Melbourne Museum

Your Question: What is eating my carpets?

Some of us with a wool or wool blend carpet have had the unpleasant experience of noticing our carpets slowly receding from the wall. Closer inspection of this phenomenon shows numbers of hairy carpet beetle larvae to be the cause of the loss.

Varied carpet beetle
Image: e_monk
Source: Used under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 from e_monk  

There are a number of different species of introduced and native carpet beetles.  As adults carpet beetles are small and usually dark, often with patterned scales on the body. The adults feed on pollen and can often be found on the window ledge trying to get outside to feed. The larvae can often be hard to see so finding the adults on window ledges can be a good pointer as to the likely presence of the larvae. As the adults feed on pollen, they won’t cause damage to property but of course will be looking to lay more eggs to maintain the population.

Despite their common name, these tenacious insects will feed on a variety of things such as carcasses, feathers, felt, textiles of an organic nature and pet hair.

Carpet beetles Anthrenus verbasci on a flower head
Image: Ombrosoparacloucycle
Source: Used under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 from Ombrosoparacloucycle  

These beetles can originate in bird or mammal nesting which may be in the roof or walls from where the larvae and adults find their way down into the house. Neither the larvae nor the adult beetles bite people but if left unchecked they do have the ability to cause damage to a variety of objects containing organic matter such as carpets, felt on pianos, clothing made from wool, insect collections and animal mounts. There is also the possibility for the shed larval skins to cause some irritation to people.

  Dermestidae: Anthrenus sp (larva).
Image: Jacobo Martin
Source: Used under Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0 from JMDN  

While these small beetles do a great job in nature of helping to break down and consume organic matter it is wise to prevent them from dining out on your expensive woollens. Undertake regular vacuuming concentrating under furniture or areas that are not often disturbed. Keep an eye out for any build up of pet hair and lint which can also support populations of these beetles.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

CSIRO: Guide to the control of clothes moths and carpet beetles.

CSIRO: Carpet Beetles 

Adrienne creates and presents public programs at Melbourne Museum.

Most of our holiday activities for kids include a make-and-take aspect, where visitors go home with a memento of their own creation, such as an Egyptian pendant. Last holidays, we took a different approach, designing a communal and collaborative program to build a mini-Melbourne within The Melbourne Story exhibition.

We weren't sure if visitors would be happy to work on something that they couldn't take home, but we needn't have worried. Each day the mini-city grew and grew and grew, so much so that Whelan the Wrecker had to come in a few times to make room for the city's growth. (Ah, how art mirrors life!) By the end of the holidays, the entrance to the Melbourne Gallery was completely full.

Urban sprawl of the cardboard variety at mini-Melbourne.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

Each participant received a cardboard square, two rectangles, a triangle, a person and three connectors to put the set together. From these simple components grew a huge array of city features. Memorable were the churches, art galleries, museums, dance studio, aquarium, South Vermont Primary School and about ten Herald Sun buildings. More personalised were the homes with family names (in English and Vietnamese) and street numbers. There were lots of boats, trains and trams but surprisingly no cars – however there was a submarine!

Buildings and residents of mini-Melbourne.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

The city was populated too, with little people sitting on or hanging off the buildings. The population explosion was very evident as the holidays progressed – the little people everywhere really made the whole scene come alive.

Mini-Melburnians in their cardboard city.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

Participants were aged from about 18 months to grown-ups and of course not everyone approached the project the same way. Younger kids wanted to decorate and construct their own buildings, while older, kids, teenagers and adults banded together to make bigger and more ambitious group projects. The cardboard pieces were decorated with coloured textas and then constructed to individual designs. So much concentration and so many conversations!

Sadly, we couldn't keep the city but we did keep the little people, all 5,000 of them. We are now seeking an artist who might like to use them in an art work or installation so the people of our mini-Melbourne live on. If you have a new home for the mini-Melburnians, email me at Melbourne Museum.

Museum staff preparing the cardboard components of mini-Melbourne.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

The autumn holiday team included Lisa Nink, Bernard Caleo, David Perkins, Jen Brook, Alexandra Johnstone, Lauren Ellis and 46 wonderful volunteers.

Your Question: I noticed that the On their own exhibition about Britain's child migrants exhibition is closing, where is it off to?

On their own, the story of Britain's child migrants will be moving on from the Immigration Museum in Melbourne to the Western Australian Museum - Maritime in Fremantle, due to open on Saturday May 19th.

On their own exhibition at the Immigration Museum.
Image: Kate Brereton
Source: Museum Victoria  

The exhibition was very popular with visitors to the Immigration Museum, many of whom commented about the moving nature of the content. Sadly, it is a story that has gone unnoticed for many years, but we were glad to be able to host the exhibition and provide visitors with a rich understanding and experience.

On their own exhibition at the Immigration Museum.
Image: Kate Brereton
Source: Museum Victoria  

Lisa snapped some pictures today of the Museum Victoria Collection Management and Conservation team and the Australian National Maritime Museum Collection Management and Conservation team working on de-installing the exhibition, getting it ready for its move across the country.

De-installing the On their own exhibition at the Immigration Museum.
Image: Lisa Collins
Source: Museum Victoria  

De-installing the On their own exhibition at the Immigration Museum.
Image: Lisa Collins
Source: Museum Victoria  

Although the exhibition is leaving Melbourne, we still do have plenty of information for visitors in the Immigration Discovery Centre, and online. The exhibition website will remain active until November 2013, so there is still an opportunity for you to learn more about Britain's child migrants.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links

MV Blog post - On their own opens

On their own: Britain's child migrants

Who knew that within Melbourne Museum there are two rooms not considered to be in Australia?

Every year Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) officers confiscate thousands of objects being brought illegally into the country through the post, airports and seaports. These items include food, drugs, plants and even live animals.

King Baboon tarantula (Citharischius crawshayi)
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria  

Such illegal items can pose a significant risk to Australian wildlife. Tarantulas are a long-lived spider which can produce thousands of eggs each year. If they were to become established in the wild exotic tarantulas would have the ability to decimate populations of small native animals.

