Another America’s Cup Challenger – Dame Pattie

Dame Pattie crew wet weather trousers

A recent conservation treatment on some wet weather gear uncovers the history of another America’s Cup challenger, Dame Pattie a purpose-built 12m class racing yacht, named after the wife of Sir Robert Gordon Menzies who served two terms as Australian Prime Minister from 1939-1941 and then 1949-1966. In 1967, although winning the trials easily, Dame Pattie skippered by Jock Sturruck, lost the series (4-0) to the American yacht Intrepid skippered by Bus Mosbacher in a a series raced in unseasonally stronger winds when Dame Pattie was better suited to lighter breezes.

Dame Pattie , christened in 1966 was designed by Warwick Hood and built by WH Barnett using a combination of Australian, Danish and Canadian timber. The main-frame was constructed using laminated Queensland maple. Edge-grain Douglas fir planking was fastened to the intermediate frame constructed using Danish ash, using silicon bronze screws.

During that particular America’s Cup race in 1967, hurricane Doria was generating off-shore northeasterly winds making wet weather gear an essential article of clothing for the contest. The Dame Pattie crew wore wet weather gear made by Plastalon. The jacket features a hood with a small peak brim, white nylon drawstring and plastic toggles and large pockets either side of the centre front opening. The jacket is fastened using black, press studs. The yacht Dame Pattie logo is printed on the left chest. The trousers feature two side pockets, an elasticised waist adjusted to fit the wearer using press studs.

The textile conservator removes black soiling using a 50% mixture of ethanol and deionised water.

A rainy day at Garden Island Boatshed

Naval Dockyard Police display at the Boatshed, RAN Heritage Centre, Garden Island
Naval Heritage Collection
Photographer Nicole Cama, ANMM

Today some of the museum’s staff braved the weather conditions to attend the launch of the Naval Historical Society of Australia’s latest documentary film, The History of the Captain Cook Graving Dock. The launch was held in the historic Boatshed building which was built in 1890 and is now part of the Royal Australian Navy Heritage Centre in Garden Island. As the rain pattered the roof of the old Boatshed, we heard senior officers of HMAS Kuttabul as well as members of the Society convey their passion for the site, as well as outline how Captain Cook Graving Dock remains an integral part of Australia’s maritime history. After the launch, my colleague Penny Hyde and I were treated to an interesting (and choppy) voyage back to the museum, aboard the museum’s RAN launch, MB 172. Thanks go to the Naval Historical Society of Australia and the Royal Australian Navy for such a well hosted event. Check out my photographs below and also our instagram feed for some more photographs from the day! Nicole Cama

A chance encounter in Albury

Last week I went to Albury to install our travelling exhibition On their own – Britain’s child migrants at Albury LibraryMuseum. This lively venue is the only regional stop in our national tour, which has so far taken in Adelaide, Melbourne, Fremantle and Canberra.

While Albury was not a major destination for British child migrants, it does have strong links with Australia’s immigration history because of its proximity to the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre near Wodonga. Bonegilla (1947–71) was Australia’s largest and longest-operating migrant reception centre and many of the post-war migrants who passed through it later settled in the Albury-Wodonga region.

Border Mail article, 1950. Pam Wright is front row, second from right

I was fascinated to discover that a small group of British children was sent to St John’s Orphanage in Thurgoona, in the outer suburbs of Albury, in 1950. The 22 girls sailed on Asturias and their arrival was reported in the Border Mail under the misguided headline ‘Orphans arrive here to start their life afresh.’ One of the youngest in the group, five-year-old Pam Wright, was told she was an orphan, even though both her parents were alive. She says, ‘The day before I was shipped, I was with my father.’

Pam’s father tracked her down in Australia and tried to claim her but was told she had been declared a ward of the state. After pleading his case to politicians, Pam was eventually released into her father’s care. In 1990, 40 years after being sent from England, she was finally reunited with her mother. You can hear more about Pam’s story in her interview with ABC Radio.

