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Eastern horseshoe bat skull

This is a colour photograph of the internal skull of an eastern horseshoe bat ('Rhinolophus megaphyllus'). This museum specimen displays two components of the skull: the braincase with fused rostrum and the lower jaw. This image has a pale background and includes a thick black scale line representing 1 cm. (Classification ...

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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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Pacific Islander labourers in the Mackay District, late 1800s

This posed black-and-white photograph shows indentured Pacific Islanders by their grass hut homes, probably on a Mackay sugar plantation in Queensland. Some are seated on logs or rough timber benches and one woman can also be seen. They are dressed in Western-style clothes. More huts can be seen on the cleared rise in the ...

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'The new rush', 1865

This is a coloured print, measuring 19.4 cm x 25.2 cm, by the famous colonial artist Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), published in 'The Australian Sketchbook' in 1865. It shows a gold rush scene, probably in Victoria, with a stream of prospectors travelling along a dirt road. Several are walking beside their horses and heavily ...

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'Gold digging in Australia 1852: bad results'

This is the first of a pair of oval watercolours, measuring 20.2 cm x 26.4 cm, painted by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), a famous colonial artist. It shows two gold miners sitting dejectedly beside their mine, probably on the Victorian gold fields. Behind the men is a windlass, as well as their wheelbarrow, pick and spade. ...

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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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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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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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Pacific Island labourer recruiting ship 'Para', c1880

This is a drawing of the two-masted brigantine 'Para', probably completed by Master Mariner William Wawn during a successful five months voyage to the Solomon Islands in 1894. One of a series of sketches of his impressions of the islands in pencil, ink and watercolour, it shows the recruiting ship offshore at anchor, as ...

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Chinese farm workers planting cane, Cairns, 1890s

This is a black-and-white 1890s photograph portraying about 12 men, presumed to be Chinese as some wear conical hats, manually laying sugar-cane cuttings, or setts, at regular intervals in long furrows in a large paddock on Hambledon Sugar Plantation near Cairns in Queensland. In the background are a mounted overseer supervising ...

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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 Islanders harvesting cane on Bingera Plantation, 1884

This sepia photograph shows around ten Pacific Islander labourers in a sugar-cane field at Bingera Plantation near Bundaberg in Queensland as the cane is being harvested. A well-dressed European man and two young children pose in the cleared foreground, while in the mid-ground stands a fully laden horsedrawn wagon with ...

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Cartoon of an Australian wife kissing a US soldier, 1943

This cartoon shows a US soldier romancing the wife of an Australian soldier. A shocked Australian Army private in uniform is depicted peering from behind a curtain at his attractive wife in the arms of a suave-looking US staff sergeant, who is also in uniform. The private holds a photograph album and the uniform hats of ...

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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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Rabbit fence cartoon, 1884

This black-and-white cartoon satirises Queensland parliamentarian John Stevenson's suggestion that a fence be built on the New South Wales border to stop an expected invasion of rabbits. It depicts a low wire fence that four rabbits are using as a tennis net. Other rabbits leap over the fence and hop in the background. ...

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'Chinese carpenters at work, Emerald Hill', c1867

This is a black-and-white print that shows a group of Chinese carpenters in a workshop at Emerald Hill (South Melbourne) around 1867. A European man, who may be an artist, observes two of the carpenters at work. The carpenters appear to be making celestial carvings, which were spiritual objects for the Chinese, but which ...

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Sheep washing at 'Collaroy' station, 1872

This is an image from a wood engraving, measuring 35.0 cm x 23.6 cm, showing an elaborate steam-driven sheep washing plant at 'Collaroy' station in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales. It shows sheep moving through several stages of scouring, washing and rinsing. Large boilers and engines are housed in sheds on the ...

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Sled dogs at the South Pole, 1911

This is a 1911 black-and-white sepia-toned photograph, taken by Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) at the South Pole, of a dog team hitched to a loaded sled on the snow. A figure dressed in Arctic-style cold weather gear stands beside the sled and a Norwegian flag is stuck in the snow. Apart from three other dogs tethered behind ...

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Wool sorting at Gilgandra, 1936

This is a black-and-white photograph, measuring 21.3 cm x 16.2 cm, of four men skirting fleeces and classing wool at Berida Station near Gilgandra in New South Wales. They are using two long tables in a large shearing shed. The station manager's daughter, a shearing contractor and two shed hands are looking on. In the background ...