In 1996 a population of Mexican Redrump tarantulas (Brachypelma vagans) was discovered in a citrus field in Florida, America. The population is believed to have stemmed from one gravid (carrying eggs) female who was released after she was no longer wanted as a pet. Over 100 individuals were found in a single survey of the 40 acre property. The Mexican Redrump tarantula is not native to Florida but has been imported for the pet trade since the 1970s. It is thought that this incidence of releasing an exotic pet has alone caused devastating effects on local fauna. With Australia's warm climate it would be easy to find ourselves in a similar situation to Florida if we didn't enforce strict quarantine measures.

Mexican Redrump tarantula (Brachypelma vegans)
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria  

Tarantulas with their unique markings, behaviours, and basic husbandry are popular pets in Europe and America. Many species are illegally transported around the world with collectors willing to pay hundreds of dollars for specimens. In Australia there are numerous species of native tarantulas that can be kept legally as pets.

Venezuelan Sun Tiger tarantula (Psalmopoeus irminia)
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria  

Queensland whistling tarantula (Selenocosmia crassipes)
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria   

But what happens to the items AQIS confiscate? Many items are destroyed to protect Australia's precious ecosystem. However, some lucky spiders are spared. They get used by museums and zoos to act as educational aids.

Quarantine room enclosures off display at Melbourne Museum
Image: Chloe Miller
Source: Museum Victoria  

Melbourne Museum is home two quarantine rooms where we house 14 tarantulas that were confiscated by AQIS. These spiders are housed under strict conditions which meet AQIS standards. These standards include the treatment of objects leaving the rooms such as waste, water, uneaten food and other implements. These items must be double bagged, recorded and frozen at minus 20 degrees for six weeks. The quarantine room is not considered to be in Australia territory but a grey zone within Australia.

Bugs Alive! Quarantine room at Melbourne Museum
Image: Chloe Miller
Source: Museum Victoria  

One quarantine room at the museum is located within the Bugs Alive! gallery and allows visitors to see its inner workings through a glass viewing wall, while the other room is located behind the scenes.

Our display spiders are fed every fortnight on Saturdays. One of our 'behind the scenes' spiders is fed weekly on Fridays at 3pm live on the web.

Tarantula feeding live on the internet
Image: Chloe Miller
Source: Museum Victoria  

Currently on display via the webcam is a Brazilian Salmon Pink tarantula (Lasiodora parahybana). Brazilian Salmon Pinks are the third largest species of tarantula with a leg span reaching 25cm.

Brazilian Salmon Pink tarantula (Lasiodora parahybana)
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria  

Equipped with urticating (stinging) hairs to flick at predators, she only uses her fangs as a last resort. This girl is a keen feeder, often climbing up the keeper's forceps to get to its prey.

Brazilian Salmon Pink fact sheet from WAZA

Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater from Australian Reptile Park

Mexican Redrump Tarantula fact sheet [PDF 179KB] from the University of Florida

1996 Florida Mexican redrump tarantula incident

Your Question: What does the word megafauna mean?

The name megafauna means ‘big animals’, generally animals with a body mass of over 40 kilograms. Much of the time, megafauna is general term used to describe a particular group of large land animals that evolved millions of years after the dinosaurs became extinct. The extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago left a void of large land animals worldwide. Over millions of years, the surviving mammals, birds and reptiles evolved to include some very large animals. This group of megafauna was at their largest and most widespread during the Quaternary Period, in the last 2.5 million years.

  The skull and upper body of Diprotodon, the largest marsupial to have lived
Image: Michelle McFarlane
Source: Museum Victoria  

Australia’s Quaternary megafauna were unique, and included giant marsupials such as Diprotodon, huge flightless birds such as Genyornis (a distant relative to today’s ducks and geese) and giant reptiles such as Varanus ‘Megalania’ (related closely to living goannas and the Komodo Dragon), all three of which are displayed in Melbourne Museum’s Dinosaur Walk exhibition - despite the fact these animals are not dinosaurs at all.

The skeleton of Thylacoleo, the so-called marsupial 'lion'
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

Some more examples of Australian megafauna are also on display in the adjoining exhibition at Melbourne Museum called 600 Million Years: Victoria evolves, such as the curious-looking Zygomaturus and Palorchestes (both relatives of Diprotodon), the carnivorous Thylacoleo (sometimes called a marsupial ‘lion’), and some megafaunal relatives of kangaroos and wallabies such as Protemnodon.

  The skeleton of Zygomaturus, a Rhinoceros-like marsupial
Image: Benjamin Healley
Source: Museum Victoria  

It is worth noting that not all megafauna are extinct – Australia has living megafauna in the form of Red and Eastern Grey Kangaroos and Saltwater Crocodiles, some of which are on display in the Wild: Amazing animals in a changing world exhibition, which is also in the Melbourne Museum Science and Life Gallery.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Video, Studying Megafauna Fossils

Book, Prehistoric Giants: The Megafauna of Australia, published by Museum Victoria

Your Question: I’ve just returned from Malaysia and am curious about the history of the Malay community in Victoria. Do you have some resources you can recommend regarding on this topic and Malay cultures in general?

The Malay community in Australia is diverse, with people from a number of ethnic backgrounds and religions that reflect the diversity of Malaysia itself. The culture of the region that we today call Malaysia, which also includes parts of Borneo, has been shaped by interactions between the Malay, Arab, Chinese, Indian, European and South East Asian peoples from the middle of the 15th century. Intermarriage between people of various cultures from this early period, plus influxes of later Chinese, Indian and European settlers led to an ethnically diverse population, which is still obvious in the country today and is reflected in the Malay community in Australia.

Students from the Malaysian Students Association take part in Orientation Week, RMIT, February 2001.
Image: Jun Siew Goh / Photographer: Unknown
Source: Copyright Malaysian Students Association 2001  

The first stop for anyone wanting to do research on the Malaysian community in Australia is Immigration Museum’s Origins website. It tells us a little about the history of Malaysian immigration to Australia, as well as statistics from census data on the demographics of the Victorian Malaysian community.

