) offered the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray a complimentary passage around the Mediterranean on its mail steamer Lady Mary Wood.

Thackeray’s lively account of that voyage, From Cornhill to Grand Cairo, extolled the virtues of sea travel and provided valuable endorsement for P&O and that most novel of leisure pursuits – the pleasure cruise. He remarked, ‘The sun never sets on a P&O ship’ – a sentiment that still holds true in 2012 as P&O celebrates its 175th anniversary.

To commemorate this occasion maritime historians Sharon Poole and Andrew Sassoli-Walker have paired up to tell the story of P&O Cruises, which can trace its heritage back to 1837. This was the year the company founded by Brodie McGhie Willcox and Arthur Anderson was awarded a contract to carry the Royal Mail on a weekly service from the United Kingdom to Spain and Portugal – one of the first private mail contracts in the world.

The book is divided into two distinct sections – the development of P&O, and its current operations. In the first section Poole and Sassoli-Walker chart the history of P&O, from its rapid expansion into Egypt, India, the Far East and Australia in the 1840s and 1850s, to the introduction of its first full-time cruise ship Vectis in 1904; from the requisition of its ships as troop transports 66

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and armed merchant cruisers during the two World Wars, to its significant role in the postwar emigrant trade, when it won a lucrative government contract to carry Ten Pound Poms to Australia.

The first section also looks at the detrimental effects of air travel on passenger shipping from the 1950s; the full merger of P&O and Orient Line in 1960 and the subsequent development of the North American cruise market; and the steady diversification since the 1960s into new ventures such as ferries, ports and container shipping. The history of P&O is condensed into just two chapters, so those readers expecting a detailed treatment may be disappointed.

The remaining 11 chapters cover P&O’s cruising operations from the 1970s to today, and are interspersed with personal insights and anecdotes from passengers and crew, past and present. The authors outline the role of crew members from pursers, housekeepers and stewards, to the commodore and captain.

P&O captains were often recruited from the Royal Navy and they ran their ships with naval precision; hence the old staff maxim, ‘There is the Royal Navy, the P&O and the Merchant Navy’.

There are chapters on the popular flagships Oriana and Canberra, including the latter’s service in the 1982 Falklands War, as well as profiles of the current fleet of luxury cruise ships: Oriana, Aurora, Oceana, Arcadia, Ventura, Azura and Adonia. The book also looks to the future

of P&O Cruises, with a preview of the new 141,000 tonne cruise ship to be launched in 2015 – the largest to be built to date.

The book is finely illustrated with more than 300 photographs, including enchanting views of liners transiting the Suez Canal and towering over the red rooftops of Venice. There is also an interesting series of photographs documenting shore-based operations in Southampton, the Hampshire port whose growth and commercial prosperity has been inextricably linked to P&O since it was selected as the official UK mail port in 1840. On 3 July 2012, for the first time in the company’s history, the entire fleet of seven ships rendezvoused in their home port of Southampton for a Grand Event to celebrate 175 years of P&O. One of the most fascinating sections of the book is the feature on ‘turn around day’ – the day passengers disembark in Southampton and the ship is readied for new arrivals. It provides an intriguing glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work involved in running a fleet of modern cruise ships, from distributing luggage and loading stores (‘shampoo to sugar, light bulbs to lettuces’), to the logistical challenges of planning shore excursions, on board dining and entertainment. It is interesting to consider how P&O has modernised its fleet to incorporate computerised navigation and communication systems, wireless internet, celebrity chef restaurants and West End style shows,

while still retaining traditional shipboard favourites such as shuffleboard, deck quoits and afternoon tea.

This seems to be the key to P&O’s success – its philosophy of innovation and adaptation while remaining true to the traditions of service, reliability and a sense of occasion. In 2010 the company’s managing director Carol Marlow introduced the concept of ‘P&O-ness’ to describe the special appeal and atmosphere of a P&O ship.

‘Our passengers particularly love the way we tailor everything to their British needs,’ she said, ‘the way we actually celebrate being on a ship, with the officers and crew making this a real nautical experience, as only we can, due to the fact we can trace our roots back longer than any other cruise line.’ The authors quote one of P&O’s repeat customers, who feels there is ‘a sense of coming home each time you get on board’, that ‘P&O-ness’ is the essence of ‘British-ness’ itself.