Curator Kim Tao and Pam Wright at the exhibition, 2013. Photographer Jules Boag/Albury LibraryMuseum

Pam spoke eloquently about her experiences and their enduring impact on her life at the official opening of the exhibition on 23 February. I spoke of how stories like Pam’s reveal Albury’s connections to broader national and international narratives of child migration. I also mentioned how the exhibition has created opportunities for many former child migrants to reunite with family, friends and the material culture relating to their migration. But I never expected the drama that would soon unfold!

As I led visitors on a tour of On their own, I could hear the commotion at the back of the group when a visitor, Connie – who by chance was visiting from WA – rounded the corner and saw her younger sister Beryl in a photograph in the exhibition. Once her shock and excitement subsided, Connie realised that she too was in the photograph, along with her three brothers. All five siblings were sent to the Fairbridge Farm School at Pinjarra, south of Perth, and this photograph captured them on the very day they arrived in Fremantle on Ormonde in 1950, the same year as Pam Wright.

Children with belongings, 1950. Connie (L) and Beryl (R) with their three brothers. State Library of WA 005080D

I had been intrigued by this photograph since I first saw it in the State Library of WA back in 2009. It was part of a collection of well-constructed arrival photographs, surely designed to encourage continued government and public support for the child migration schemes that were once considered generous philanthropy but are now widely condemned as flawed social policy. I was interested in the subjects of this well-composed photograph – the boys in their distinctive striped Fairbridge ties; the girl on the left, who we now know is Connie, with her Orient Line suitcase – but I never expected them to be a family group.

Connie and Beryl with their photo in the exhibition, 2013. Photographer Kim Tao/ANMM

This latest encounter during the national tour of On their own once again reinforces the value of telling personal stories and presenting living history in museums. It also demonstrates the wonderful role museums play in collecting this history, making it accessible and reconnecting people with their heritage and material culture. Here’s to Connie, Beryl and chance encounters.

Kim Tao
Curator, Post-Federation Immigration

On their own – Britain’s child migrants is showing at Albury LibraryMuseum from 23 February to 28 April 2013.

Changing Pyrmont – guest post by Jane Bennett

Meet Jane Bennett, an artist whom you may see around the museum wharves from time to time. We invited Jane to contribute a guest blog post about her work and current exhibition at Frances Keevil Gallery.

Hi, Jane Bennett here.

I would like to invite you to the annual end-of-year show at the Frances Keevil Gallery where I will have three of my recent Pyrmont paintings on display.

I first started painting Pyrmont when I was in art school in the late 1970s, documenting Pyrmont’s original character that came from its industrial heritage – the workers’ cottages perched on the creamy sandstone escarpment above dark, decaying wharves and warehouses.

During the 1980s Pyrmont was discovered by developers and radically transformed from a once-neglected industrial suburb in a 19th-century time warp, to a sleek media and entertainment hub. Buildings were often demolished as fast as I could paint them. Almost everything that I have painted has either been demolished or has changed beyond all recognition – the pubs have been gentrified, working-class terraces are replaced by apartment blocks and old warehouses are converted into offices.

Lions and Dragons and Lanterns oh my!

Swaying, slithering, jumping, bouncing.

A brilliant yellow dragon with a fiery fluorescent belly and menacing eyes turns the corner. Silver flecks along its side catch the sun. The waiting crowds applaud and raise their camera phones to capture the action.

Dragon dance outside the museum, presented by Dong Tam Association

Dragon dance outside the museum, presented by Dong Tam Association

The first day of Spring school holiday programs started with a bang, or a thumping drum and clanging cymbals to be precise, as the first of our free outdoor performances took to the stage- a spectacular of dragon dance, lion dance and extreme martial arts presented by the Dong Tam Association.