Immigration from the Malaysia actually began in the mid 19th century and Malay workers were involved in the pearling industry, trepang, mining, agriculture, including cane fields. European descended Malays came to Australia during WWII. Following the end of the Immigration Restriction Act in 1973 Malaysian immigration increased and by 2006 there were 30,476 Malaysia-born Victorians and 92,335 in Australia. Most of these identified as ethnic Chinese (c 65,000), with smaller percentages of Malay (c 12,000), Indian (c 6,000) and other groups. English is the language most spoken in the home, followed closely by Cantonese, with smaller amounts of Malaysia-born Australians speaking Mandarin, Behasa Melayu, Tamil, other Chinese languages and Vietnamese.

Pencil Drawing by Thomas Le. It depicts the journey of of Mai Ho's family to Australia and shows their first few months here.
Image: Museum Victoria / Artist Thomas Le
Source: Copyright Thomas Le 1998  

Some famous Malaysia-born Australians include singer Guy Sebastian, politician Penny Wong and entertainer Kamahl.

Further details and statistics regarding Malaysian born people living in the wider Australian community can be found on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website and this factsheet produced by Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has some great general information on Malaysia, its people and their relations with Australia.

In the Immigration Discovery Centre we have a variety of books on Malaysian history, culture, contemporary politics and the Malay community in Australia. While the IDC is not a lending library, you are welcome to come and browse the books we have here.

Couple cutting the wedding cake, at their wedding in Singapore
Image: Tuty Juhari / Photographer: Unknown
Source: Copyright Tuty Juhari 1997  

There are a number of other useful websites and resources for finding out about the Malaysian community in Victoria, including Melayu Melbourne, the Malay Education and Cultural Centre of Australia Inc (MECCA), Malaysian Students’ Council of Australia (MASCA) Victoria, 92.3 FM ZZZ, Malaysian show, and Australian-Malaysian Film Festival. 

Got a question? Ask us!

It's Earth Day on 22 April 2012 and the Earth Day Network is seeking a billion pledges for 'acts of green' – individuals and organisations to commit to an act or activity, large or small, to contribute to conservation and environmental awareness.

One of the museum's customer service staff, Ella, is passionate about protecting the Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii). She's inspired MV Blog's act of green: to highlight this amazing flightless bird and the efforts to conserve its Queensland rainforest habitat. The species is listed as endangered in Queensland, and vulnerable on the IUCN Redlist.

Museum Victoria's Southern Cassowary. It is exhibition in Wild: amazing animals in a changing world.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

The Southern Cassowary in the Wild exhibition has been in the museum's collection for over 100 years. Our records note that it was collected on 26 March 1885 in Queensland by an unknown collector and that we acquired it in 1887 from the Acclimitization Society of Victoria. In the 1880s, cassowaries were far more common; an estimated 1000 individuals are all that are left in the wild today.

Australian Cassowary, reproduced from The Birds of Australia, supplements by John Gould, London 1851, vol. 1 (5parts)
Image: Artist John Gould / Lithographer H. C. Richter
Source: Museum Victoria  

The name cassowary stems from a Malay word meaning needle, after the bird's the needle-like wing feathers. With its brilliant-coloured neck and glossy black plumage, the Southern Cassowary is Australia's heaviest bird. Its large body is fuelled by the fruits of over 200 species of rainforest trees and it has an important ecological role in spreading seeds. It's estimated that 70-100 plant species will only germinate once their seeds have travelled through the gut of a cassowary.

As humans have cleared Queensland forests for timber, agriculture and housing developments, we have removed and fragmented the birds' habitat. Fewer trees mean less food for cassowaries. The birds roam between forest patches that are now criss-crossed by roads and many are killed by cars each year. Domestic dogs are another cause of cassowary population decline. In 2011, Cyclone Yasi hit the Far North Queensland coast and severely damaged the remaining habitat occupied by a cassowary population at Mission Beach.

Preserving and regenerating suitable habitat is critical for the survival of this species. Rainforest Rescue is an organisation that purchases land in the Daintree River valley to turn into permanent conservation reserves. They also reconnect remnant forest patches by revegetating cleared land between them, forming continuous tracts of habitat full of cassowary food plants. Since 2007, Rainforest Rescue has planted over 26,000 native plants in the Daintree. It is a very long-term project because these plantings take many years to mature. Their hope is that one day the fruits of those trees will fill the bellies of a stable and thriving cassowary population.

Links:

Rainforest Rescue

Cassowary in Wild: amazing animals in a changing world 

Your Question: Who or what has been eating my Easter Eggs?

This week, the Discovery Centre was sent some pictures of Easter eggs. It's a sad story: they'd been gnawed, and not by their rightful owner (who was very interested to find out who the culprit was).

Gnawed Easter chocolates
Image: Anonymous
Source: Anonymous  

Usually we need to see a specimen or a photograph of an animal in order to identify it, but the chocolate thief had left behind a clue – teeth marks.

Gnawed Easter chocolate
Image: Anonymous
Source: Anonymous  

We sent the photographs to Museum Victoria's Senior Curator of Mammals. He examined the marks and reported that they had been made by the incisors of a small rodent, most likely a House Mouse, Mus musculus. His identification came with another sad story – his own chocolate Bilby had suffered the same fate!

A House Mouse, Mus musculus
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

Rodents have very distinctive teeth – a pair of incisors in the upper jaw and another pair in the lower jaw. The incisors grow continuously (like our fingernails), so rodents have to do a lot of gnawing to grind them down. In fact, the name "rodent" comes from the Latin words "gnaw" (rodere) and "tooth" (dentis). The gnawing process also acts to sharpen the incisors.

The skull of a House Mouse, Mus musculus
Image: Marnie Rawlinson, Cathy Accurso and Ken Walker
Source: Museum Victoria  

Wild House Mice are primarily granivorous (they eat grains and seeds), but they will eat almost anything. It seems that, like us, they love chocolate.

