Museum news

Coming soon: Burra Learning Place

When the Australian Museum First Nations team was tasked with creating a new education space that would represent Pacific, south-east First Nations and Western ways of knowing, local First Nations custodians kept returning to one animal teacher: Burra, the Eel.

Eels are born in the warm Pacific waters of the Coral Sea before swimming thousands of kilometres and across the East Australian Current to the Gadigal Coast and other eastern First Nations. Entering Estuaries and Rivers, the young Eels travel inland — including throughout the Sydney Basin — where they live and grow for up to 50 years. The mature Eels then return to the Coast to journey across the Ocean back to the Pacific to breed before dying.

In Burra Learning Place — opening in July 2022 — visitors are invited to join a mob of Eels as they make their amazing journey, meeting different animal teachers along the way. Replacing Search & Discover on Level 2, Burra Learning Place will feature two multi-purpose teaching spaces and several versatile programming areas, an immersive theatre, custom-made touchable First Nations tools, sensory walls and dioramas showcasing the work of the Australian Museum Research Institute, and a range of multi-modal, accessible interactives.

The space will offer a ‘many-ways’ experience where First Nations and Western knowledge systems are brought together in layers of learning, breaking down the view that they are at odds with each other. School groups, children and adults will have opportunities to engage with different ways of knowing within each topic, providing a rich, multi- dimensional learning experience.

Above, left and right: Designs for the areas inside Burra Learning Place, opening July 2022

The faces of mummies

In 332BCE, as Alexander the Great was conquering the Persian rulers of Egypt and the Great Pyramids were young at just 2000 years old, Egyptian mourners were continuing the centuries-old funerary practices that they believed were essential for the dead to attain immortality. Bodies were mummified and wrapped in linen bandages. Before being placed in wooden coffins or sarcophagi, masks and coverings made of cartonnage — an ancient form of papier- mâché involving layers of linen or papyrus bound together with a glue-like mixture called gesso—were also being used to decorate and assist in preserving the body.

The Australian Museum is fortunate to have four examples of these coverings in the collection. Two belong to the same mummy, dating back to the Ptolemaic period between 332-30BCE. The other two are masks from separate mummies which date to around 30CE. Acquired in 1910 and 1912, the objects are incredibly special; adorned with images of icons and symbols, gods, depictions of people and fashion, and importantly, an idealised image of the deceased. They are vital to understanding the funerary practices of the day and the belief systems of this society.

The Australian Museum Foundation has provided funding for the AM’s Collection Care and Conservation team to do intensive research and conservation treatments on the objects involving radiocarbon dating to establish dates of origin, and the stabilisation of any major tears or holes. Once completed, the objects will go on display in the AM’s future permanent Egyptian exhibition.

Above: Front of cartonnage mask from Abydos in Upper Egypt. Attributed to the Ptolemaic period (332-30BCE). Acquired in 1912 via the Egypt Exploration Fund. Photo by Melissa Holt Inset: The inside of the cartonnage mask from Sedment. Photos by Melissa Holt.

Hunting for hidden treasure in Sydney Harbour

Curious what animals lurk around the submerged walls of the Sydney Opera House, cling to the pylons beneath ferry wharves, or flit around your ankles at harbour pools? A new genetic tool may provide the answer.

With more than 240km of shoreline including beaches, bays, ports, seawalls and mangroves, Sydney Harbour is globally recognised as a biodiversity hotspot. But the delicate balance of its ecosystem is under constant threat from human activity, invasive species and city animals. That’s where the AM’s Ichthyology team comes in, with a powerful new tool in our arsenal — Environmental DNA (eDNA). eDNA works like this: when fish swim through the water they shed tissue, cells, secretions and excreta. By analysing the DNA present in the water, we can see which species have passed through it. This emerging technology provides a fast and inexpensive way to census the fishes in our beloved harbour, as well as any organisms they depend on — crabs, corals, sponges and algae.

The AM Ichthyology team has been busy sampling and filtering seawater at 59 locations, ranging from the Gladesville Bridge in the inner west to Watsons Bay in the east. Most of these seawater samples are skimmed from the surface, but our scientists have gone “digging” as deep as 45m to the harbour floor near Blues Point, in the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is the first time this kind of research has been conducted in the harbour. The Australian Museum is best positioned to do the work because of our vast collections of animals from the waterway that date back to the 1870s. Our thousands of specimens of fishes, polychaetes, crustaceans and molluscs can be compared to the DNA we find in the harbour, helping us identify species, or the opposite — see which ones are no longer present.

