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Australian Museum

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Australian Meuseum

  • May 17, 2009
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Drever from Ayr
Australian Meuseum

This museum, the oldest in Australia is a museum of natural history and anthropology. Its collections cover invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, mineralogy and palaeontology, and anthropology. It also provided a setting for showing and promoting indigenous arts and culture. My interest covered the latter so after a brief look at the other galleries I explored the history of the Indigenous people.

They have occupied Australia for at least 60,000 and possibly as much as 120,000 years. How they reached here is shrouded in mystery but the landmasses were different then which may have made the journey across what is now water easier. On reaching here they evolved with the land, changing it and changing with it. The land to them is not just soil, rocks and minerals but is the core of their spirituality.

Their religion, the Dreaming, has different meanings for different tribes. It is a network of knowledge faith and practices that stems from stories of creation, which controls all spiritual and physical aspects of life. It sets out the structure of society, the rules for social behaviour and the ceremonies performed to preserve the life of the land. In essence the Dreaming comes from the land. With the arrival of the Europeans the Dreaming entered a new phase to take account of the newcomers. It is a powerful living force to the Aboriginals that they nurture and care for.

When European colonists first arrived they found an unfamiliar land occupied by plants, animals and people they didn't understand. They misunderstood the important connection between indigenous Australians and land and thought the land was theirs for the taking. They didn’t realise that if they took for example fish from waters traditionally fished by Aboriginals the indigenous people would expect something back in return. The Aboriginals might therefore help themselves to for instance a cow. The settlers saw this as theft not realising that they themselves were guilty and so conflict grew.

The Europeans in several cases hunted down the Aboriginals. They offered resistance. Pemulwug was the first to do so. Between 1790 and 1802 he waged a guerrilla war on the young colony of New South Wales. Although shot and captured in 1802 others continued the fight.

The whites massacred hundreds of Aboriginals at Waterloo creek in 1837. The year 1838 saw some justice. A court ordered the hanging of seven whites for the murder of several black people at Myall Creek. However Aboriginals died in great numbers from European diseases, poor food and accommodation, ill treatment and sometimes murder.

The newcomers even tried breeding the Aboriginals out of existence by forcing the women to take white men as husbands. The forced separation of children from parents by the Aboriginal Protection Board occurred from the late 1880s until 1969. The Board aimed to bring up the children like white children.

Link -up formed in 1980 worked with Aboriginal adults separated as children from their families. They were the lost generation who lost contact with their roots. States or sectarian institutions for indigenous children or in non-indigenous institutions, foster homes or adoption homes raised many.

Since 1987 the Aboriginals have been gradually winning full title to their traditional lands. 1994 even saw the launch of the anti-racism campaign by the NSW Local Aboriginal Land Council at Sydney Opera House.

One of the great ironies of indigenous history is that the use of indigenous labour aided the steady advances of the pastoral industry and indigenous land. Indigenous stockmen provided valuable bush skills and labour, yet received little for their work.

The sheer contempt that white people had for other cultures I find breathtaking. Charles Darwin’s work On the Origin of Species must have contributed with its ideas on the survival of the fittest. In fact the early attempts to explore Australia were often stupid beyond belief. Something that consulting the indigenous people would have prevented. However such was the contempt that they were held they weren’t originally even classified as people but as fauna.

At first while admiring their art I at first thought them only pretty patterns. Buried deep within them thought is a story some quite complex. Originally they used natural materials such as from the gum tree but they have rapidly caught up with modern methods and now often use acrylics. White painters did not have a feel for Australia and it was Aboriginal painters through their works that truly opened up the red heard of Australia with their expressive paintings.

From journal In and Around Sydney

Australian Museum

  • November 30, 2004
  • Rated 3 of 5 by panda1 from ., California
Australian Museum

The Australian Museum offered a guided tour that covered the museum and its offerings, including a collection of 68,000 rocks and minerals, the indigenous Australians exhibition, an array of birds and insects and ancient Egyptian artifacts.

Allow yourself at least 15 minutes to browse through the museum gift shop to buy something. My partner saw some aboriginal artwork for $20 that he liked, but thought he could get it cheaper elsewhere. It ended up costing us more in terms of time spent looking for it for the rest of the trip. He managed to get something for his wall in Adelaide, our last stop, for the same price. He should have just bought it and been done with it instead of wishing he had bought it when he had the opportunity and kicking himself for not doing so.

Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for children, $17.50 to $25 for a family, and children under five and Australian seniors get in for free.

Daily 9:30am to 5pm, closed Christmas Day.
Phone: (02) 9320 6000, Fax: (02) 9320 6051

From journal SYD

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