Developed by the National Museum of Australia to accompany the Darwin exhibition in Australia, Darwin and Australia represents Darwin's experiences and encounters during his visit to Australia.
The exhibition includes artworks and graphics by Australian artists which reflect the landscapes that Darwin encountered as well as specimens of plants and animals that he observed and described in his diary. It explores Darwin's travels in Australia and his associations with prominent Australians. It also profiles Darwin's analogous observations in Australia, and subsequent and contemporary Australian research that continues his intellectual legacy.
To many of the people he met and travelled with in Australia, Darwin was simply a visiting young naturalist — none could have imagined how he would later shift our understandings of the world.
Darwin was a young man at the start of his career when he visited Australia. A snapshot of Charles Darwin as a young man can be gleaned from his writings of his Australian experiences. Although Australia was not to feature strongly in Darwin's later writings it was to leave its legacy on Darwin's later life.
Charles Darwin's visit to Australia in early 1836 came towards the end of a long voyage. Almost four years after departing England, the Beagle and its travel-weary company arrived on Australian shores. During the 61 days spent in Australia, Darwin visited Sydney, the inland settlement of Bathurst, Hobart Town in Tasmania, and King George's Sound in Western Australia.
Darwin confided in a letter to his sister Caroline that he was 'looking forward with more pleasure to seeing Sydney, than to any other part of the voyage'. On first impressions he was not disappointed. Sydney's roads, houses and even the shops all met with Darwin's enthusiastic approval. In his diary he declared the colony 'a most magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation' and was moved 'to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman'. Darwin's elation did not last. Four days after his arrival in Sydney he headed west to Bathurst, across the Blue Mountains, to gain a general idea of the country's appearance. Beyond Sydney he found the landscape arid and sterile, and the vegetation unappealing.
On March 14th the Beagle left King George's Sound and Australian shores, on a homeward course via the Keeling (Cocos) Islands, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope. Despite Darwin's strong desire to be home, which possibly jaded his view of Australia, his writings are rich in observations of the continent's landscape, fauna, flora and people. These, and the insights he gained from his Australian associates, contributed to the development of his theories and ideas.
Darwin's work liberated the ways in which scientists interpreted the origins, dynamics and distribution of different species of plants and animals.
Darwin maintained his connections with Australia long after his visit in 1836.
He continued to speculate on how the continent's flora and fauna were related to what he had seen in other parts of the world.
As in England, the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species provoked great controversy in Australia and divided the scientific community. In August 1863 during a spirited exchange of ideas with Joseph D Hooker, the prominent botanist at Kew Gardens, Darwin wrote:About New Zealand, at last I amHis work also influenced how Australians interpreted the widening gap between scientific theory and theology.
coming round & admit it must have
been connected with some Terra firma;
but I will die rather than admit
Australia.
Darwin is based on an exhibition organised by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org) in collaboration with the Museum of Science, Boston; The Field Museum, Chicago; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and the Natural History Museum, London.
Presented in conjunction with Art Exhibitions Australia.