At the core of the Museum and its exhibitions is the National Historical Collection, more than 200,000 objects representing Australia's history and cultural heritage.
When the Museum was established in 1980, it inherited a disparate collection mainly featuring horse-drawn vehicles and a few cars. Since then, Museum curators have actively gathered objects for the collection. Some have been donated, some purchased, and some inherited from former collecting bodies such as the Australian Institute of Anatomy (the preserved wet specimens collection, including the heart of racehorse Phar Lap) and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (Aboriginal art collection).
At different times, special emphasis has been given to acquiring particular objects. The Museum now has the world's largest collection of Aboriginal bark paintings, with more than 1,600 works by numerous artists from throughout Australia. There are also 95,000 Aboriginal stone artefacts from surface sites found all over Australia.
Other diverse features include journals, photographs and equipment of Australian women scientists; convict clothing, leg irons and tickets of leave; a large technology collection, including historical vehicles; protective clothing and equipment used in the 1994 Sydney bushfires; and a growing assortment of Australian political cartoons. There are also thousands of objects relating to early settlement and later migration, including the Museum's largest object, the boat Hong Hai, in which 38 Vietnamese 'boat people' arrived on Australia's northern shores in 1978.
> Collection highlights
> Recent acquisitions
> Caring for the Collection
