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Funeral of Burke and Wills, Melbourne, 1863

This is a 17.3 cm x 24.3 cm black-and-white wood engraving of the 1863 state funeral of Burke and Wills in Melbourne, Victoria. Crowds line the street, and watch from balconies and rooftops, to see the procession that includes an ornate horse-drawn open carriage bearing the caskets of the two famous explorers, preceded ...

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'The claim disputed', c1852

This is a watercolour, measuring 19.4 cm x 25.4 cm, by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), a famous colonial artist. It shows a well-dressed man - presumably the Gold Commissioner - arbitrating a dispute over a claim involving three diggers, probably on the Victorian gold fields. Two of the diggers are in animated discussion ...

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Burning of the Garden Palace, Sydney, 1882

This is a colour chromolithograph print measuring 36 cm x 51 cm, showing the huge blaze that destroyed Sydney's Garden Palace (previously used for the International Exhibition) on 22 September 1882.

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Sorting mother-of-pearl shells, Broome, c1953

This is a black-and-white photograph measuring 18.7 cm x 24.5 cm, showing three Malay or Indonesian men grading and sorting mother-of-pearl shells in Broome, Western Australia in about 1953. The photograph was taken by the famous Australian photographer Frank Hurley.

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Homeless man at Dutton Park, Brisbane, 1937

This is a black-and-white newspaper photograph from 1937 showing a homeless middle-aged or elderly balding man lying in a makeshift bed on the floor of what appears to be a disused water tank lying on its side. He is fully dressed, despite being in a makeshift bed, using a hessian sack as a blanket and having an improvised ...

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Ophir gold diggings in 1851 - asset 4

This is a hand-coloured print of a sketch made by George French Angas (1822-86) of the gold fields at Ophir, near Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1851. The title of the sketch ('Ophir at the junction') refers to the junction of Summer Hill and Lewis Pond Creeks, but the junction itself is not clearly shown. The view is from ...

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'Wooloomooloo Bay, Sydney', 1852

This is a pen-and-wash drawing by George French Angas (1822-86) of Woolloomooloo Bay, Sydney, dated 16 December 1852 (the title uses an alternative spelling). Looking north-east across Sydney Harbour towards the Heads, it is a scene only lightly touched by humans, with some wharf buildings in the middle ground, three dinghies ...

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'Opening of the Free Chapel at Angaston, German Pass', 1844

This is a hand-coloured lithograph print of a drawing by George French Angas (1822-86). It shows a group of men and women, dressed in their Sunday best, picnicking on a slope in front of a small stone chapel in the hills of the Barossa Valley, South Australia, in 1844. The chapel is the only structure in an open woodland ...

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Ophir gold diggings in 1851 - asset 5

This is a hand-coloured print of a sketch, entitled 'Fitzroy Bar, Ophir', by George French Angas (1822-86) of the gold fields at Ophir, near Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1851. It shows prospectors cradling for gold along the banks of a stream, which flows swiftly to the rocky Fitzroy Bar, then turns left down between rock-lined ...

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Pacific Islander labourers outside slab-hut dwellings, late 1800s

This is a black-and-white photograph showing indentured Pacific Islanders and their families posing by their slab-hut homes, probably on a coastal Queensland sugar plantation. They are wearing Western-style clothes, with the women in long skirts and the men wearing jackets and trousers. The huts appear to have been constructed ...

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Pacific Islander labourers clearing land, c1895

This is a black-and-white photograph showing nine Pacific Islander men using picks and axes to clear undergrowth and small trees from a clearing in a thickly vegetated area at Farnborough in central Queensland. The men are bare-chested, hatless and barefoot, with some wearing sarong-like garments. A white man stands in ...

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Chinese gold digger preparing for work, c1860s

This is a black-and-white photograph of a Chinese goldminer posed in front of a wall on a central or north Queensland gold field. He wears clean work attire of a conical hat, long-sleeved shirt and Western-style trousers and boots, and carries mining equipment on a shoulder yoke. The equipment includes buckets, spade and ...

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Chinese men on the road to the Palmer River gold field, 1875

This black-and-white wood engraving shows a stereotypical image of Chinese men walking in a line to the Palmer River gold field in northern Queensland. It appeared in the Australasian Sketcher with the title 'CHINESE ON THE ROAD TO THE PALMER'. The six men in the foreground are wearing a variety of traditional clothing ...

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Chinese workers on banana punts near Innisfail, early 1900s

This black-and-white photograph shows three Chinese workers transporting bananas on a punt near Innisfail in northern Queensland. The Chinese workers are wearing traditional dress and conical hats and the punt is laden with boxes and stalks of bananas. At the bow of the small flat-bottomed punt two of the men push long ...

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Chinese market gardener, c1880s

This is a black-and-white photograph showing A H Wong, a Chinese market gardener in Brisbane, watering a bed of what appear to be vigorous cabbages or cauliflowers. He uses a traditional Chinese method of watering - a shoulder yoke or pole with a large watering can at each end. He wears protection from the sun - a hat and ...

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Whaia McClutchie, female orator, 1989

This is a black and white photograph of Whaia McClutchie (1922-1992), speaking in 1989 at the wharenui (meeting house) called Porourangi, at Waiomatatini on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. She stands in front of a doorway, on the porch, holding a broad-brimmed hat in her left hand and pointing with her ...

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Students digging trenches at Ascot State School, Brisbane, 1942

This black-and-white photograph shows schoolchildren digging air-raid trenches in the grounds of Ascot State School in Brisbane, Queensland, on 24 January 1942. Working in the slit trenches, knee deep or deeper, the male students use picks and shovels to dig and remove the earth. A man digging with them on the right is ...

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Convict jacket

This is a woollen convict jacket from Tasmania. The inside of the jacket is stamped with the mark 'WD', indicating that it was issued by the War Department, and it has an arrow mark, signifying British Government property. These marks date the jacket to after 1855.

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Arawa soldier, 1865

This is a watercolour painting created by British soldier Horatio Gordon Robley (1840-1930) in 1865. He called it 'Arawa soldier warning off'. It shows a Mäori warrior with a moko (skin marking) on his face and a moko puhoro (marking on leg or thigh) on his left thigh. He wears a form of traditional clothing made of either ...

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Feathers of upland moa

This is a set of seven feathers from the extinct upland moa ('Megalapteryx didinus'). They were collected by R A Falla in 1947, when he was the director of the Dominion Museum (forerunner to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) in Wellington. He probably collected them from a cave in Takahe Valley in Fiordland National ...