For this reader there is something paradoxical about exploring the world but doing so in a ‘home away from home’ where ‘English is the only language throughout the ships’, of visiting diverse ports but getting ‘back on board in time for afternoon tea’. Nevertheless the authors do capture one of the most appealing aspects of cruising – that tantalising prospect of watching your worries disappear in the ship’s wake as you set sail under the iconic P&O house flag and rising sun crest.

P&O Cruises: celebrating 175 years of heritage provides an engaging and succinct overview of a company that has sailed through war and peace, the rise and decline of the British Empire, the era of mass-migration and the advent of air travel, to arrive at a place where pleasure cruising is firmly established as a popular holiday choice. For more glimpses of this fascinating story make sure you visit the museum’s P&O – celebrating 175 years display, which opens in our Tasman Gallery on 17 October 2012.  Kim Tao, curator, post-Federation immigration right top to bottom: Chocaholic buffet night on board Artemis.

Skylight over Oriana’s Tiffany-style atrium.

Postcard from Victoria, sent from Port Said.

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Viewings Pearling, history and art Introspection

By Gavin Cawthorne The Painters Gallery Mona Vale NSW 14–28 July 2012

The pearling industry has recently been in the news for many of the wrong reasons. In a very different light, in July this year, pearling was the subject of a series of artworks on display at The Painters’ Gallery in Mona Vale, in Sydney’s north. Artist Gavin Cawthorn’s inspiration for his exhibition Introspection grew from his life of maritime experiences – growing up on the banks of the Shoalhaven River, travelling the sea with his family as a child, and later working aboard a pearling vessel off the coast of Western Australia.

The art works are derived from his time employed as a deckhand for Paspaley Pearls. Cawthorn, however, does not deal with the industry standards or work practices that are current news headlines, but wishes to engage with the natural environment of the Kimberley coast and how nature’s elements affect change on objects, landscapes and people.

Introspection includes as subjects several objects relating to the pearling industry from the National Maritime Collection. Cawthorn regularly visited the museum to view and then paint images of museum collection items. The Australian National Maritime Museum’s historic 1957 pearling lugger John Louis is seen encased in a block of ice. So too, a diving helmet from the collection is quite surreally frozen in ice, and thus also in time. The smouldering embers of burnt timber boats are the subject of several other paintings.

Cawthorn’s work is in the style of photorealism. Yet through intriguing juxtapositions it becomes a deeply meditative process. Cawthorn is intrigued by how objects can work as metaphors – our view of the museum object is mediated not simply through the painting, but through the painting of a block of ice – which has captured the object in a moment of time, but also is melting away.

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The diving helmet or the pearling lugger become expressions of their landscapes, memories and the people associated with them

Cawthorn’s work holds a wonderful and surprising tension between absence – of people who crewed the boats or wore the diving helmets – and the presence of history. It forces us to reflect on how we view the museum object; the diving helmet or the pearling lugger become expressions of their landscapes, memories and the people associated with them.

Cawthorn shows how the everyday object as simple as a few burning timbers can be a powerful tool for sharing history.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Introspection is that this is Cawthorn’s first solo exhibition. In 2010 he received the Corangamarah Art Prize and in 201112 was invited to exhibit in both Korea and Australia as part of ‘Celebrating 50 years of Friendship between Australia and Korea’. As was noted at the exhibition opening, the quality of work for a first exhibition was outstanding. I hope this collaboration between the museum and an emerging artist will be repeated.  Stephen Gapps, curator of environment, industry and shipping, was invited to open this show. above: Rapture of the deep – Paspaley 1, oil and resin on timber panel below: John Louis 2011

Viewings A fellowship to Antarctica Antarctica – A Place in the Wilderness

By Judith Parrott Stein Gallery Fairfield City Museum and Gallery 11 August – 29 September 2012

Our fascination with Antarctica knows no bounds, much like the continent itself. This Great White Land to our south inspires and intrigues and this photographic exhibition by Judith Parrott offers us a glimpse of the importance of community, cultural identity and connection to a place that has inspired her.