This holidays we have been inspired by our beautiful dragnet fishing boat Tu Do ( Freedom) that carried refugees to safer shores in 1971 . When it pulled into Darwin carrying 31 passengers including Than Tan Lu and his young family, whose stories are a part of our permanent exhibition Passengers, Tu Do was just one of many passenger boats from Vietnam carrying people eager to find safe-haven in Australia. Today though, it is one of only three surviving vessels from this period in Australia’s history, and the only one that is still seaworthy and displayed on the water. Tu Do has recently been beautifully restored by a team of curators, conservators and fleet staff at the museum.

It just happens to be just the perfect time of year for celebrating Vietnamese culture as our program’s timing co-incides with the Mooncake or Mid-Autumn festival- a popular lunar harvest festival celebrated in China and Vietnam.  In line with this our family activities space Kids on Deck is themed – Dragon Dreams and Dragnets. Stepping inside Kids on Deck the sound of giggles and squeals fills the room as children try on fancy dress costumes and play with the dragon shadow puppets they have created in the puppet theatre. Others clutch at paint dabbers making delicate painted lotus flowers, or furiously colour bright paper sheets to cut into beautiful lanterns- a traditional activity associated with the mid-autumn festival.

Participants at the Pho-tastic Family Cooking Workshops

This Spring we have also returned to the kitchen for more of our popular cooking workshops, this time for families to enjoy together. The first session of Pho-tastic cooking began last Wednesday with a family friendly tour on the story behind Tu Do. Participants shared their favourite foods and their cooking disaster stories and got to meet our friendly chef Tom who escorted them to the Yots café kitchen. Here they undertook culinary challenges and learned to create a delicious Vietnamese noodle dish, all while dressed to theme and cute as a button in striped aprons and paper chef hats.

Lion Dancers from Sydney Indochinese Youth Sport Association

Lion Dancers from Sydney Indochinese Youth Sport Association

Today the festivities continued as more Lion Dancers, this time from Sydney Indochinese Youth Sport Association provided a captivating finale to the cultural performances. Last week these also included some enchanting and adorable young dancers from Southwest Sydney as Canley Vale, Cabramatta and Lansvale Public School’s Vietnamese, Khmer and Chinese dance troupes performed. Waving scarves, tipping conical hats , tapping coconut shells and fanning chopsticks these young dancers won over the audiences with their beautiful renditions of traditional dance forms.

Kids on Deck: Dragons, Dreams and Dragnets continues every day in holidays and every Sunday in Term 4More information on school holiday programs can be found at www.anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays

William Dampier – Buccaneer, Explorer, Hydrographer and sometime Captain

Copper engraving c 1789 of William Dampier. ANMM Collection 00000846

Buccaneer, Explorer, Hydrographer and sometime Captain of the Ship ROEBUCK in the Royal Navy of King William the Third.

So reads the memorial to Englishman William Dampier in the village of East Coker, Somerset, England, the place of his birth in 1651. The memorial lists only a portion of Dampier’s eclectic career and speaks faintly of his contradictory character. Pioneer and pirate, criminal and captain, explorer, author, travel writer and buccaneer. Ironically Dampier, with his less than angelic past, visited Australian shores in 1688, a full century before the convicts of the first fleet. At its bleakest contrast, Dampier was a felon who created a historic legacy in the hallowed halls of literature, science and exploration.

Here’s how it came about.

Arr pirate writin’ story challenge for you!

Johnny Grognose our resident pirate

Avast me maties! It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day once again! And our scurvy pirate mate Grognose Johnny is up to no good! He’s got a cunning plan to commendeer our Facebook page… but he’s setting you all a challenge! A pirate writing story challenge with pirate booty to be won, including tickets to the museum, DVDs of The Pirates Band of Misfits and Signals magazines!

During Talk Like Pirate Day (Wednesday 19 September) Grognose will be asking our Facebook fans to put pen to paper (or hook to keyoard) in the attempt to write the most adventurous, disasturous and hilarious pirate story ever to be written.

Kicking off at 10 am tomorrow morning, Johnny will provide the first line of the story, then it’s up to you to fill in the rest!

