Exciting news! The museum announced today that it has acquired three amazing historical treasures from James Cook’s second Pacific voyage.

The three artefacts – two carved wooden clubs and a rounded hand club made of whalebone – were collected from Polynesian communities during Cook’s 1772-1775 exploration of the Pacific, giving them a direct link to the great explorer.

They are also significant because of their association with the Polynesian Omai who joined the expedition and became the first Pacific Islander to be taken to England.

There were two ships travelling together on the voyage – HMS Resolution (commanded by Cook) and HMS Adventure (commanded by Tobias Furneaux). Omai joined Furneaux on the Adventure and they became close friends.

He accompanied Cook and Furneaux when they landed at Tangatapu (Tonga) in October 1773 and was there when the two wooden clubs were gifted by the islanders to the commanders.

In December of that year, Furneaux received the whalebone hand club when the expedition visited Queens Charlotte Sound in New Zealand.

On arriving back in England at the end of the expedition, Furneaux took Omai to his home at Swilly, near Plymouth, to meet his family. He also took great pleasure in bringing home with him his South Seas treasures. The three clubs, now widely known as the Omai relics, remained in the Furneaux family collection until 1986 when they were sold.

The museum purchased the clubs from a private vendor for $622,750 with funding assistance from the Australian Government’s National Cultural Heritage Account of $100,000.

Curator Dr Nigel Erskine examines the Omai relics

But what makes these objects particularly significant is their unquestionable provenance. It is extremely rare for objects dating back to this era to remain in private ownership.

We’re delighted these objects are now part of the National Maritime Collection, adding to our existing collections relating to Cook and the European exploration of the Pacific. They will be going on display in the museum in time for the Christmas holiday season.

For more information visit our Newsroom.

While racing in the State Open Water Championships (during October 1947 in Rose Bay, Sydney) a competitor reaches under the hull to move the keel aft.

Model skiff designs were based on their larger, fully crewed 18 foot cousins and usually built by their skipper.

The big skiff origins go back to the 1870s when a number of classes raced regularly on Sydney Harbour. The 1890s saw the 18-footers begin their rise to dominance as the showpiece skiff class, and the massive 22-footers and 24-footers faded into history.  Meanwhile as always, there were people playing with and racing model boats, largely on ponds and lakes. In Sydney,  the south of the city, the natural water plains and ponds that drained towards Botany Bay had been landscaped to become parklands, areas now known as Centennial Park and Moore Park. The lakes were ideal model boat venues and the pond boats were a regular weekend feature.  View historic images of a 1947 race in Rose Bay, Sydney.

About a year or so before 1910 some model yachtsmen developed the idea of open water model skiffs, sailing on Sydney Harbour or Parramatta River. The first club was at Berrys Bay in North Sydney.  Soon after a club was created on the opposite shore at Balmain and another started at Iron Cove. In 1918 a state council was formed with various pond and open water clubs participating.

At least 10 clubs were formed to race the skiffs on open water, some were short lived, others such as the Iron Cove 2 ft Club spanned almost the full history of the skiffs. Whilst most were located in the inner western suburbs along Parramatta River there was an outpost at Sans Souci on the Georges River, and briefly, another at Cammeray on Middle Harbour.

Racing appears to have stopped by 1954, but during the four decades before hand racing was extremely active. Designs evolved, racing reached great heights and the support from competitors and spectators was very strong. The model skiff and pond classes were quite numerous – from eight to 10 inches up to 32 inches. However, the predominant classes for the open water skiffs were 12 inch and the mighty two foot class.

The skiffs were raced in winter; summer was for the real boats. An integral part of racing was for the skiffs to be followed by their skippers in rowing boats. No ordinary rowing boat either, something at least three metres (10 feet) long. There was also someone else on board to row – sitting aft and facing forward with the skipper in the bow.  The rower could be a colleague of the skipper, or a family member – many were women; sisters, cousins or girlfriends.

It was a team effort, but the rower’s principle job was to manoeuvre the dinghy alongside for the skiff’s skipper to make adjustments to his boat during the race.  While the skipper and rower had their independent tasks, in some instances they worked together on tactics and shared observations on the conditions and their rival’s position. The rower had to make sure he kept clear of other skiffs and their rowers. Interference or contact with the opposition could bring instant disqualification from the officials adjudicating the race.  The skipper had a pair of oars too; in between fiddling with his boat he had to row as well so they could keep up with the speedy blighters.