Happy Easter House Mice!

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Introduced Rodents

Collections Online: Easter

Your Question: Now that the Jumbunna exhibition space in Bunjilaka has closed, what Aboriginal cultural experiences can I have?

The exhibition space 'Jumbunna', part of the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at the Melbourne Museum has closed for an exciting redevelopment of the space.

Former exhibitions in Jumbunna include Koori Voices, Belonging to Country and Two Laws. The redevelopment will see a stronger focus on the vibrant and living Victorian Aboriginal culture and will provide dynamic and contemporary experiences as well as showcasing items from the incredible Aboriginal cultural material collection held in trust by Museum Victoria. The gallery will remain closed for redevelopment until mid-2013; however, Bunjilaka remains open, hosting a range of Aboriginal experiences.

Birrarung
Image: James Henry
Source: Museum Victoria

Birrarung Gallery, located in the Bunjilaka, is a space dedicated to Victorian Aboriginal artists and is where you can experience some of the best Aboriginal artists in Australia, showcasing their culture and talent through various art forms, from painting and photography to 3D installation and audio visual. This space has three exhibitions a year and is currently exhibiting River Woman by Aunty Barb Egan, which explores her connection to her home of Robinvale, in the northwest of Victoria, and to the Murray River through a series of lino prints, embossing and painting.

River Woman exhibition in Birrarung
Image: James Henry
Source: Museum Victoria

Aunty Barb
Image: James Henry
Source: Museum Victoria

Bunjilaka also has an indigenous plant garden called Milarri. This will remain open for visitors to learn about the natural resources important to Aboriginal people of southeastern Australia and about their traditional uses. Melbourne Museum's Forest Gallery, also displaying indigenous plants and animals, is another space where you can learn creation stories of Melbourne and about the seasons of the Kulin calendar, traditionally used by the Aboriginal people of Melbourne and surrounds.

Aunty Barb in her studio
Image: Kimberley Moulton
Source: Museum Victoria

The Koori Voices exhibition is currently being de-installed and will be re-installed within the museum for visitors to experience by July 2012. Bunjilaka's weekend and holiday programs will be run throughout the year and can be viewed on the Melbourne Museum and Bunjilaka websites.

The education sessions 'Our Shared History' is still available and can be booked through the museum booking office. Our Shared History is an opportunity for visitors to learn about the history and diversity of Australia's Aboriginal cultures, with a strong focus on Victoria and southeastern Australia. Learn about Victoria's 38 language groups, Aboriginal usage of both indigenous flora and fauna, and many other facets of Victoria's vibrant Aboriginal cultures.

From April 21 through to June 24, Bunjilaka will be hosting a fun weekend activity for children called 'Bunjil's Bullroarers'. Children and their families will have an opportunity to learn about, make and decorate their very own bullroarer. The bullroarer is a traditional musical instrument used by Aboriginal people for communication and ceremonial purposes.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links

Bunjilaka redevelopment project

River Woman exhibition

Your Question: What’s on in the Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre these school holidays?

The April School holidays are here and it’s time to come into the Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre to celebrate our great city Melbourne!

Flinders Street Station, Melbourne
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

Central Railway Station, Flinders Street, Melbourne, Victoria, circa 1910
Image: Unknown, Norm De Pomeroy Collection
Source: Museum Victoria  

A meeting between John Batman and a group of Aboriginal men in 1835 is regarded as Melbourne’s foundation point. Batman claimed to have signed a 'treaty' with Aboriginal leaders, giving him ownership of almost 250,000 hectares of land. Three months later a group, led by John Pascoe Fawkner, established the first permanent settlement. Governor Bourke in 1837 named the City Melbourne after the British Prime Minister of the day.

The discovery of gold brought wealth and an estimated half a million people to Victoria between 1850 and 1860, and the infant city struggled to absorb this influx.  By 1880 Melbourne was a city larger than most European capitals; money was poured into the lavish decoration of the city. By 1891 the economy crashed leading to Victoria’s worst depression. Banks collapsed, unemployment bit hard, and families were evicted from their homes.

Southwest View From Parliament House, Melbourne, Victoria, circa 1885
Image: Unknown, C. Nettleton Studio
Source: Museum Victoria  

In the decades following World War One, Melbourne was transformed by new opportunities and challenges. The “war to end all wars” was over, and few could yet see the shadow it cast into the future. It was time to enjoy life.

The post-war years brought enormous changes to Melbourne. The arrival of a million immigrants over a twenty year period ensured both a cultural and a physical transformation in the life of the city.

Immigrants from continental Europe brought their distinctive cultures to the city. New flavours were added to the arts. European-style cafes gave the city pockets of sophistication; the blueprint of today's Melbourne was in place.

The Discovery Centre has lots of great books on the history, architecture, laneways and culture of Melbourne. There research tables and a reading room with comfy bean bags to relax in.

Discovery Centre Reading Room
Image: Kate Brereton
Source: Museum Victoria  

We have a ‘name the toy’ activity for the kids from the Childhood and Youth collection, and some fabulous posters of historical Melbourne.

Discovery Centre Activity Table
Image: Kate Brereton
Source: Museum Victoria  

So come on in to the Discovery Centre these April School Holidays!

Got a question? Ask us!

Links 

Melbourne Story

Melbourne Story - Biggest Family Album

Marvellous Melbourne

Picture Australia 

Exhibition horticulturalist Brendan Fleming is turning April's Bug of the Month post into Plant of the Month. He is one of the Live Exhibits staff that tend the plants in the Forest Gallery and Milarri Garden.

From an early age I have enjoyed bushwalking within the Grampian Ranges in western Victoria. One particular plant species found there that fascinates me is Xanthorrhoea australis, the Southern Grasstree. X. australis is the most widespread of the genus of 30 odd species and subspecies. It is found down the eastern coast of Australia.