Judy completed a three-month Arts Fellowship with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) in 2005 as part of its program of informing and educating Australians about the Antarctic and Australia’s activities there. The program enables those with a non-science focus to experience Antarctica first-hand; they then communicate this unique experience and understanding to others through their chosen discipline. In Judy’s case, 58 silver-gelatin prints formed the basis of her travelling exhibition.

While most photographers use digital cameras, Judy preferred to take her Nikon FM2/T camera and Ilford Delta 35mm roll film to Antarctica.

Also included in the original show were the illustrated and personal diaries of her adventure, and a soundscape of Antarctica’s ambient sounds and the expeditioners at work and at rest.

Unfortunately neither the diaries nor the soundscape were present at this show.

The images cover the trip south in the AAD’s research and resupply vessel Aurora Australis, Antarctic community life and work at Australia’s three stations, Casey, Mawson and Davis, and some of the intriguing work scientists are undertaking on the human impact of the bases and visitors to this wild, cold and windy continent. The voyage home was via the Russian resupply ship Vasiliy Golovnin.

Antarctica – A Place in the Wilderness offers a reflective experience and delves into the lives of those who work at the bottom of the world. Judy was there in the 2005–06 summer season when the sun does not set and the hues, shadows and shapes of the continent are possibly at their best. She follows the work of the scientists and tradespeople, those who keep the bases operational, and how their important leisure time is spent. As well as the serious side of the work being undertaking – bird studies, the changing sea ice, heavy metals and the building of

the Wilkins Runway for aircraft – there is also the fun side: volley ball in the store, soccer on the snow, Friday night drinks and Christmas and New Year celebrations. Judy’s photographs show how normal life can be in this world that few of us will ever experience.

Although not entirely cut off from the rest of the world in terms of communication, it is the physical presence that is important. That and a sense of isolation from home, friends and family back in Australia. ‘They all come to the wharf to wave goodbye.

The whole world is there. And as the ship pulls away and they fade to a tiny dot in a vast expanse of white, I see how tiny we were.’  The exhibition production was funded by the Australian Antarctic Division and Arts Queensland through Brisbane City Council Creative Sparks. More of Judy Parrott’s works can be viewed at her website www.judithparrott.com Lindsey Shaw, senior curator, maritime technology, exploration and naval history, was invited to open this show.

above: Bob, Paul, Graeme and Cath dive through the sea ice at O’Brien Bay. left: Cath and Ben go dip netting for amphipods around the Swain Group of islands.

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Currents Carl Halvorsen, centenarian This winter we noted the one hundredth birthday of one of the museum’s oldest friends, in several senses: Carl Halvorsen, of the famous Halvorsen boatbuilding dynasty. The Halvorsen name is best known for the elegant pleasure cruisers that the family designed and built in their Sydney boatyards, and for the fleet of Halvorsen hire boats that operated on Pittwater and the Hawkesbury River for many decades, providing happy holiday memories for countless families.

Carl Halvorsen was born on 9 July 1912 in Helle, Norway, into a line of shipwrights and seafarers. He migrated to Australia 1924 with his father Lars, mother Bergithe, four brothers and two sisters.

All of them went to work in the family boatbuilding business that would become synonymous with quality and style, producing countless yachts, cruisers and work boats over many decades, including hundreds of military craft during WW2.

Carl’s working life was spent with the firm, including a period marketing its luxury motor cruisers to Hollywood celebrities. He married Glenagh Brown and enjoyed a long happy family life with their daughter Verity. At the age of 76 he hand-crafted the masts and spars for the museum’s historic yacht Kathleen Gillett, a Norwegian design that was in the firstever Sydney Hobart race in 1945, and was restored as Norway’s Bicentennial Gift to Australia in 1988. Carl was a successful yacht racer who skippered 5.5s well into his 90s, after winning RPAYC’s Division 1 series aged 89.

This great Norwegian boatbuilding family’s heritage is preserved at the museum in the Lars and Harold Halvorsen Collection, named after Carl’s father and elder brother. It contains a treasure trove of design drawings and photographs of the family’s enormous Australian output, as well as shipwright tools and other memorabilia. The family story was told in our 2004-05 museum exhibition Dream Boats and Work Boats – the Halvorsen Story. 

