Kate C

Early this morning, we installed a huge, beautifully polished slab of banded iron at the entrance of the Dynamic Earth exhibition at Melbourne Museum.

The banded iron slab showing its gorgeous coloured layers.
Source: Museum Victoria  

The slab, donated by stonemason and artist Richard Williamson, is about three metres high and weighs 870 kilograms. Its wavy bands of red jasper and brown iron oxides record the rise of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere.

About 2.7 billion years ago, the first oxygen-producing cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) completely transformed the Earth by releasing oxygen during photosynthesis. Over hundreds of millions of years, this oxygen reacted with the iron that was dissolved in the ocean, forming solid iron oxides and silica which settled on the ocean floor. It was only once all the iron precipitated out of the oceans that oxygen began to build in the atmosphere, and the Earth became habitable for multicellular life forms like us. There is, however, approximately 20 times more oxygen within the banded iron formations than is present in the atmosphere today.

  The slab resting on its A-frame and about to be positioned with the slab lifter.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

This piece of banded iron formed about 2.5 billion years ago in the area that is now the Pilbara in Western Australia. It was subsequently buried and metamorphosed, or transformed under extreme pressure, changing the minerals and creating the folds and waves of its layers. Among the red bands of fine-grained silica called jasper, and black layers of iron oxide, you can see shimmery yellow lines of tiger-eye, a fine-grained quartz that has replaced a fibrous mineral.

Ant, Nev and Veegan using the folklift to lift the 870kg slab and guiding it into its support brackets.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

Banded iron is the major source of the world's iron ore. Most of these large iron ore deposits formed between 2.5 and 1.8 billion years ago. It is mined and fed into blast furnaces to extract the metal. This piece escaped that fate because of its unusual beauty and size; it is rare to find such a large piece that has no veins of quartz, which often cause fractures. The rock, once a huge boulder, was extracted from the Ord Ridley Ranges, cut in Perth and polished in Adelaide.

View through the dinosaurs of the slab in its new home.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

Installing such a huge specimen was quite a feat. In the wall behind the rock, steel supports and counterweights hold it securely in place. Bringing it into the gallery took a team of people and a forklift designed to lift and move concrete slabs for building construction. The crew brought the slab in on an A-frame trolley, lifted it, and inched it carefully into its specially-designed support brackets.

And yes, you can touch it!

Manager of Natural Science Collections Dermot Henry next to the newly-installed slab of banded iron.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

Up in her studio in Melbourne’s CBD, artist and animator Isobel Knowles is working on something wonderful for the First Peoples exhibition. She is turning accounts of the traditional toys and play of Aboriginal children into beautiful animations for our young visitors. 

Isobel Knowles in her studio with some of the paper cutouts she uses in her animations.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Isobel creates her animations with a combination of delicately cut pieces of paper, watercolour washes, photography and digital techniques. For this project, she took scripts that the exhibition curators wrote – mostly in collaboration with members of the First Peoples Yulendj Group – and brought them to life. Each animation shows the playthings in use which, in many cases, emulate the activities of the adults around them, such as nursing mothers and men hunting. Isobel has presented the stories with a deft touch of humour because, as she describes them, “they’re stories of the cheeky things that kids do.”

Isobel's materials: paper cutouts of a paddlesteamer and vegetation, and her storyboard sketches.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Isobel began with thinking about how she wanted the animations to feel and researching the landscapes of the different areas and the colours that would capture the Australian bush. “It’s been really nice working with Australian bush imagery,” she says. “Usually I’m referencing fairy tales so it’s a European look.” She also carefully considered how the children should appear. “I’ve been trying to research what they would wear but a lot of the reference pictures are during special events,” explains Isobel. Yulendj members helped her get these details right when she showed them the animations last week.

Still image from a work-in-progress: Isobel's digital animation of the mudswitch story.
Image: Isobel Knowles
Source: Museum Victoria  

In the Toy Story case of the Many Nations section, visitors will see the animated stories next to the actual toys. This section, with its animations, will be a key part of the museum's educational programs. The toys are from cultural groups across the country and they haven’t been on display before; many of them aren’t well-known outside their communities of origin.

Isobel says she’s enjoying the work and finding it incredibly interesting. “It’s a really exciting project for me and I feel very honoured to have been asked to do it and to contribute to such an amazing exhibition.”

Links:

Isobel Knowles's website

MV Blog: Modelling Myee's hands

MV Blog: Mudswitches on the plaza

The Spencer & Gillen: A Journey through Aboriginal Australia website was launched last Friday at a celebration at Melbourne Museum. In attendance were MV staff, representatives from several partner institutions, Central Arrernte Elders, and descendants of the two ethnographers, Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen.