A spectacular display of Southern Grasstrees following a bushfire in the Grampians.
Image: Brendan Fleming
Source: Brendan Fleming  

Its appearance is unlike any other indigenous plant. Older grasstrees have a blackened, sometimes gnarled elevated trunk, with bluish-green whorled leaves that seem to explode from the crown and drape down to skirt the stem.

The Southern Grasstree is very slow-growing. It grows approximately one to three centimetres per year, reaching a height of three metres in about 100 years. It has a shallow root system and is found in even the poorest of soils. Whilst not generally occurring in areas with less than 250mm rainfall, it does best in areas exceeding 500mm per year. Southern Grasstrees are found in the understorey of woodlands, heaths, swamps, and rocky hillsides.

Grasstree species are mostly distinguished by the shape of their leaves in cross-section. X.australis has a diamond shape, and with the leaves being softer than other species.

Close up of the apex of a Southern Grasstree in Milarri, showing a single diamond-shaped leaf in cross section.
Image: Brendan Fleming
Source: Museum Victoria

From germination it takes about seven years to reach maturity, and although sporadic flowering and fruiting can occur thereafter, X.australis generally flower following fire. It is not well understood why fire stimulates reproduction, but cutting off the leaves can also initiate flowering. Application of ethylene, which is present in smoke, has a similar effect, indicating that flowering is stimulated from a hormonal response to leaf removal.

I found an extraordinary scene following bushfires several years ago in the Grampians National Park. Thousands of flower spikes up to 3m high as far as the eye can see, even curly ones, evoking some Leunig illustration!

Although most flower spikes are perfectly vertical, I occasionally see odd shapes at the Grampians.
Image: Brendan Fleming
Source: Brendan Fleming

The flowers are highly scented and produce much nectar, prized by birds, mammals and insects which pollinate the flowers. Each stalk can produce up to 10,000 seeds.

Close-up of the Southern Grasstree flower spike showing individual flowers.
Image: Brendan Fleming
Source: Brendan Fleming  

Southern Grasstrees are quite susceptible to Phytopthora cinnamomi (root rot), often being the first plants to show symptoms. Hence they are a good indicator of the presence of the disease.

Drenching with Phosphonate is a good way to boost the Southern Grasstree's defences against the Cinnamon Fungus Phytopthora.
Image: Chloe Miller
Source: Museum Victoria

Xanthorrhoea australis is not difficult to propagate. Seed germinate readily in just a few weeks, with no pre-sowing treatment required. Just be patient though - growth is very slow. A grasstree I germinated from seed was well-established but still trunkless after 10 years, and made a handsome addition to my garden.

Grasstrees feature heavily in Indigenous culture. Uses include weapons and fire sticks from flower stalks, sweet drinks from flower nectar, and edible leaf bases.

I don't have to go to the Grampians to enjoy grasstrees. The Milarri Garden at Melbourne Museum displays these remarkable plants right in the heart of Melbourne. Exit the Forest gallery to the North terrace and meet Milarri from its western end. It really is a dramatic entrance to the Museum's Indigenous garden.

Grasstrees at the entrance to Milarri Walk from the North Terrace during autumn.
Image: Brendan Fleming
Source: Museum Victoria  

References:

Flora of Tasmania

Wrigley, J. & Fagg, M., 1983, Australian Native Plants, William Collins, Sydney, 512pp.

Adrienne creates and presents public programs at Melbourne Museum.

What do you eat when you are having bugs for brunch?

Well, scorpions for starters, followed by BBQ-flavoured mealworms. Or perhaps you prefer your mealworms simply roasted with a dipping sauce? And would you like crunchy crickets with that?

A plate of roasted mealworms and crickets.
Image: Tom Pietkiewicz
Source: Umkafoto  

More than 3,000 ethnic groups in 113 countries eat insects and other invertebrates, and in many places they are preferred over beef, pork and lamb. Producing insects generates fewer greenhouse emissions than for other forms of meat production and you get more for the same effort: less feed produces more protein. This means a high-protein and low-fat food source that leaves a smaller environmental footprint. While eating insects makes environmental sense, it's pretty confronting to many of us.

Developed as a children's program for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, the Bugs for Brunch events ran over four days and tickets sold out fast. Surprisingly, there were just as many young adults as children (with their parents) who came along learn about – and taste - edible bugs. They wanted to do something different, something fun, something with their friends and family. But were they ready to eat bugs?

Most declared they were slightly squeamish and only a few had ever eaten a bug. After being shown how many bugs are already in our food, they were even more grossed out.

But with tastes of bug vomit (delicious honeycomb from Mount Dandenong) to sweeten them up, and up close and personal viewings of all kinds of edible bugs from Bogong Moths and bardy grubs to scorpions, grasshoppers and Chilean Rose tarantulas (Grammostola rosea), people's opinions shifted.

A bardy grub (beetle larva) at Bugs for Brunch.
Image: Tom Pietkiewicz
Source: Umkafoto  

After seeing lots of images of people eating bugs, looking through bug recipe books and watching a Pad Thai being made with mealworms, they were ready to eat! Lollypops with bugs in them and mealworm chocolate chip cookies gave them a soft approach to the "whole bug in mouth" experience. But by the end, those roasted toasted whole bug snacks were being scoffed. They couldn't get enough and every plate was empty by the end.

Pad Thai with mealworms.
Image: Tom Pietkiewicz
Source: Umkafoto  

The Bugs for Brunch program was developed and delivered by Patrick Honan and Rowena Flynn from the museum's Live Exhibits team and Adrienne Leith from Education and Community Programs. The insects at the Bugs for Brunch event came from one of the country's few consumable insect producers and were bred under hygienic conditions that comply with Australian Food Standards.

Links:

Edible Forest Insects, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Your Question: What did Caroline Chisholm do behind the Shelter Shed?

A bit of scrapbooking apparently...

Having such a large online presence, as Museum Victoria has, we in the Discovery Centre are always asked if we can provide copies of the brochures, passenger lists, workshop manuals, etc, that feature in our massive Internet Empire. In order to satisfy this demand, we have to apply subtle pressure on a variety of curators, collection managers and photographers, in order to have these articles scanned.

