Convict tattoos
What do the following things have in common: candlesticks, beehives, cock fights, drinking glasses, swans, flowerpots, crucifixes, stags, comets, and roses? Give up? They’re all convict tattoos.
Such was life
Baker of ours
Kate Baker’s autograph book bears witness to her passionate advocacy for Australian literature. Manuscripts librarian Sandra Burt tells us more.
Ruth Hollick and early Australian fashion photography
Arts & literature, Such was life:
Ruth Hollick is noted for her portraits of children and of Melbourne society’s elite as well as creating some of the earliest known fashion photographs in Australia.
Newly digitised works on paper
Arts & literature, Such was life:
After ten years, the Library’s Works on Paper project has resulted in the digitisation of more than 11,000 original drawings, prints and watercolours, creating an extraordinary archive of unique Victorian artworks.
Fish named after men
People & professions, Such was life:
Melbourne in the 1850s had a small but ambitious scientific community. One particularly idiosyncratic member of that community was William Blandowski, a man often at odds with the scientific establishment. He found himself embroiled in controversy with his choice of names for newly described Murray River fish.
The 1967 referendum
On 27 May 1967, Australians voted in record numbers to alter two sections of the Constitution so it no longer discriminated against Aboriginal people. The landslide ‘yes’ vote was seen as a watershed moment in Australian political history.
Visions of fairyland: Herbert Swire’s watercolours
Herbert Swire was 22 years old when he joined a scientific voyage to Antarctica on board the ship, HMS Challenger. He captured what he saw in two delicate watercolours that have recently been donated to the library.
Australian ornithologists in Siberia
People & professions, Such was life:
In 1903 the Australian ornithologist Robert Hall (1867-1949) embarked on his major expedition to Siberia (via Japan and Korea), to collect specimens and eggs of Siberian birds known to migrate… Read More ›
The Fred Boyle Photographic Collection
People & professions, Such was life:
The Fred Boyle Photographic Collection portrays Echuca in the 1950s and ’60s as a town driven by community spirit.
The owl and the heiress: The life of one book over six centuries
Arts & literature, Our stories:
What do Athena’s little owl, an unashamedly unmarried Chicago heiress, and the Heide School of modernist Australian artists have in common? A book in our collection, as it turns out… Recently I… Read More ›