Screenshot of the newly-launched website, spencerandgillen.net.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Descendants of Sir Baldwin Spencer with MV curator Dr Phillip Batty and three visiting Central Arrernte Elders.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

The spencerandgillen.net launch included speeches by project partners and collaborators, and a performance by three Central Arrernte Elders. L-R: Martin McMillan Kemarre, Ken Tilmouth Penangke and Duncan Lynch Peltharre.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

The website has been several years in the making and brings together over 50,000 objects, photographs, documents, recordings and drawings that are housed in institutions in Australia, Europe and the United States. Research coordinator Jason Gibson calls it "one of the most comprehensive collections to do with a group of Aboriginal people. Certainly there’s nothing else like it on the web. It covers life on the frontier in Central Australia between 1875 and 1912."

Among the treasures are rare and wonderful audiovisual recordings, including the earliest film footage taken on mainland Australia. "Most of this material isn’t available on the web anywhere else, so we had to digitise and compile it at the same time," explains Jason. With a new mapping function and many ways to sort and filter the collection, you can now access these vital ethnographic records in ways never before possible, which is particularly important for members of Arrernte communities. "We spoke to over 80 different individuals from five different language groups, mainly in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek and overwhelmingly everyone is really excited and proud to have their heritage on display for all to see."

The Central Arrernte Elders watching the footage on spencerandgillen.net of the 1901 Unintha corroboree at Charlotte Waters. This is the earliest film footage shot on mainland Australia.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

Download the Unintha corroboree, Charlotte Waters video

View the Unintha corroborree footage on spencerandgillen.net

Spencer and Gillen worked in Central Australia for 30 years. "Although they have been criticised by many people for their social evolutionist attitudes, this collection demonstrates the collaboration with local people," explains Jay. "Gillen’s very close relationship with Arrernte people was unusual at the time and they were among the first non-Indigenous people to grapple with the concept of the Dreaming. 'Dream time' was a Gillen interpretation of the Arrernte word Altyerr and this interpretation became important internationally in terms of thinking about religion and society."

The website is the product of a collaborative project that was funded by the Australian Research Council and led by the Australian National University. It would not have been possible without the partner organisations especially the South Australian Museum, Northern Territory Library, and the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Links:

spencerandgillen.net

Media News: Putting Spencer and Gillen back together

MV Blog: Following the travelling Tjitjingalla

MV Blog: Rare scene of first European contact

Last Friday Myee Patten, daughter of MV staff member Will Patten, came to work with her dad to stick her hands in a bucket of goo. This might seem an odd school holiday activity, but it will help exhibition curators demonstrate the toys of Aboriginal children in the Toy Stories section of First Peoples. For scale and context, children’s objects are best shown in the hands of children– so we needed to model some hands for this important task. Myee was willing to let us borrow her hands for the job.

Myee with her dad, Will, sitting very still and waiting patiently as museum preparators make a mould of her hands.
Source: Museum Victoria  

This pink goo, or alginate, is most commonly used by dentists to make impressions of teeth. It’s non-toxic, flexible when set, and smells just like a dentist’s office! It’s also extremely fast-setting so the preparators mixed it up as quickly as possible and poured it over Myee’s hands as she held the poses needed to demonstrate the objects in use.

Preparators Pete and Steven in a stirring frenzy as they mix up the pink goo as quickly as they can!
Source: Museum Victoria  

Myee’s first job was to hold her hands as if cradling a baby, to support a clay doll from Milingimbi in Arnhem Land in the 1930s. The second time round, Myee held a fragment of lignum as if she’d just flicked a mudswitch, a popular game among children growing up along the Murray River.

Pete and Myee with the freshly-set mould of her hands.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Myee did an excellent job of staying completely still while the alginate set. Once it was solid – and you can tell this because the colour changes from purple, to pink, through to white –  Myee carefully wriggled out of the mould, leaving behind an exact impression of her hands.

Mixing up the plaster ready to pour into the mould. This is a special mix of plaster and cement that sets extremely hard.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Minutes after her hands were free, the preparators filled the moulds with hard-setting liquid plaster. A few hours later, they extracted the casts. The preps will remove any rough bits and prepare the casts for their important job of display. And in years to come, when Myee visits with her school or family, she can point out to her friends how she lent us a hand (or two)!

Preparators Brendan and Pete carefully removing the cast of Myee's hands from the mould. This model will support the clay doll.
Source: Museum Victoria

A cast of Myee's hand holding a piece of twig. The process that the museum's preparators use captures every skin wrinkle and tiny detail.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Links:

MV News: Will Patten "Talking to everybody"

MV Blog: Mudswitches on the plaza

The Kooyang ('eels' in the Gunditjmara family of languages) section of the upcoming First Peoples exhibition will feature an eel trap in a diorama of Western District eel-farming practice. The trap, woven from puung'ort (spear grass) by Gunditjmara woman Jody-Ann Agnew, tells the story of one of the world’s oldest aquaculture systems.