With 20 or more skiffs racing in a strong breeze, the sight must have been something to behold. Spread out over a bay in panorama was a migrating flock of little white sails and emblems being herded and chased by people in clinker dinghies.

Yet this was serious stuff for the skippers, many had designed and built their craft.  Built at home, often on the kitchen table, the hulls and fittings were a true example of expert craftsmanship, and these days are treasured like artefacts. Some people won’t even put them in the water. The early examples were hollowed out of a solid timber, usually the light Queensland red cedar. Later craft had miniature skiff construction with keels, frames, floors, planks, beams and knees. Brass fittings were hand made from sheet and stock sections, halyards and sheets with sliding cleats and jappara sails.

It was all big boat design and construction on a ridiculous scale. And not for show under a glass case either – these racers had to work in a good breeze out on the Harbour.

– Story contributed by By David Payne -  a yacht designer and curator at the museum. View his website.

More information about model skiffs

- Model skiffs make a come back
- Build your own model skiff
- Recollections of model skiff racing – a personal story

George McGoogan with Joan 11, the two-foot model skiff he built.

From the age of five years I was interested in sailing boats. Each Sunday I watched and helped the sailors rig their boats in Mort Bay, Balmain, and as I got older I would be invited to crew in a boat as  the bailer boy, on a windy day.

They raced from Clark Island to the Sow and Pigs. In the winter months, when the skiff season was over,  the Balmain 2-foot model sailing boats raced off White Horse Point each Sunday. They had a fleet of approximately 16 starters. My uncle Hugh McGoogan sailed the Marie, its colour patch was a round black circle. My father George McGoogan was his rower.

I first became involved with the 2-foot boats in 1942, when I was 15 years old, the year before I was apprenticed at Cockatoo Island. Brother George made sails and fitted out a boat called the Jean. I was his rower. We sailed at the North Sydney 2’0” Model Sailing Club for one year, and the following two seasons we sailed with the Drummoyne club.

A group of sailors from Balmain got together and formed the Birchgrove 2’0” Model Sailing Club. They held their meetings on Sunday mornings in Mr Dodds’ boat shed at Birchgrove, and raced around Snails Bay in the afternoons.

Brother George then built me a 2-foot clinker boat called the Joan, named after his wife. My handicap was eight minutes. My father George, an experienced rower, rowed for me and I learned a lot from him about 2-foot sailing. I won four races during my first season.

Brother George was a shipwright by trade, he built a number of 2-footers in his early years. His rower was brother Jack McGoogan, whose nickname was ‘Up Jackie’! During their racing career George’s was usually the scratch boat. The combination of skipper and rower was important to racing 2-footers.

The rower could position the dinghy to assist the 2-footer into the wind, or pull it away to achieve fast speed through the water. Likewise, off the wind the position of the dinghy could change the direction of the model boat without the skipper doing any adjustments to the sails, rudder or fin. When a strong westerly or nor’easter blew  it was necessary to have two pairs of oars in the dinghy to catch the model boat.

Two-foot model boats had four sets of sails. The biggest was used in light conditions, then there were intermediate, second and the small heavy weather rig. The sails were made of Japara silk or unbleached  calico.

Model boats were built in a jig. The keel consisted of Huon pine (when available) planked with cedar and fastened with swaged boat nails. The construction was generally carvelbuilt, though the early models were dug out of solid cedar logs. The 2-foot models had a sliding fin fabricated from mild or stainless steel, 25” long, 4” wide and carrying 22 pounds of lead.

In 1946 I built a new 2-footer called the Margaret after my girlfriend Margaret Ritchie, whom I later married. She volunteered to be my rower and was extremely good. The Margaret model is now 62 years old and in excellent condition. I sailed her off the Drummoyne shore in an easterly breeze not all that long ago.

In 1946 moorings were placed in Snails Bay to berth the timber ships from overseas. This prevented further sailing in Snails Bay. The Birchgrove club moved their courses adjacent to Cockatoo Island and started their races off Cove Street wharf, Birchgrove. The club was changed back to Balmain 2’0” Model Sailing Club. It had a big following, and hired a 60-foot ferry every Sunday to follow the race.