A page from Caroline Chisholm's scrapbook.
Image: Museum Victoria
Source: Museum Victoria  

However, in the case of Caroline Chisholm’s scrapbook, we can casually point out to the inquisitive enquirer, that by scrolling down the webpage, they will see the heading ‘Downloads’ followed by ‘Caroline Chisholm’s Scrapbook PDF 129.3 Mb’. Eureka! This unique piece of Australia’s history can be all yours at the click of a button. Now, at your leisure, you can peruse the pages of Caroline’s life and works.

Caroline Chisholm scrapbook, circa 1844-1861
Image: Museum Victoria
Source: Museum Victoria  

Who attended the ‘Soiree to Mrs. Chisholm’? Prince Albert did, that’s who. As did ‘The Ladies who have honoured us with their company’. Is one of your ancestors on ‘Mrs. Chisholm’s List of Missing Friends’? Margaret Lyons was looking for her brother Luck Lyons; Mrs. Tipple couldn’t find her husband Thomas Tipple and Mr. Wright could not be found which left his ‘Wife in great distress with six children’. And what did Charles Dickens say about Mrs. Chisholm? The answer can be found on ‘page 12’.

Caroline Chisholm scrapbook, circa 1844-1861
Image: Museum Victoria
Source: Museum Victoria  

Caroline Chisholm’s scrapbook is not the only scanned item available for download on our website, but it is a particular favourite of mine. Thanks to the unsung heroes of the museum – the MV Studios folk who scan these wonderful items, all your questions can now be answered. We salute you!

Got a question? Ask us!

Links 

Caroline Chisolm's scrapbook

Australian Dictionary of Biography Online

Bernard works part-time at Melbourne Museum devising and delivering presentations for visitors. The other part of the time he writes and draws and edits and publishes comic books, and also teaches and broadcasts about them.

Gilgamesh. What a guy. 

In The Epic of Gilgamesh, we learn that he's the son of a human man and the goddess Ninsun.

A hero overpowering a lion (left) and Lamassu in the Louvre. These bas-relief sculpures are huge - the man figure is about three times life-size. Lion-taming spirits are often identified with Gilgamesh.
Image: caribb
Source: Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 from caribb.

He's two-thirds god and one-third human, and single-handedly built the city walls of Uruk to protect his people.

Cast bronze sculpture of Gilgamesh at The University of Sydney. It was made by Lewis Batros and donated by the Gilgamesh Cultural Centre on behalf of the Assyrian community celebrating the university's sesquicentenary in 2000.
Image: D. Gordon E. Robertson
Source: Wikimedia Commons  

He fought and befriended the wild man Enkidu. Enkidu and Gilgamesh fought the monster Humbaba (or Huwawa). They defeated Humbaba and brought his head back to Uruk on a raft.

Clay mask of the demon Huwawa or Humbaba. The cuneiform inscription on the back says that if the intestines of a sacrificed animal are looped around to resemble Humbaba, it is an omen of 'revelation.' Gruesome.
Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum  

Gilgamesh and Enkidu also defeated the Bull of Heaven, who was sent to destroy Uruk by the furious goddess Ishtar after Gilgmesh said that he wouldn't go to the prom with her.

The 'Queen of the Night' Relief, possibly a representation of the goddess Ishtar. It might also be her sister and rival, the goddess Ereshkigal, or the demoness Lilitu, known in the Bible as Lilith. Old Babylonian, 1800-1750 BC, from southern Iraq.
Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum  

Sure, Gilgamesh is the legendary demigod hero-king of Mesopotamia, but is he actually the first comic book superhero? Of course he is. There were definitely legendary heroes and gods before Gilgamesh, but he's the first one we have a publication for. That publication weighs a little more than your standard comic book, because it's made of tablets of baked clay. But there are 12 of those tablets, each telling of a separate episode, so each could be considered an 'issue' of the Gilgamesh comic mini-series.

The one possible argument against it being a comic book is its total and utter lack of pictures. However, this objection is easily overcome by holding the tablets of cuneiform up against the large narrative Mesopotamian wall-carvings. The tablets thus become word balloons, containing a tale that the characters on the carvings are telling to one another. THEN it's a comic book. A weighty comic book. It might even, given the scope of the story, be a 'graphic novel' (=long comic book). Ooh la la!

Three thousand years after that original clay publication of the adventures of Gilgamesh, the brilliant Jack Kirby, 'King of Comics', who virtually invented the visual language that we associate with American superhero comics, put the Babylonian demigod on paper. BK (Before Kirby), comic books used the restrained compositions and drawing styles that they had inherited from newspaper comic strips. Kirby changed all that. His characters burst through the frames. They leapt from the page.

Me ensconced in the classic Jack Kirby comic book series The Eternals, which features his character Gilgamesh.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Gilgamesh shows up in issue #13 of The Eternals (1977), a comic book series that Kirby created for Marvel Comics. In the intervening years, the character has been drawn and written by various writers and artists. Sometimes he's working under a different name (simply 'Hero' or 'The Forgotten One'), sometimes he's costumed in the hide of the Bull of Heaven, and sometimes he's fighting alongside the team called The Avengers, but I'm pretty sure he won't have a cameo in the film of the same name directed by Joss Whedon (the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator) coming from Marvel Studios later this year. More's the pity, eh?

On Thursday 1 March, hundreds of people gathered outside Melbourne Museum from 5pm, apparently as curious as we were to see what would happen at the adults-only SmartBar event.

Crowd waiting outside Melbourne Museum for SmartBar to open.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

The idea of adults-only museum events is not a new one, but it's new to Museum Victoria. All over the world, history and science museums like us witness the same pattern: young people in their twenties don't visit much. Many museums have started holding special events to cater for the interests of this group. The Australian Museum launched their Jurassic Lounge three summers ago and it's a hit in Sydney. Closer to home, NGV and ACMI have launched successful adult programs, but would such a thing work for us?