Carl Halvorsen this year, and in a rather earlier publicity photograph. At age 16, Carl built the mast of Sydney yacht Utiekah seen at left in the photo he's holding (top). Randi Svensen photograph

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Currents In transit at Lord Howe and Darling Harbour ‘Here it comes! Now!’ Over 100 excited Year 3 students from Chatswood Primary School don their solar-safe glasses and catch a glimpse, between the clouds, of an event which will not occur again in their lifetime. The lucky ones see it through the specially-filtered telescopes set up outside ANMM. Their faces say it all, and make all the preparations worthwhile.

The Transit of Venus, one of the rarest of all astronomical events, was first predicted and observed on 24 November, 1639 by Jeremiah Horrocks. The most celebrated historical viewing was by Captain James Cook and astronomer Charles Green on 3 June 1769, sailing to Tahiti on HMB Endeavour sponsored by the British Royal Academy. Endeavour famously sailed on via New Zealand to Australian shores.

To celebrate the 2012 Transit of Venus the museum sent the HMB Endeavour replica, just returned from her historic 13-month circumnavigation of Australia voyage, to Lord Howe Island, 600 km east of Port Macquarie, NSW. The 16 professional crew and 40 voyage crew battled stormy seas to land special guest astronomer Carlos Bacigalupo, and historian Dr Alex Cook, on the island.

Here they worked with Lord Howe Island School and Lord Howe Island Museum to create a day of special events for students and members of the public, despite the weather. The transit was captured in an online feed to the museum’s web site.

‘It was raining cats and dogs (technically speaking) with 50-knot winds and some of the harshest weather the locals could recall,’ said Carlos.

‘We set up the observing tent in the rain in case we had a only a small window of opportunity. The weather got worse and the tent blew up with all the people holding it in a Mary Poppins type of way.’

Bad weather hampered the event here too, but it did make the glimpses even more tantalising! The Chatswood students also enjoyed a tour of the Navigators gallery and a latitude and longitude workshop with Professor Stirling Sharpwit. To round off the occasion a progressive Members dinner was held on board Endeavour

and at Yots on Sunday 17 June, with Captain Ross Mattson and astronomer Carlos Bacigalupo delighting their audience with tales from the Lord Howe Island adventure.

The activities were run in conjunction with the Sydney Observatory, Questacon and Lord Howe Island. Time capsules with messages and a range of media

were made at both locations, to be opened at the next Transit. I can’t help but wonder what the world at the next Transit of Venus in 2117 will be like.  Judithe Hall, education project officer Students from Chatswood Primary School view the last Transit of Venus in their lives.

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Poster pack: Remembering Titanic This collection of eight posters shows a genuine insight into the true history of the ship, from newspaper reproductions to White Star Line Advertising. Size 407 x 305 mm. $35.00 Members $31.50

Canberra: A very strange way to go to War This paperback tells the astonishing story of the ‘Great White Whale’, the much-loved luxury ocean liner that turned troopship, after being diverted from the Mediterranean to the dark heart of the Falklands war. $49.95 Members $44.96

P&O at 175 Commemorating Britain’s most famous shipping company, the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company.

The full company history from its roots in the Shetland Isles to current operations under the ownership of Dubai Ports, it includes P&O Cruises and P&O Ferries. Richly illustrated. $69.95 Members $62.96

P&O: Aurora and Oriana They were built for P&O as part of the expansion and development of the company at the end of the 20th century. Brian David Smith brings together the development, construction and the operations of these two distinctive and popular cruise-ships. $59.95 Members $53.96

Luxury Liners: Their Golden Age+4 CDs While the golden age of the great luxury liners is long gone, the myth of sophisticated transcontinental travel lingers on. Contemporary and vintage photographs of the biggest and best, from the early 19th century. CDs include elegant bar music, swing, tango and Charleston of the great salon orchestras $89.95 Members $80.96

A Dictionary of Passenger Ship Disasters Many years of research by acclaimed maritime historian David Williams has produced this comprehensive catalogue of all major passenger-ship disasters since 1840. This valuable book covers the losses of ships around the world larger than 500 gross tons. $85.00 Members $76.50

Titanic: On a Sea of Glass The authors bring the tragedy to life, telling the story of the ship’s design, construction and her maiden voyage, using rarely seen accounts of the sinking from passengers of all classes and the crew as well. $125.00 Members $112.50