And this is what it's all about - eels. This is one of several eels created for the diorama.
Image: Benjamin Healley
Source: Museum Victoria  

Museum designers, curators, photographers and preparators have worked closely with Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Corporation to capture a slice of the Western District, complete with animals, plants and terrain typical of this area. The models and specimens of eels and other wildlife created by Dean Smith and Kym Haines are dazzlingly true-to-life, including a leech that Kym modelled from the little sucker that hunted him down when Jody's mother, senior weaver Aunty Eileen Alberts, took museum staff to Tyrendarra!

Preparator Dean Smith holding models of native fish that he made for the Kooyang diorama. One is an unfinished cast, the other is fully painted.
Image: Benjamin Healley
Source: Museum Victoria  

Steven Sparrey and Brendon Taylor are recreating the volcanic boulders of the Tyrendarra lava flow thrown out by Budj Bim (Mt Eccles) thousands of years ago. Gunditjmara people used these rocks to create an ingenious network of ponds, channels and dams to farm the eels. Aunty Eileen and Jody will oversee the final stages of the diorama construction.

Preparator Brendan Taylor working on replicating the rocky terrain of the Western District.
Image: Benjamin Healley
Source: Museum Victoria  

First Peoples opens at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Melbourne Museum in September 2013.

Links:

Media News: Taking the eel-path to a shared history

Video: Lake Condah, Gunditjmara Country

That celebrated mimic, the Superb Lyrebird, is the star of a new children's picture book published by Museum Victoria. Lyrebird! A True Story by Jackie Kerin is magnificently illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe and was released just this week.

Cover of Lyrebird! A True Story by Jackie Kerin, illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Lyrebird! A True Story is based on the real tale of Edith Wilkinson and a a lyrebird she called 'James' who danced in Edith's Dandenongs garden in the 1930s. At the time, Superb Lyrebirds were believed to be shy and elusive, but James tolerated human audiences and performed for bird-watchers and ornithologists who arrived from around the globe. Upon a platform built on Edith's verandah rail, he became one of the first lyrebirds to be captured on film, and helped spread the reputation of these birds as uncanny imitators of the sounds around them.

Jackie first learned about James and Edith in 2007 from a 1933 book called The Lore of the Lyrebird by Ambrose Pratt. Therein he described an article he wrote about the unlikely pair in the 13 February 1932 edition of The Age. Jackie retrieved the article and from then on, she was hooked.

"I loved the story and thought that I could shape it into what I call a 'tellable tale' – take the story and put it into language for telling. I tell stories at schools and festivals and I was very interested in collecting some uniquely Australian stories," explains Jackie. "Also I like to encourage kids to connect with nature. And they're just such fabulous birds that we carry in our change purse or pocket, on the ten-cent coin. So I wrote a little story that I called Edith's Lyrebird." Her story won an award at the Woodford Folk Festival, then at the instigation of filmmaker Malcom McKinnon, Edith's Lyrebird was turned into a short film.

Creating a book was the next logical step, and Tasmanian illustrator and artist Peter Gouldthorpe was a natural choice to illustrate the book. As well as being a very fine landscape painter, Jackie says "he understands the importance of getting the animals and vegetation correct. I wanted a book for hungry eyes with lots of detail for kids to explore."

Jackie bird-watching in the Dandenongs while researching for Lyrebird!.
Source: Jackie Kerin  

Jackie researched the places and era of James and Edith. She read extensively about lyrebirds and explored the landscapes and bird life of the Dandenongs. "Edith had what they called a 'cut flower and foliage farm' on the south-west side of the mountain. During the Depression, flower gardening was a big industry up there. They'd have these flower shows with whole football ovals covered in flowers." Her photographs of Cloudehill Gardens in Olinda, situated on a former cut flower farm, helped provide the reference material Peter needed to recreate Edith's garden. Wayne Longmore and Rory O'Brien at Museum Victoria showed Peter and Jackie rare books and bird specimens so that they could capture details of Dandenongs birdlife and the nature of bird-watching in the 1930s.

MV photographer Jon Augier with a lyrebird specimen in the museum's photography studio. Studying specimens of Dandenongs bird species helped Peter Gouldthorpe get all the details right in his illustrations.
Source: Jackie Kerin  

The result is a book with many layers for readers to explore. "We've tried to include a sense of the seasons because the birds' mating and moulting are connected to the rhythmical seasons of the mountain." Throughout the illustrations there are the birds in Edith's garden that James mimicked, like the Yellow Robin, Laughing Kookaburra, and rosellas, and a there is a chart at the end of the book to identify them. Budding horticulturalists can also identify types of flowers and native flora.

The chart to help readers of Lyrebird! name the birds of Edith's garden.
Image: Peter Gouldthorpe
Source: Museum Victoria  

Jackie has also become quite fond of author Ambrose Pratt. "He was very passionate and his prose is very rich and fruity. He believed that the future was in the hands of children. He was very keen that people understand that if you care about the animals, you have to care about their environment."

Links:

Jackie Kerin's website

Lyrebird! A True Story on Facebook

Biography of Ambrose Pratt