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Third hut at Challicum, 1845

This is a watercolour by Duncan Cooper that depicts the third hut built at Challicum, a sheep run west of Ballarat in western Victoria. It shows a weatherboard hut or cottage with an established garden surrounded by a palisade (paling fence). A wooden bridge, which spans a creek, joins a pathway that leads to the front ...

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Ophir gold diggings in 1851 - asset 3

This is a hand-coloured lithograph made by Thomas Balcombe (1810-61), measuring 27 cm x 47.5 cm, and based on a sketch made on the spot by J Korff. It depicts gold diggings at the confluence of Summer Hill Creek and Lewis Ponds Creek at Ophir in New South Wales. A horseman is shown approaching miners standing near the creek, ...

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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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Forehead ornament, c1916

This is an Aboriginal forehead ornament from the Northern Territory, believed to have been made in the early 1900s. It comprises more than 30 kangaroo teeth, each embedded in beeswax and then attached to a string. Lengths of string extend out at both ends of the ornament. The ornament is 45 cm long and 9.5 cm wide.

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'Attacking the mail, bushranging, NSW 1864'

This is a coloured print, measuring 19.8 cm x 25 cm, painted by the famous colonial artist Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80) and published in 'The Australian Sketchbook'. It shows three masked bushrangers holding up the Royal Mail coach with shotguns and muskets. Their horses are hidden in nearby shrubs. The Mail is shown crowded ...

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Concert room at Ballarat, 1855

This is a watercolour, measuring 22.8 cm x 31.9 cm, by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), a famous colonial artist. It shows Charles Thatcher (1831-78), a comic singer well known on the gold fields, performing popular songs on stage at the Charlie Napier Hotel in Ballarat with a female accompanist. The painting has the artist's ...

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First pole on the Overland Telegraph, c1870

This is a black-and-white wood engraving of a drawing dating from about 1870 by Samuel Calvert (1828-1913). Probably set near Adelaide, South Australia, it depicts a group of men and women in mid-Victorian dress, circled around a rough-hewn telegraph pole, in a bush setting. The pole is being levered, using ropes, into ...

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Sedge hunting baskets, 1936, 1980s

These are four hunting baskets from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. All are made from sedge grass. The top bag on the left and the two at the bottom were made in the late 1980s, while the bag on the top right-hand side was collected in 1936. The oldest bag is 113.5 cm high, 51 cm wide and 28 cm in diameter. The other ...

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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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Women unionists marching on Black Friday during the Brisbane General Strike, 1912

This is a black-and-white photograph of an orderly procession of women walking four or five abreast past Brisbane's Treasury Building in the city centre on 2 February 1912, a day that became known as 'Black Friday'. The majority of the women appear to be dressed in their best and wearing hats for the occasion. Several horsedrawn ...

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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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Electors arriving to vote, Mackay, 1877

This black-and-white pen-and-ink sketch depicts voters arriving at a polling station in a state by-election in Mackay, Queensland, on 23 April 1877. The voters arrive in horsedrawn buggies and carriages. Speech bubbles and banners include the slogans 'VOTE for LONG', 'Yah! no slavery!' and 'Beor! and down with Kanaka Labour!' ...

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Former Pacific Island indentured labourers waiting for deportation, 1906

This black-and-white photograph shows Pacific Islanders mustered at the Cairns Court House in Queensland awaiting a medical examination prior to their deportation under the Australian Government's 1901 Pacific Island Labourers Act. The group, including a woman, some children and an Islander holding a bicycle, would probably ...

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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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Humpback whale carcass, Tangalooma Whaling Station, c1957 - item 2 of 2

This is a colour photograph of several men with long-handled flensing knives removing blubber from a whale's carcass as it lies on the flensing deck of the Tangalooma Whaling Station at Moreton Island in Queensland. The men do not appear to be wearing safety equipment and are dressed in work clothes. Several people look ...

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Humpback whale carcass, Tangalooma Whaling Station, c1957 - item 1 of 2

This is a colour photograph showing the carcass of a southern humpback whale ('Megaptera novaengliae') on the wooden slipway of the Tangalooma Whaling Station on Moreton Island in Queensland. The whale is intact with its underside uppermost, showing distinctive colourings and markings, including the ventral grooves. Onlookers, ...

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The Holy Triad Temple at Breakfast Creek, 1886

This black-and-white photograph of the Holy Triad Temple (San Xung Kung) at Breakfast Creek in Brisbane shows the exterior of a small elaborately decorated and well-maintained Chinese temple sometimes known as a joss house. The decorative triple roof sits on a rectangular rendered brick structure, which is adorned with ...

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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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Pacific Islander women planting sugar cane at Bingera, c1897

This black-and-white photograph shows several indentured Pacific Islander women planting sugar-cane stalks, or setts, in freshly made furrows in a large field at Bingera near Bundaberg, Queensland. The women, dressed in Western-style clothes, are following directly behind a horsedrawn plough that is worked by indentured ...

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Pacific Islanders at irrigation channels, c1905

This sepia photograph shows around 20 Pacific Islander men posed on either side of a narrow irrigation channel in a cane field at Bingera Plantation near Bundaberg in Queensland. Some are holding long-handled hoes or shovels. A junction of the irrigation channel is visible in the foreground with equipment necessary to divert ...