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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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Cranbourne meteorite

This is a colour photograph of an iron meteorite called 'The Cranbourne No 2 mass'.

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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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John Forrest's 1874 expedition

This is a 52.5 cm x 69 cm, black-and-white photoengraving, of John and Alexander Forrest, James Sweeney, James Kennedy, Tommy Windich and Tommy Pierre with their horses after crossing the Great Victoria Desert in 1874. On the far right is the Overland Telegraph Line, about 120 kilometres north of Coober Pedy in South Australia. ...

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Panning for gold on the Mulgrave River, c1888

This is a black-and-white photograph showing five miners prospecting for alluvial gold on the banks of the Mulgrave River in Queensland. Two of the men hold shovels and stand by a sluice, two others pan for gold and the fifth rests on a wooden wheelbarrow. Several other mining implements are in evidence - a pan, pick, shovel ...

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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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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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Air-raid shelter in Brisbane, 1942

This black-and-white photograph shows two women and two uniformed servicemen in a backyard featuring a homemade air-raid shelter during the Second World War. The two men, Private Dick of the AIF and US soldier Tom Squires, are standing in the shelter with Anthea Dyke while Doreen Smythe is jokingly pointing a hose at them. ...

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Bunyip gold nugget, 1972

This is a gold nugget known as the 'Bunyip nugget'. It weighs 50 ounces (1.55 kg). It was found in the early 1970s by a farmer while ploughing near Bridgewater to the west of Bendigo in Victoria, and was purchased by the National Museum of Victoria (now Museum Victoria) in 1978 for $40,000.

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US soldier and air-raid shelter, Brisbane, 1942

This colour photograph taken in May 1942 shows a US army officer posing at the entrance of an underground air-raid shelter in Brisbane. The photo was taken in the grounds of Somerville House, an exclusive girls' boarding school requisitioned by the US forces in the Second World War as one of their headquarters in Brisbane. ...

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Chinese people on the way to the Ravenswood gold fields, 1870

This pen-and-wash sketch dated 9 December 1870 depicts four Chinese men and a dog on the way to the gold fields at Ravenswood in northern Queensland. Made by Donald Sydney Thistlethwayte it is titled ''Celestials' on the way to Ravenswood diggings'. The men are dressed in traditional Chinese clothing. One wears sandals ...

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Baw Baw frog

This is a colour photograph of a preserved Baw Baw frog ('Philoria frosti'). It is a museum specimen preserved in a transparent container. Museum cataloguing labels are visible.

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Amphipod

This is a colour photograph of a marine amphipod ('Birubius wirakus'), showing its characteristic curved body shape and tail limbs.

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Fish fossil

This is a colour photograph of an ancient fish ('Wadeichthys oxyops') fossilised in mudstone. This specimen is from the Koonwarra fossil bed in South Gippsland, Victoria. The fins, tail and body scales of the fish are clearly visible. Museum cataloguing numbers are written on the rock.

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Little red flying-fox skull

This is a colour photograph of the internal skull of a little red flying-fox ('Pteropus scapulatus'). 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 2 cm. (Classification - ...

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Troopers protecting non-union labour during the Shearers' Strike, 1891

This is a black-and-white photograph of 121 armed officers and men of the Townsville Mounted Infantry escorting about 60 non-unionist shearers, known as 'blacklegs' or 'scabs', to Hughenden Station on 22 April 1891 during the central Queensland Shearers' Strike. Several crowded 'German' wagons follow, some containing more ...

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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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Chinese fruit and vegetable hawker, Brisbane

This black-and-white photograph shows a Chinese fruit and vegetable seller, or hawker, known as 'Vegetable John' according to the accompanying rather derogatory description of the time, posing at the steps of a suburban house. He is wearing Western-style clothes and is resting his shoulder pole and two very large open-weave ...

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'Port Arthur during occupation, A.D. 1860'

This is a sepia-toned black-and-white photograph measuring 8.8 cm x 13.6 cm, taken from an elevated vantage point behind a cottage in the township of Port Arthur, looking across Manson Cove with its wooden wharves to Settlement Hill. It shows the Port Arthur Penitentiary (the large building in the centre of the image), ...

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'Meeting of Major Mitchell and Edward Henty, Portland Bay, 1836'

This is a photo-engraving, approximately 52.5 cm x 69.0 cm in size, depicting two men in front of a farm greeting a party of visitors. It shows Edward Henty shaking the hand of Major Thomas Mitchell, who is on horseback. They are watched by a man standing on the left-hand side and by four members of Mitchell's party on ...