Sailor families were on board and for those who were interested in having a bet on the race, the bookmakers’ prices were advertised on a blackboard.

During the racing season there were various inter-club races and State championships sailed down the harbour off Shark Island. Sailing continued during the 1940s and until the 1950s. It probably ended because people’s way of life changed. Families started getting motor cars and they might go for a Sunday drive instead.

The television arrived in Sydney not long after and that was the end of a great winter sport sailed on Sunday afternoons.

- Post written from Harry McGoogan’s  handwritten notes. First published in the museum’s magazine, Signals.

More information

- Read how model racing skiffs are making a comeback.

- Build your own model racing skiff.

- View images from a recent model skiff race on Sydney Harbour.

A skipper shepherds his model skiff between Point Piper and Shark Island.

During the first half of the century model racing skiffs were regularly seen sailing across Sydney Harbour in winter.

They were often raced by people who in summer were busy racing full sized skiffs.

Although this practice ended around 1954, model racing skiffs are making a comeback across Australia, which the museum is keen to encourage.
Model skiffs shared things in common with their full sized cousins the 18 foot skiffs, and many were built by skippers or their crew. They were much smaller, had over-sized rigs and improbable hull proportions.  Being models, the skiffs couldn’t be crewed so their skipper would follow them in row boats. These boats had another person to row the boat who was usually the skipper’s colleague or family member – many were women; sisters, cousins or girlfriends.

The rower would manoeuvre the dinghy along-side the skiff so the skipper could make adjustments to his boat during the race.  While the skipper and rower had their independent tasks, they also worked together on tactics and shared observations on the conditions and their rival’s position.

Model racing skiffs  started making a comeback  in the 1980s, and featured names such as Fred Thomas from Sans Souci and the McGooghans of Balmain – people who had been part of model racing in the 1940s and 1950s.They were joined by the late Nick Masterman, a dedicated heritage shipwright and enthusiast for Sydney Harbour’s maritime past. Masterman encouraged people to restore the old craft, as well as highlight the models’ story in local media and boat shows.

Since then others have come aboard – people with their dad’s or uncle’s old skiff, or one they picked up elsewhere like in an antique shop or garage sale.

This once dormant art is stirring back to life as more new craft are being constructed.  Already, enthusiasts in Brisbane, Tasmania and up the NSW coast have built their own models. Last year the museum organised an event on Sydney Harbour for enthusiasts to sail their craft. View pictures.

The museum is keen to encourage this revival and has published plans to build a traditional 12 inch model skiff. This class is quite manageable to build, store, transport and sail, and provides all the qualities and satisfaction of the big two-foot class. View images of a traditional 12 inch model skiff.

If you do build a model skiff racer, we would love to hear from you so please post your experiences in the comments section below. Eventually, if there are enough interested people a club for the model skiffs might be formed again to organise occasional events. If you are interested please email us to let us know. We would love to see photos of your craft too.

More information

- Download and view instructions of how to build a model racing skiff – remember the key to a successful skiff is to keep the hull light.

- View images of a traditional 12 inch model skiff.

- Story contributed by By David Payne, a yacht designer and curator at the museum. View David’s website.

David's skiff in action.

The delightfully comical proportions of racing model skiffs are rather confounding for many people. How does something so short, so wide, so deep – and with all that sail – actually work?

Why can’t it look more normal? Why aren’t they just scaled down from an 18 foot skiff to the specified length of the model class, of one or two feet (30.48 or 60.96 cm)?The really simple answer is that these are not models in the first place. They are yachts in their own right, and subject to the same principles that shape any vessel. A study of these principles, and the way they are calculated, fills books. Indeed it is a university course, and becomes quite complex rather quickly.

In contrast, model skiffs have traditionally been created by eye, drawing solely on the maker’s experience – but the factors that govern a big yacht’s ability to sail still apply to these little model skiffs.

I am a yacht designer (and a curator at the museum) and have created my own model skiff plus some plans to show other enthusiasts how to build a traditional 12 inch skiff. Download them here (add link)

The range of sizes of skiffs built to the 12 inch (305 mm) length varies considerably. The plans prepared for this 12 inch skiff will produce a model that is towards the smaller size. This is a good starting point for a first model and the builder will end up with a skiff that can be comfortably displayed inside, fully rigged.

