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'Panorama of Challicum, No. IX', c1850

This is a watercolour measuring 15.7 cm x 24.3 cm showing the vast yellow-and-green Challicum plains. In the distance a flock of sheep, watched by a shepherd and dog, is moving into temporary wooden yards. Among gum trees, to the right of the yard, is the homestead. The artist, Duncan Cooper, included this painting as the ...

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'Cultivation paddock, Challicum', c1850

This is a watercolour by Duncan Cooper that shows the cultivation paddock at Challicum, a sheep run west of Ballarat in western Victoria. Two figures in the foreground are manually harvesting a cereal crop, while on the left of the paddock, a bullock-drawn dray collects the stooks (bundles) of harvested crop. The various ...

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'Panorama of Challicum, No. II', c1850

This is a watercolour measuring 16 cm x 24.5 cm showing the Victorian squatting runs Challicum and Yalla-y-poora from a south-south-westerly viewpoint. In the midground is the yellow grassland of the Fiery Creek plains, gum trees dot the countryside and the distant bluish mountain is Mount Weejort. Two emus are shown in ...

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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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Portrait of political activist Emma Miller, c1910s

This posed black-and-white portrait photograph of Emma Miller, probably taken in Queensland in the 1910s, shows a thin and elderly woman, fashionably dressed for the time, sitting on a chair in a studio. She is staring straight at the camera with a resolute look on her face. Her dark clothing includes a richly embroidered ...

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Shackleton expedition at Lyttelton Harbour, 1914

This is a black-and-white photograph showing the sailing ship 'Endurance' being loaded with ponies and sled dogs at Lyttelton (east coast of the South Island of New Zealand) for Ernest Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica. A crowd of people is aboard the ship, watching proceedings, and there are groups of people in the ...

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Exploring the Swan River, 1827

This is a painting on canvas called 'Captain Stirling's exploring party 50 miles up the Swan River, Western Australia, March, 1827'. The painting, measuring 29.2 cm x 36.0 cm, shows a tree-lined section of the Swan River, near present-day Perth. There are two boats: on one of them, men in British navy uniforms are lowering ...

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Rock painting, Carnarvon Gorge, 1938 - item 2 of 2

This 1938 sepia photograph of a large Indigenous rock painting displays many stencilled hands, boomerangs, coolamons and a net-like shape, possibly representing a cycad, on a cliff wall in Carnarvon Gorge in central Queensland. A large rock near the wall shows some engraved art. The photograph was taken during the second ...

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Pacific Islanders arriving at Bundaberg, 1895

The black-and-white photograph shows Pacific Islander men and women arriving in the sugar port of Bundaberg after being recruited to work as indentured labourers on Queensland's sugar plantations. The posed shot shows more than 60 Pacific Islander men, women and boys and one European on the deck of a schooner at the dock. ...

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Sketch of Moreton Bay penal settlement, 1835 - item 2

This detailed pencil sketch, attributed to Henry Boucher Bowerman, depicts Moreton Bay (Brisbane) penal settlement from present-day South Brisbane. The panoramic landscape view takes in the river in the foreground and existing government buildings necessary to a convict settlement, spread across the land behind. The buildings, ...

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Female emigrants bound for Australia, 1834

This hand-coloured lithograph, measuring 36.0 cm x 22.7 cm and consisting of seven panels of an original ten, depicts in cartoon form the deprivations suffered by single women migrating to Australia in the 1830s. Titled 'FEMALE EMIGRATION!', the scenes follow the story of the women leaving Britain, their rough crossing ...

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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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The 1864 eight-hour day demonstration

This is a black-and-white print that shows the eight-hour day demonstration entering the Zoological Gardens (now the Royal Melbourne Zoo) in Melbourne, Victoria. The large procession of people, some carrying banners and flags, can be seen in the background, while in the foreground, several spectators including a few policemen ...

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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 ...

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Possum trappers

This is a photograph of two New Zealand possum trappers. It was taken in 1929 in Taranaki, North Island, and shows the trappers with the dried skins of the Australian brush-tailed possum ('Trichosurus vulpecula').

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Touring possible sites for the federal capital, 1902

This is a black-and-white photograph, measuring 18.8 cm x 24.0 cm, taken in 1902 during a tour of inspection by senators from the Federal Parliament of possible sites for the proposed federal capital. Having alighted from a horse-drawn stage coach, five members of the party en route to Tumut, New South Wales, are standing ...

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Australian gold diggings, c1855

This is an oil painting measuring 70.5 cm x 90.3 cm, painted about 1855 by Edwin Stocqueler (1829-1895), showing men working on the Bendigo gold field in Victoria. The men are panning, puddling and cradling for gold on both sides of a stream in a tent-dotted valley. The valley is stark, with only a few trees remaining. ...

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'A ship's boat attacking a whale', c1813

This is a hand-coloured aquatint (a print made from an engraving on copper) showing a boat's crew from a British whaling ship about to harpoon a whale. Measuring 18 cm x 22.8 cm, the print appeared in a book entitled 'Foreign field sports, fisheries, sporting anecdotes ...'

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'Panorama of Challicum, No. VIII', c1850

This is a watercolour measuring 15.8 cm x 24 cm showing the vast, yellowing Challicum plains with grassfires burning smokily in the distance. A flock of sheep is being watched by a shepherd and dog. The artist, Duncan Cooper, included this painting as the sixteenth watercolour in his field sketchbook and inscribed the title ...

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'Cradling, Forrest Creek', 1853

This is an 1853 hand-coloured lithographic print, entitled 'Cradling. Forrest Creek'. It was made by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80) from a sketch done on the spot as he watched gold miners cradle for gold at Forest Creek (as it was more commonly spelled), in Victoria. One miner scoops water into the cradle, while the other ...