Audio on demand

An overview of the work required bring a rich collection of hundreds of objects from a family museum at an historic grazing property into the National Historical Collection.

Celebrate activist Rick Farley’s contribution to Australian environmental and political thought in this forum with friends, colleagues and the authors of his biography, A Way Through: The Life of Rick Farley.

Senior Curator Kirsten Wehner introduces the new National Museum gallery exploring a broad history of Australia through stories of places and their peoples.

For many decades, Sunshine Harvester Works was a significant landmark in Sunshine, a suburb in Melbourne’s industrial west. Museum curator Leah Bartsch explores research into the stories and objects of Sunshine.

The development of the Australian pastoral industry at Bowen Downs in central Queensland, one of four places to be featured in the ‘Never enough grass’ module of the National Museum’s Creating a Country gallery, is outlined by curator George Main.

The impact of adaptation and evolution on the development of modern agricultural crops and the use of genetically modified technologies is outlined by evolutionary biologist Jeremy Burdon.

Historian Darrell Lewis discusses his research on ‘the outback archive,’ unorthodox historical records from pre-European times to the present, concentrating on marked water tanks and trees along the Murranji Track in the Northern Territory.

Curator Martin Woods examines a rare map drawn by Ludwig Leichhardt. Woods says the map of the Balonne and Condamine rivers in Queensland raised hopes of an expanded Darling Downs farming district and funded Leichhardt’s final journey.

The history of the Springfield collection, more than 2000 objects from a major rural property near Sydney, is outlined by registrar Carol Cooper. She explores the remarkable family who cared for it and the Museum’s work to make this collection available.