It is possible to build larger craft and they can be based on these lines by enlarging the hull sections or body plan on a photocopier, while keeping the length to 12 inches (305 mm). It will be necessary to redraw the waterlines to the new widths at each two inch (51mm) section or station.

This will increase the volume, but the amount it goes up by is equal to the square of the enlargement. For example, if the boat is enlarged by a factor of 1.15 (or 115%) on the photocopier, the width and depth are increased by the same amount, and the volume is increased by 1.15 squared. This equals 1.32, so the displacement of 1.5 kg to waterline No. 3 is increased to almost two kg.

The advantage of a bigger boat is that it can carry more ballast and a bigger rig, which should make the skiff faster than a smaller one in some conditions.

It is necessary to keep the hull light and make cut outs on the inside of the lifts. Choose lightweight timbers to build the hull, such as cedar. The skilled model makers who originally built these craft managed to have remarkably thin skins that measured less than 5mm thick. This may not be practical for a first time builder, but with care and patience the hull can be cut down towards the minimum amount of timber required.

The original craft were a true representation of the individual builder’s ideas on hull size, shape, rig and fittings. They would carve the shape by eye, estimate a rig size and then think out their own answers to the all the fittings details. This process evolved for each builder as they produced a series of skiffs.

These plans show enough detail to construct a basic model. Builders are encouraged to look at other 12 inch skiffs and figure out ways of fabricating their own fittings, or even build a different shape.

Download plans, they are in three sections:
1.    Plan one (2 KB)
2.    Plan two (1.4 KB)
3.    Plan three (1.7 KB)

View images of a traditional 12 inch model skiff.

- Story and plans contributed by David Payne, a yacht designer and curator at the museum. View David’s website.

When 13 year-old Rob Davids migrated to Australia from Holland almost 60 years ago, he didn’t realise his most treasured possession -  a pair of 1930s wooden ice skates  – would come to symbolise his expectations and misconceptions about the new country he would call home.

These skates are on display in the museum’s New Acquisitions Case and help tell a fascinating story of persecution, exile, dislocation, lost hopes and new beginnings.

Rob's treasured 1930s wooden ice skates.

Rob migrated to Australia with his mother and brothers onboard the liner Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, which arrived at No 7 Wharf Pyrmont in September 1952. They were joining Rob’s father David, who was already living in Australia. The Davids family planned a new life in Australia after many years of dislocation.

During the German occupation of Holland (now The Netherlands) David, who was Jewish, divorced his wife Maria van Rijn in 1942 to protect her from Nazi persecution. David was smuggled across the English Channel in a small fishing boat where he worked for the Dutch government in exile throughout the war. David was a so-called ‘Engeland vaarder’ and received the Bronze Cross in the Order of Oranje-Nassau from Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina.

Two-year-old Rob in Holland, 1941.

Rob and his brothers stayed with their mother in Holland during the German occupation. During this period Maria was forced to fend for herself and moved several times after the Germans requisitioned her home. In 1942 the family lived in Sant Poort near Harlaam, where Rob later discovered his mother was hiding Jews in her garage. As a child Rob recalls tailing German troops as they marched through the streets; and listening to a British news station on a secret radio concealed in a cupboard at home.

After liberation, David returned to Holland and remarried Maria. The family then lived on a farm in north Holland, before migrating to East Surrey in the UK. In 1949, seeking a better life, they migrated to Jakarta, Indonesia where David tried to establish a small business machines company. When the business failed to take off and political turmoil escalated in the lead up to Indonesian independence, David migrated to Sydney. Maria and her three children returned to Holland, packed up the house, and followed David in 1952. Rob packed his cherished violin and ice skates for the voyage. Rob did not want to go and still has vivid memories of farewelling his grandparents from the wharf in Amsterdam.

In Sydney, David established NSW Business Machines with an office on the third floor of the Strand Arcade. He sold copying machines by OCE and Retoce. Rob remembers spending a few Christmas holidays helping with the business. Later, David started RUF Accounting Systems, which sold double entry accounting systems using carbon paper.

– Story contributed by Kim Tao, curator

Lyneham High School performs outside the museum on 22 September 2009.

The museum loves music and encourages school bands to perform on its forecourt. So far we’ve had school bands from South Australia, Coffs Harbour and recently Lyneham High School from the ACT. We’d love to hear your school band perform. It’s a great way to get performance experience and show Sydney what your school band is made of.