Crises do Happen – The Royal Navy & Operation Musketeer Described by some as a military success and by others as a great failure, there is agreement that the Suez Crisis of 1956 was a political disaster with far-reaching consequences for Britain’s role and influence in the world. $49.95 Members $44.96

P&O Across the Ocean A nostalgic glance astern at the glory days at sea and on shore. Drawing on the archives of P&O Heritage, it’s a curator’s tour of the company’s art collection which dates to P&O’s foundation in 1837. An engaging and richly illustrated homage to one of most famous companies afloat, in its 175th anniversary year. $99.95 Members $89.96

Classic Classes This is the complete reference to the classic yachts and dinghies that still sail today. The best-known, most popular and enduring designs from the 7-ft Optimist to the 125-ft J Class; this beautifully illustrated book features 144 boats from across the world, with a wealth of detail on each class. $49.95 Members $44.96

Signals 100 September to november 2012

shop online at anmm.gov.au Hundreds of books something for everyone from key rings to ship models and boating clothes friendly service mail order Members discounts!

Open 9.30 am to 5 pm seven days a week Phone 02 9298 3698 or fax orders to 02 9298 3675 or email thestore@anmm.gov.au

DVD – Titanic 6 DVD box set $79.95 Members $71.96

Titanic calendar 2013, 12 fantastic pictures $25.00 Members $22.50

Titanic memorabilia pack: don’t forget that night to remember $22.00 Members $19.80

Wooden Boat calendar 2013, 12 classics by Mendlowitz $30.00 Members $27.00

Tubtanic novelty bath plug keeps you afloat $23.00 Members $20.70

Titanic anniversary brooch: remembrance on your lapel $25.00 Members $22.50

80-page instruction, 50 sheets of pre-printed origami paper $20.00 Members $18.00

Own our own HMAS Onslow mini model $20.00 Members $18.00

Early Australian exploration ships range: tea towel $16.95 Members $15.26, oven mitt $16.00 Members $14.40, double oven mitt $25.00 Members $22.50, A6 notebook $17.95 Members $16.16

Rising sun badge boxed set of 7 ANZAC icons $150.00 Members $135.00

Submarine tea diffuser takes a dive in your teacup $18.95 Members $17.06

Vanguard class submarine, battery operated 34cm $25.00 Members $22.50

Australian National Maritime Museum Open daily except Christmas Day 9.30 am to 5 pm (6 pm in January) 2 Murray Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia Phone 02 9298 3777 Fax 02 9298 3780 ANMM council Chairman Mr Peter Dexter am Director Mr Kevin Sumption Councillors Mr Paul Binstead Mr John Coombs Rear Admiral T W Barrett am csc ran Mr Peter Harvie Ms Robyn Holt Dr Julia Horne Ms Ann Sherry ao Mr Shane Simpson am Ms Eva Skira Mr Neville Stevens ao Signals ISSN 1033-4688 Editor Jeffrey Mellefont Staff photographer Andrew Frolows Design and production Austen Kaupe Printed in Australia by Pegasus Print Group Editorial and advertising enquiries Jeffrey Mellefont 02 9298 3647 signals@anmm.gov.au Deadline mid-January, April, July, October for issues March, June, September, December Signals back issues Back issues $4 10 back issues $30 Extra copies of current issue $4.95 Call Matt Lee at The Store 02 9298 3698 Material from Signals may be reproduced only with the editor’s permission. The Australian National Maritime Museum is a statutory authority of the Australian Government.

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Museum sponsors Major sponsors Austereo Blackmores Ltd Nine Entertainment Lloyd’s Register Asia Olbia Pty Ltd SBS Sydney Catchment Authority Project sponsors ACP Magazines Take 5 APN Outdoor Coral Sea Wines Orion Expeditions Qube Logistics Rova Taxis Silentworld Foundation Sydney by Sail Wilhelmsen Investment Group Foundation sponsor ANZ Founding patrons Alcatel Australia ANL Limited Ansett Airfreight Bovis Lend Lease BP Australia Bruce & Joy Reid Foundation Doyle’s Seafood Restaurant Howard Smith Limited James Hardie Industries National Australia Bank PG, TG & MG Kailis P&O Nedlloyd Ltd Telstra Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics Westpac Banking Corporation Zim Shipping Australasia