Our stories, Victorian history:
It is Library week and some or our librarians have picked some favourite photographs from our collections. Our collection of images is varied, eclectic and endlessly fascinating and many have been digitised and are often available to download as high resolution TIFF files
Our stories, Victorian history:
In the 1880s Melbourne’s men of science formed a committee to revive interest in Antarctic exploration. They canvassed the colonies and the world in attempts to raise an expedition. Ultimately unsuccessful, they did though inspire the first publicly recorded landing on the Antarctic continent by Henrik Bull and the crew of his whaling expedition.
People & professions, Such was life:
It is quite a tenuous connection but could our Library claim some credit for the exploration of the Antarctic?
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.
People & professions, Such was life:
Antarctica, January 1916…exhausted, ill, running out of food and 650 kilometres from their base on Ross Island, the Ross Sea Party had little chance of survival. Whatever hope they had relied on their four sled dogs…
When Ernest Shackleton’s 1915 Antarctic expedition ran into trouble, the Ross Sea party that was laying out stores for his team continued unawares, facing harrowing challenges of their own.