If you’d like your school band to play at the museum, please contact us at events@anmm.gov.au

A year’s passed and I’ve finally finished researching and re-cataloguing the museum’s collection of maritime small arms and accessories. All up, I’ve looked at nearly fifty guns, swords, knives and pikes, as well as one walking-stick rumoured to house a sword. Sadly, it turned out to be a simple cane, and thus fell outside my brief.

I’m now entering my research results into “The Museum System,” the museum’s central database where information on an object’s provenance, condition, storage location and so on are collated. Once the data has received a stamp of approval from the curatorial team, it will be available to the public through our e-museum.

When I started out the project, a historian friend of mine (who clearly spends too much time shrouded in documents) joked that objects are boring and only significant for three reasons: 1. they’re rare 2. they’re typical, or 3. they belonged to someone important. He’s kind of right, but I’d argue that the way these three factors intersect makes objects interesting and insightful, and a valuable supplement to written material.

In my research I’ve tried to explore the stories behind the objects, and see how they might illustrate some important themes.

One major focus area of the museum is the strong maritime links between Australia and the United States, celebrated in the museum’s USA Gallery.

It’s easy to forget what cosmopolitan places the colonies were, especially in the heady years of the gold rushes. And as people traversed from place to place, they brought their sidearms with them for personal protection. The frontiers of our settlements were not so very different from the fabled ‘Wild West’ of the United States.

One pistol held by the collection—and yes, the story of its owner—brought home how close the Australian colonies and America were in the nineteenth century. It is a flintlock ‘coach’ pistol produced by J. Harding, a London manufacturer active between 1815 and 1840. For stylistic reasons I suspect this pistol was produced in the late 1830s. Harding manufactured similar pistols for use by Her Majesty’s Coach Service and three examples are held in the British Post Museum and Archive.

Flintlock Coach Pistol owned by Francis Deane (ANMM 00008294).

This particular pistol, however, was for civilian use, and is believed to have belonged to Francis Williams Deane, an American sailor who travelled between the gold-rushes in California and Victoria in the mid-nineteenth century. The museum holds a number of objects associated with Deane, including a daguerreotype portrait, and his naturalization, death and marriage certificates.

Daguerreotype of Francis Williams Deane (ANMM 00008367).

Deane was born around 1820 in Raynham, Massachusetts. After travelling to the Californian rushes in 1848, Deane came to Sydney as master of the Bark Milwood. The following year, Deane returned to America to join the ‘forty-niners’ on the Yuma diggings in Arizona.

Diggings in Arizona and California were reputed to be fairly safe places for new immigrants, but around the time Deane arrived, a number of arrivals from the south had been causing trouble. One local miner explained there was an influx “of the worst element in the world, chiefly from Sydney and other Pacific Ocean ports… this matter seriously changed and endangered current affairs in California.” In response to a string of thefts in 1851, locals in San Francisco rose up and formed the famous “Committee of Vigilance Committee,” several hundred strong. In a flurry of activity, the Vigilantes hung 4 Australians, and drove several dozen others from California.

The execution of John Jenkins, “an ex-convict from Sydney”. Held at the Californian Military Museum.

Deane was not Australian, but, perhaps due to his earlier Antipodean sojourn, is rumoured to have fled town “a pier jump ahead” of the Vigilantes. He departed (permanently) for Victoria, and it is tempting to wonder whether he armed himself with this pistol for protection.

Deane was naturalised in 1854 in Williamstown, Victoria, a place known for its strong maritime community. On his naturalization certificate he was described as “a master mariner who arrived from the US on board the Mary & Ellen and who intends to purchase land and establish himself in the said colony.”

Deane married a local, but never abandoned his ‘Yankee’ ways. According to a district historian, “Captain Deane called his home Yosemite… it was his habit to ride round the streets of Williamstown on a small skewbald pony, complete with Mexican saddle and savagely rowelled spurs. A heaving line [lasso] was coiled on the pommel like a lariat, and jammed on the head of the pilot would be his shiny stovepipe hat.” Deane died in 1898.