And for a little pirates, we have games and activities, including a pirate dictionary, and pirate hat and eye patch pattern on our Pirates! Children’s adventure land website. Just in time for the opening of the adventure land this Saturday!

Arrr!

King Neptune, his wife, a surgeon, a barber and – some bears.

Orient Line passenger liner menu, 1953, ANMM Collection 00042590

The danger of sea travel and the mysteries of the ocean have produced some elaborate and fascinating mythology over the thousands of years humans have been at sea. At the whims of weather and water, the rough and adventurous lives of sailors and seafarers led to the creation of a wide variety of superstitions, omens and rituals. Gods had to be supplicated, mermaids avoided and traditional rites observed in order to maintain a safe and productive journey. Perhaps the most enduring of these rituals is the Crossing the Line Ceremony.

The sinking of TAHITI – a disaster captured on film

Passengers peer through windows on the deck of the liner VENTURA and hang over the ship’s railings, completely engrossed in the scene in front of them. Some are still climbing ladders up the side of the vessel, while others wait in lifeboats below. Several hundred metres away a ship, their ship, RMS TAHITI is sinking before their very eyes – set to become a relic at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Passengers of the sunken liner TAHITI await transfer to VENTURA. ANMS1122[018] ANMM Collection Gift from Shirley Eutrope

It is 18 August 1930 and the passenger liner TAHITI, two days after its starboard propeller shaft first fractured and then smashed through the side of the hull, is finally succumbing to the irreparable damage.

A treasure trove of shipwright’s tools: exploring the Higham collection

Greetings my name is Candice Witton and I am working with Roxi Truesdale as an Intern in the Registration department at the Australian National Maritime Museum. Roxi and I have been accessioning the Higham shipwright tool collection into the museum database. I will be profiling some of the fascinating tools we have uncovered.

Of the 180 or so objects in the Higham collection we have had great success (so far) identifying the many (at first) boggling variations of tools. We have had some amazing reference material from the Vaughan Evans Library which we are so grateful for. Without this, we may have been left referring to the many different varieties of caulking irons as ‘chisels’ and helical auger drill bits as ‘spiral drills with screws on top’. Thankfully we have now been exposed to the fascinating world of shipwrighting, and the process of caulking.

Caulking is simply the method of sealing joints or seams. Caulking irons are used in a similar manner to chisels, hammering a fibrous material into the joints between wooden planks. This is done to make the vessel watertight and leak free.

Sharp caulking irons

Here we have two caulking irons from the Higham collection. On the left is a significantly older model than the relatively newer iron on the right. Traditional caulking on wooden vessels uses fibres of cotton and oakum – usually a material such as hemp fibre soaked in pine tar. These specific irons are known as sharp or butt irons, and they are used for forcing the caulk into narrow areas.

Reefing irons

Here are two reefing or clearing irons from the Higham collection. The left iron is an older model than the one on the right. Reefing irons were used to scrape out old oakum, to clean the seams to make way for new caulking.

Helical auger drill bit

The Higham tool collection contains many variants on auger drill bits. Here is a standard bit, which features a rotating helical blade and a screw to pull it into the wood. This bit is to be used in a hand-brace, and is effective at moving wooden material out of the hole being drilled.

One object in the Higham tool kit remains a bit of a mystery. This object seems quite unusual, and after consultation with tool experts we were left stumped. It is most possibly a variation on a cold chisel, and after doing extensive online research this is what it most closely resembles. Regardless how I phrased my searches, I still returned numerous references to Jimmy Barnes!

What is also curious are the manufacturers logos “Plumb (Aust) PT” on one side, “Fern Tools” with fern frond on the other. I discovered W H Plumb Australia is of axe making fame, but beyond that we haven’t had a lot of luck!

So there you have a small sample of some of the many, many interesting tools of the Higham tool collection. You can read Roxi’s awesome blog detailing our first contact with the tool collection, and curator Stephen Gapp’s fascinating blog on the origins of the collection. Stay tuned for more intern blogs as we explore the time and place that these tools were used.

Candice

Registration Intern