Mark Norman talking about strange sex in the deep blue sea. Here he shows the SmartBar crowd a female argonaut or paper nautilus.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria

David Perkins works in the museum's Public Programs department and helped organise SmartBar. "The whole point was to find if people were interested in coming to this type of event," says David, "And they were, more so that we ever expected." Online tickets sold out days in advance and people waited patiently to grab the last remaining door tickets. Over 1,000 people attended SmartBar and we were delighted that 83% of the audience were between 18 and 34 years old.

Erich Fitzgerald addressing the age-old question: just how accurate was Jurassic Park?
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

"The presentations were the most popular thing," says David. The talks covered the bizarre sex lives of deep-water animals, spotlights on specimens and chats with preparators, curators and animal keepers. They all had a blast giving visitors direct access to the museum's research activity and to talk about their work. The Science and Life Galleries became a social space and all kinds of enthusiasts came out of the woodwork, many of them commenting that they liked being in the museum with no kids around.

Bird's eye view of the crowd watching Wayne's demonstration in the Science and Life Gallery.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria

The phenomenal success of SmartBar is encouraging and the museum is exploring how we can hold it regularly. Because we weren't sure what to expect, there were a lot of surprises – mostly good, but there were some aspects that we didn't get right. The queues at the door were too long and it was difficult to get the sound right in the Science and Life Gallery with so much going on. A survey, a comment board and feedback on Twitter, provides us with lots of information about what to improve next time, and what was spot-on. We'd like to thank everyone who gave us feedback as it will help us get things right in the future. At this stage we are planning to have four a year to follow the seasons – so watch out for our winter SmartBar.

Nearly a quarter of the attendees had never been to Melbourne Museum before. What was it about this event that attracted them? And what has stopped them in the past? David thinks the focus was just right for this crowd. "Adult education is a dirty phrase. If you asked a bunch of people to sit in a class after work, it would be a hard sell. But if it's easy and casual you can take it at your own pace. You have a nice night and you've learned something."

Links:

Comments from the pinboard on Pinterest

SmartBar photos on Melbourne Museum's Facebook page

Your Question: Why are bird eggs so variable in their colours and patterns?

The colour and colour pattern of bird eggs vary enormously from species to species (and often between individuals of the same species, and sometimes between the eggs of the same mother).

  A tray of eggs from Museum Victoria's H.L White egg collection, showing the diversity of patterns and colours for a single species, the Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen.
Image: Michelle McFarlane
Source: Museum Victoria  

Eggs are made of calcium carbonate, which is white. White is therefore the default colour for bird eggs, but many birds lay coloured or colourfully-patterned eggs. Why?

The colouration of bird eggs can often be explained by the animal's biology and behaviour. The eggs of ground-nesting birds, for example, need to be well-camouflaged to avoid discovery by predators. They are usually coloured and patterned to match the substrate they are laid upon.

The highly-camouflaged eggs of the American Golden Plover Pluvialis dominica, which nests on the ground.
Image: MeegsC
Source: Wikimedia Commons  

Tree-nesters, on the other hand, usually have blue or green eggs.

The American Robin, Turdus migratorius, which nests in trees, lays bright blue eggs.
Image: Laslovarga
Source: Wikimedia Commons  

Birds whose eggs are hidden from view (in hollows, burrows or deep nests), or who sit on their eggs continuously throughout incubation, tend to have white eggs.

  The now extinct Paradise Parrot Psephotus pulcherrimus, which laid its eggs in termite mounds, had white, unpatterned eggs.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

The patterns on eggs have developed over eons via natural selection – the better the camouflage, the more likely the eggs are to survive and pass on the genes for well-camouflaged eggs to the next generation. Ornithologists have classified egg patterns and given each "style" a name in order to distinguish them: splashed, blotched, spotted, dotted, marbled, streaked, scrawled, overlaid, capped, and wreathed.

Eggs from Museum Victoria's Ornithology Collection
Image: John Broomfield
Source: Museum Victoria

Colour also provides another form of protection: it is thought to act as a sunscreen, protecting the developing foetus from UV light. The addition of colour also strengthens the eggshell. Birds that are calcium-deficient lay thin-shelled eggs, which are more likely to break. Scientists have found that birds that have multiple clutches in a single season have more highly-coloured eggs in the second and subsequent clutches (when the mother's calcium supplies are reduced). Patterned colouration is also more common in areas with calcium-deficient soils.

The specific colours are incorporated into the shell in the final stage of egg development. Blue and green colour comes from a pigment called biliverdin (which is the same pigment that causes green bruises in humans). In egg colouration, biliverdin comes from bile; the red and brown colour on eggs comes from protoporphyrins, which comes from blood.

The Red-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus cafer lays red eggs.
Image: J. M. Garg
Source: Wikimedia Commons  

Australia's native birds are protected. It is illegal to collect eggs or to interfere with birds' nests without a permit. Details of regulations and permits can be obtained from the Department of Sustainability and Environment.

Links:

Museum Victoria's Ornithology Collection

H.L. White Collection of Australian Birds’ Eggs

The evolution of egg colour and patterning in birds

Australian Magpie Eggs

Your Question: I am trying to trace my aunt and uncle and their children or any of their living relatives. They migrated to Australia after World War II in the 1940s or early 1950s. How would I go about finding them?

Locating living people is a question we often get and, although it can be very difficult, there are a number of resources that might help you to find them:

• For those that immigrated here in the mid 20th century, the first step would be to order their immigration records, which are held by the National Archives of Australia (NAA). This will give you information about their immigration and may give some indication of where they went when they arrived in Australia. These documents might then allow you to know where to search for further information in electoral rolls, public registries and other resources

The National Archives website has online indexes, which feature a percentage of records in their collection. A step by step guide to using these indexes and ordering documents can be found on our Quick guide to passenger lists infosheet.