Deane’s single-shot, muzzle loading coach pistol seems small and awkward in comparison to a second pistol associated with both Americans and the Victorian gold rushes. It is a Colt Second Model Dragoon Revolver, which fired six shots and was known for its large bore and great stopping power. Colt revolvers were popular amongst civilians and soldiers because of their unique (at the time) double-action firing mechanism. Previous mechanisms required the shooter to manually ‘cock’ the pistol before firing the trigger. The ‘double action’ cocked and fired the pistol simply by pulling the trigger, which significantly increased the gun’s rate of fire.

Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company was established in Hartford, Connecticut in 1847. It’s initial focus was on the production of revolvers for use in the Mexican-American War of 1846 – 1848, but it soon expanded its operations. Three models of the Colt revolver were manufactured, with the second model being made between 1850 and 1851. Approximately 2550 of these were produced, making them the least common of the three. This pistol’s serial number- 9253- indicates that it was manufactured in 1850.

Colt Second Model Dragoon Revolver (ANMM 00029485).

According to its previous owners, the pistol was “found in pieces under the dirt floor of a shed in Ballarat.” There is a chance- admittedly a small one- that it was used in the miner’s uprising at the Eureka Stockade in 1854.

The uprising began in response to the high price of mining licenses and the uncertain returns of digging. Some miners equated the purchase of licences with taxation, and argued that gold diggers were being subjected to taxation without representation.

In October 1854 the murder of a Scottish miner by a local hotelkeeper led to increasing civil unrest, which culminated with the formation of the Ballarat Reform League in November. Among other things, the League demanded the removal of the licence system, and manhood suffrage. On the 3rd of December, after a tense stand-off, miners and government troops clashed at a hill occupied by the League. A subsequent commission determined that 22 miners were killed, and at least twelve more were wounded. Other accounts put the figure as high as 27.

Troops and miners clash at the stockade. The miner in the blue trousers appears to be wielding a Colt. State Library of NSW SSV2B/Ball/7.

Because of the Reform League’s demand for universal male suffrage, the uprising at Eureka has sometimes been described as the “birthplace of Australian democracy.” This Australian claim makes it is easy to forget what an international endeavour the uprising was. The thirteen miners were charged with treason in the uprising’s aftermath included Irishmen. Scots, an Italian, and a Jamaican. The first of the thirteen tried, John Joseph, was an African American who hade come from New York. As with the other twelve, Joseph was acquitted. His defence, however, held a unique racial element: the defence argued it was impossible for “a simple nigger” to oppose Her Majesty the Queen.

Joseph was not the only American involved. The prominent American businessman George Francis Train, who was based in Melbourne, had imported a consignment of Colt revolvers to the colony. They sold well, and when tensions arose in Ballarat, miners sent a request for Train to forward a further stock of Colts, on loan, to the diggings. Train refused to help, and, ever the entrepreneur, proceeded to lease six wagons to transport government troops and supplies to Ballarat.

Despite Train’s tardiness, a group of up to 200 American miners based in Ballarat organised themselves into the “Independent California Rangers Revolver Brigade.” Rafaello Carboni, an Italian who described events at the stockade, noted members of the Brigade were armed “with a Colt’s revolver of large size, and many had a Mexican knife at the hip.” The Brigade missed the skirmish, having left the stockade the previous evening in an attempt to intercept government reinforcements (incorrectly) rumoured to be en-route to Ballarat.

 After watching the rebellion of James T. Kirk in the recently released epic film Star Trek I got to thinking about the pressure of following in the footsteps of one’s parents, especially a parent like George Kirk, who in an alternate reality, served as captain of the Kelvin for a mere 12 minutes yet saved over 800 souls. Don’t stop reading- I promise to not reference Star Trek again in this blog. The idea I am trying to introduce here is the desire to continue one’s family legacy and birthright through an occupation. Consider this; a legitimate reason for enlisting in the armed services today is to consolidate and continue the family tradition. Like father, like son, as the old adage goes.  Wandering around the Australian National Maritime Museum I saw this paradigm play out in front of my eyes via an exhibit on display. Yes, that’s right. You’ve guessed it. Sons and grandsons carrying on the naval tradition as clown entertainers onboard passenger liners.

Doubling as a theatre duo and husband and wife, Harold Tanner and Marcelle Rose boarded ships using the stage names of Poncho and Bubbles.  The exhibit label informs the audience that Poncho was always interested in clowns and magic and his father performed as a clown under the nom de plume Poncho also. The exhibit included an array of paraphernalia such as posters and performance memorablia, not limited to a rubber chicken. 