Though this project is in its infancy, the AM aims to provide a roadmap for future cost-effective environmental monitoring in Sydney Harbour in the face of changing climates and urban impacts.

Below: AM scientists collecting eDNA in Sydney Harbour, 2019. Photo by Dr Joseph DiBattista

All hands on deck to discover secrets of the deep

In July 2021, a team of scientists from Australian museums and universities embarked on an expedition aboard the CSIRO research vessel (RV) Investigator, led by Chief Scientist, Tim O’Hara, from Museums Victoria.

The voyage set out to characterise the biodiversity of underwater mountains, known as seamounts, 100 to 5000m below the waves in Australia’s Indian Ocean Territories, for the first time. Expeditions like this not only survey completely unknown habitats (specifically, these deep seamounts) but also provide specimens that scientists can identify and describe—including some species that are new to science.

The RV Investigator departed Darwin on 30 June 2021 with a research team that included five AMRI scientists: Dr Frank Koehler, Dr Elena Kupriyanova, Dr Ingo Burghardt, Alice Yan and Claire Rowe. Unfortunately, the voyage was cut short, but despite this, our scientists’ quest for deep-sea critters did not disappoint. They collected, sorted, preserved and tentatively identified a diverse range of marine life, including bizarrely shaped sea cucumbers, huge sea stars, blood-red crustaceans, beautiful jellyfish, deep-sea worms and alien-like fish. Importantly, the scientists were able to collect environmental DNA and map the ocean floor for the seven seamounts around Christmas Island.

The marine invertebrate specimens collected on the voyage are now being assessed at the Australian Museum by collection managers Dr Steve Keable, Marine Invertebrates, and Dr Mandy Reid, Malacology, and our scientists are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to start studying these fascinating deep-sea creatures. Watch this space—we hope the RV Investigator will return to the Indian Ocean in 2022 for part two of the voyage.

This research was supported by a grant of sea time on RV Investigator from the CSIRO Marine National Facility.

Below: RV Investigator docked at Hobart, November 2018. Photo by Ingo Berghardt

Celebrating ten years of DigiVol

Ten years ago, Dave Britton, Collection Manager of Entomology, removed a drawer full of cicadas from a vast cabinet of insects hidden away in a room below the Museum’s public exhibition halls. The drawer was handed to a team of excited volunteers; this was their first opportunity to put their skills to the test and get a glimpse of collections not accessible to the public. Their task was to delicately remove each specimen from the drawer, along with its label, and take a photograph. This data would then be transcribed by online volunteers using a brand new, custom-built, crowdsourcing website.

This was the beginning of the successful collaboration between the Australian Museum and the Atlas of Living Australia, and the birth of the crowdsourcing citizen science project known as DigiVol. Invaluable information is stored within natural history museum specimens and objects, on their labels and in their archival records. Prior to digitisation this information was accessible only to researchers who could visit the collections' physical location. By creating a digital record of each item, the AM is providing access to a global audience. DigiVol is now used by institutions around the world as a way of combining the efforts of many volunteers to digitise their data. In the past decade, DigiVol lab volunteers have contributed 60,000 hours to create 682,000 digital records. The DigiVol online community has completed more than eight million transcriptions, and contributed more than 140,000 hours in the past two years alone. The Australian Museum congratulates our DigiVol volunteers and staff led by Paul Flemons on the remarkable achievements of this globally- recognised project, which has been adopted by over 70 other institutions around the world.

Above: DigiVol volunteers imaging specimens in the DigiVol lab at the Australian Museum. Photo by Abram Powell

Find out how you can get involved by going to www.australian.museum/get-involved/citizen-science

Exhibition open until 27 January

Unsettled exhibition tours

Add to your Unsettled experience through a tour with our knowledgeable First Nations guides, as they illuminate the meaning of key exhibition objects and offer a deeper understanding of how we can reconcile this nation.

Every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday until 27 January 10.30am, 12pm, 1.30pm

Book now

australian.museum/event/ unsettled-exhibition-tours