Overview of the National Museum of Australia's purchase of the Leichhardt nameplate

Matthew Higgins

Speaker
Matthew Higgins, National Museum of Australia

Title
Overview of the National Museum of Australia's purchase of the Leichhardt nameplate

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The National Museum of Australia acquired a small brass nameplate marked 'LUDWIG LEICHHARDT 1848' in November 2006.

This plate is the first object with a corroborated provenance from Ludwig Leichhardt's 1848 expedition, where the German explorer set out to attempt an east-west crossing of Australia.

Leichhardt and his party disappeared and the earlier failure to find any definite artefacts from the expedition has been one of the great mysteries of Australian exploration.

A team of conservators, scientists, curators and historians haved helped to establish the plate's authenticity.

Matthew Higgins has been working professionally as an historian for more than 25 years. He is the Senior Curator at the National Museum in Canberra who worked on the authentification and acquisition of the Leichhardt nameplate.

Matthew has been with the National Museum since 2004. He previously worked at the Australian War Memorial, the Australian Heritage Commission, Department of Environment and Heritage and as a freelance historical consultant.

In 2007 Matthew joined the staff of the National Museum's Centre for Historical Research, to work on a book on the history of the Australian Capital Territory's high country.