In 1961 the couple bore a son, Clive, and at six years of age he developed an alter ego; Pimple. We have all heard of stage parents, but isn’t this taking it a little too far? At the age of fifteen Cli…ergh Pimple began to perform on passenger ships with his parents. The tradition did not stop with that little facial spot; Poncho and Bubbles also have two performing grandchildren- Freckle and Dimple. 

Sadly Poncho passed away in April of 2000 but Bubbles still performs. I decided to test this out and to my surprise I found a website offering the services of the novelty clowns Poncho, Bubbles and Pimple.   This is indicative of a successful career spanning over fifty years.

Krusty the Klown eat your heart out.

As a volunteer intern at the Australian National Maritime Museum it has come to my attention that museum personnel are inherently just as fascinating and enigmatic as the objects which are kept and displayed in the exhibits.   In my quest to find a suitable artifact in the Maritime to be the focus of this blog, I encountered an entertaining and unsuspecting specimen in the form of a security guard. He has often regaled me with comical anecdotes as I’ve passed him on my way to lunch from time to time and as such I was pleasantly surprised to find a familiar face wandering around the galleries. My questions about any ‘curious’ objects left him pondering for a moment or two before he proceeded to detail to me a rumour he had heard concerning a display statue outside the ‘Passengers’ exhibit. The statue is a depiction of a young boy seated amongst travel baggage grasping a teddy bear.   

Museum labels inform me that children were commonly passengers on sea vessels. They travelled via ship to Australia with their families, at times to grasp the new working opportunities the country had to offer, other times to seek refuge. Children were also known to travel on their own, as part of the British scheme to populate the newly colonized country.    

 The security guard divulges to me that two former security guards of the museum swore they saw the spirit of the child walking along the platform adjacent to where the statue is situated. Night at the Museum eat your heart out. They have not since returned to the museum, he adds for further emphasis. Distinctive of many urban legends, a precise date is not specified and the witnesses of the specter are not identified by name.

 He does not cease there. On his first 3am shift following the revelation of what transpired in the after hours of the museum, the elevator proceeded to run on its own. No buttons were pressed and no one else was in the building. Upon being asked if he was ‘spooked out’ he chuckled and reported the elevator had been known for working in mysterious ways for some time.

 Thanking him for his input and preparing to move on he appeared to have had an epiphany; his eyes became focused as he insisted that he show me the wild animals that secretly frequent the museum. He explained that he is about to tell me the story he tells the adolescent patrons of the museum. I am led to a gallery with a large, wharf crane holding wooden crates in suspension by a roped net. This crane is characteristic of the ones used to move catches of fish along the Victorian coastline during the early 20^th century. I am instructed to stand directly beneath it.  I do as I am told.

 “Now look to your left.”

Adjacent to the crane, atop more wooden crates and ropes is a small rat. The guard explains that once a person is standing right underneath the target, Mr. Rat gnaws at the rope in the hope of breaking free the cargo. However this is not a one rat job. He has an accomplice, in the form of a small pigeon that is perched on the other side of the exhibit, a la Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. He acts as a scout and helps finish off the job by flying about the undoubtedly dazed victim.

I am told that in the beginning there was also a mouse involved. Must’ve been quite a trick- some trio. I suggest possibly it was the mouse that enticed the unsuspecting victim under the trap. My input delighted the security guard and he agreed that it was indeed plausible. Unfortunately however the mouse went missing, although I promised to keep an eye out for him during my wanderings through the museum.

 The exchange ended with him recounting a talk he had in 2008 with young pilgrims who were visitors to the museum during World Youth Week. Seeing the Southern Cross portrayed on the ceiling along with the other constellations they exclaimed that they were in a blessed place. I put it to you that they were quite correct. The Australian National Maritime Museum is indeed fortunate to employ such animated staff, like my friend the security guard, with a fervency to evoke the imaginations of the patrons with the products and the vividness of his own. He, and others like him, are valuable contributions to the aura of the museum.

Walking back to the office in Wharf7 I glance at the artefacts on exhibit in the Sydney Heritage Fleet Artefact Store, opposite the Conservatory Laboratory. What do you know? There is a little mouse in the display. 

Funny that. I’ve never taken much notice of him before.

Melissa Grima