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Video

Pipe dreams, 2007: O'Connor's dream for water

This clip is an excerpt from the 2007 film 'Pipe dreams' (55 min), the second episode of a three-part series entitled 'Constructing Australia'. Over black-and-white photographs and dramatised video of the key players, a narrator describes the significant challenges of supplying water to the WA goldfields in the late 19th ...

Video

National treasures, 2004: Gallipoli boat

'Gallipoli boat' is an episode of the series 'National treasures' produced in 2004. The episode features Lifeboat 6, a small lifeboat that was retrieved from Gallipoli five years after it had landed at Anzac Cove. The boat is now held at the Australian War Memorial. Warren Brown describes the difficult conditions on the ...

Video

Rogue nation, 2009: Democracy and the colony of NSW

This clip is an excerpt from the 2009 documentary 'Honour among thieves', the first of a two-part television series entitled 'Rogue nation'. In a dramatised re-enactment, British Commissioner John Thomas Bigge investigates the colony of NSW in 1819. He is advised by John Macarthur, a member of the 'exclusives' class of ...

Video

Rogue nation, 2009: NSW in 1819, convict gulag or place of opportunity?

This clip is an excerpt from the 2009 documentary 'Rites of passage', the second of a two-part series entitled 'Rogue nation'. The clip begins with historian Michael Cathcart providing contextual information about England in the early 1800s. He says that in the midst of the industrial revolution, millions of people were ...

Image

Landmarks: people and places across Australia

This resource features the Landmarks gallery, which traces a broad history of Australia since British colonisation in the late 18th century. The exhibition explores ten big themes in the country's past through the stories of Australian places and the people who have lived there. It examines how people have engaged with ...

Image

Gold nugget

This is a gold nugget (approximately 3.4 cm x 2.2 cm), which was probably found in about 1865 on a goldfield in Otago (in the southern South Island of New Zealand).

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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 ...

Image

'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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'Diggers licensing, Forest Creek, 1852'

This is a black-and-white print that shows diggers (miners) at Forest Creek on the Mount Alexander diggings in Victoria lining up before the Gold Commissioner's tent to pay a licence fee. A policeman stands guard next to the tent while, in the foreground on the left, two policemen can be seen speaking to a digger. The print, ...

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: Thomas McIlwraith

Find out more about Thomas McIlwraith, premier of Queensland and an Australian nationalist. Examine two different types of biographies of McIlwraith: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the 'Biography: ...

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'Panorama of Challicum, No. VII', c1850

This is a watercolour measuring 15.7 cm x 24.4 cm, showing a mounted man herding a small group of cows past scattered native bush and trees, beneath the backdrop of the Mount Cole ranges. The artist, Duncan Cooper, included this painting as the fifteenth watercolour in his field sketchbook and inscribed the title 'Panorama ...

Image

Phar Lap

This is a photograph showing the mounted hide of Phar Lap, a champion racehorse in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was a large chestnut-coloured gelding who stood 17.1 hands (about 174 cm) tall.

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: James Howe

Find out more about James Howe, the father of the Commonwealth old-age pension. Examine two different types of biographies of Howe: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the 'Biography: Federation people' series.

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: John Bray

Investigate John Bray's role in the move towards Federation. Examine two different types of biographies of Bray: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the 'Biography: Federation people' series.

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: Edwin Blackmore

Find out more about Edwin Blackmore, clerk to the Federal Convention 1897–98. Examine two different types of biographies of Blackmore: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the 'Biography: Federation people' series.

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: John Forrest

Find out more about John Forrest, federalist and premier of Western Australia. Examine two different types of biographies of Forrest: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the 'Biography: Federation people' series.

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The 'Southern Cross' reaches Sydney, 1928

This is a black-and-white photograph of the 'Southern Cross' biplane arriving in Sydney and being greeted by reporters and photographers and a large contingent of police after the record-breaking flight of Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew across the Pacific. Signed portraits of the crew are superimposed upon the photograph, ...

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: Charles Todd

Investigate the role played in Federation by astronomer and engineer Charles Todd and his Overland Telegraph. Examine two different types of biographies of Todd: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the ...

Image

Convicts from hulks, Woolwich, England, 1779

This is a hand-coloured engraving of convicts from the hulks at Woolwich labouring in the docks area. Two hulks are anchored offshore with rowboats shuttling to and fro. Beneath the image is inscribed 'A View near WOOLWICH in KENT showing the Employment of the CONVICTS from the Hulks'. The engraving measures 29.8 cm x 44.9 cm.

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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 ...