Newly Arrived Migrant Family Standing Near Temporary Accommodation, Ringwood East, 1955
Image: unknown photographer
Source: Museum Victoria  

• Electoral rolls list all the names and addresses of registered voters within Australia. The State Library of Victoria Genealogy Centre holds archived as well as current electoral rolls dating from 1856 until the present. For more information about accessing electoral rolls contact the State Library of Victoria Genealogy Centre or the Victorian Electoral Commission.

• Copies of Birth Deaths and Marriages certificates may reveal useful personal information and allow you to trace your relative’s descendents. Births, deaths and marriage registries are run by different government departments in each state and some have a limited amount of information in online indexes.

• A simple search of the telephone directories may reveal the location of relatives. The White Pages is available online or you may wish to peruse hardcopies, which are often available at state, and sometimes local, libraries.

Man, Woman & Two Girls, Backyard, Ukrainian Christmas Day, Newport, 1951
Image: unknown photographer
Source: Museum Victoria  

• If your relatives belong to a specific migrant community, a relevant community organisation may be able to give you advice about finding them.

• Search digitised newspapers at the National Library of Australia’s Trove website for mentions of their name. With hundreds of national, state and local newspapers digitised from 1803 to 1954, you may find a mention of them.

• Their may be an online bulletin board for the ship your relative came on or a migrant camp in which they may have stayed. Many people find each other through such forums so it might be a great place to throw your question out to the wider world.

Mother, Boy & Girl Sitting on Public Seat, Middle Park, 1949
Image: Mr Cliff Atkinson
Source: Museum Victoria  

• Doing an online search for their names might reveal something. While it sounds obvious, many don’t think of it! Lots of people are online these days with personal websites, blogs, social networking, business websites and so forth.

• Various organisations have tracing services that may, in certain circumstances, be able to locate missing family members.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Post World War II Immigration in Photographs

Live Exhibits staff visited Cairns and Cape Tribulation in North Queensland in December to augment our live animal collection with fresh genetic stock. We met many interesting animals along the way, so here are a few portraits of the critters that came back with us to Melbourne Museum.

The Giant Mantid is one of the largest mantid species in Australia. They feed on a range of insects but are large enough to overpower small frogs and lizards. Giant Mantids are currently on display in Bugs Alive!.

Giant Mantid, Heirodula majuscula.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria  

Raspy crickets derive their common name from the fact that all known species, both male and female, can produce a rasping sound at all stages of development. There are more than 200 species of raspy crickets in Australia and new species are regularly discovered. This very large adult female has powerful jaws and, like all raspy crickets, a bad temper. She ate her way out of several containers on the journey from North Queensland, causing havoc wherever she went.

Raspy Cricket, Chauliogryllacris species.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

A male Golden Huntsman, probably the largest huntsman in Australia and generally considered the second largest in the world. This species sometimes causes panic when it enters houses, but like most huntsmans it is relatively harmless.

Golden Huntsman, Beregama aurea.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Net-casting Spiders are famous for their ability to spin perfectly rectangular silken nets, about the size of a postage stamp. These nets are thrown over passing prey as the spider sits suspended above an insect pathway. In honour of their enormous eyes, they are also known as Ogre-Faced Spiders.

Net-casting Spider, Deinopis bicornis.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria  

French's Longicorn is one of Australia's larger beetle species. This one was found in a small mating aggregation on a strangler fig in the rainforest at night. Longicorns are characterised by kidney-shaped eyes which wrap around the base of the antennae.

French's Longicorn, Batocera frenchi.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria  

The spiny legs of the Serrated Bush Katydid give it both its common and scientific name. Adults are always green, but nymphs may be red, brown or violet, depending on the colour of the leaves on which they feed. Males produce a short, loud call which is commonly heard in the rainforest at night. Another katydid, the Kuranda Spotted Katydid, is one of the larger and more robust of this group in Australia. The nymphs closely resemble ants, which may afford them some protection against predators. The eggs are glued to dead twigs by the female using a short, thick ovipositor.

Left: Serrated Bush Katydid, Paracaedicia serrata. | Right: Kuranda Spotted Katydid, Ephippitytha kuranda.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria  

These creatures, and many more, can be seen every day in Bugs Alive! at Melbourne Museum.

Your Question: Which Museum Victoria exhibition is going to Paris this year?

The stunning Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art exhibition, a collaboration between the National Gallery of Victoria and Museum Victoria in partnership with Papunya Tula Pty Ltd, is off to France. This exhibition was on show at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia and is now being carefully packed to be sent to Paris for display at the Musée du quai Branly in October this year.

Anatjari Tjakamarra, Big Pintupi Dreaming ceremony 1972
Image: NGV
Source: National Gallery of Victoria © artists and their estates 2011, licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Limited and Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd  

It is a wonderful example of cooperation between public institutions and generous private lenders to bring together and showcase over 200 paintings completed between 1971 and 1972 from the Papunya region of the Western Desert. This initial production of paintings represented the founding of the Western Desert art movement and led to an explosive growth in the Aboriginal art movement. Museum Victoria has loaned numerous artefacts for this exhibition from its extensive collections. Tjukurrtjanu also presents 150 objects, including 78 painted and incised shields, spear throwers, pearl shell pendants, stone knives, head bands and ephemeral body ornaments, that establish the paintings pre-existing Western Desert iconography.

Group of decorated shields from Central Australia
Image: Museum Victoria
Source: Museum Victoria  

The Musée du quai Branly is a recent addition to the museum scene in Paris, opening near the base of the Eiffel Tower in 2006. It has a collection of some 300,000 objects and is well known for its beautiful external ‘living walls’ featuring a variety of living plants and mosses. The museum exists to display and promote the indigenous cultures of Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas. It already holds collections of Aboriginal art from the north and central desert regions of Australia; bark paintings from Arnhem Land collected in the 1960s, contemporary acrylic paintings and a ceiling spectacularly painted by Indigenous artists.

Charlie Wartuma Tjungurrayi, Old Man’s Dreaming at Mitukatjirri
Image: NGV
Source: National Gallery of Victoria © artists and their estates 2011, licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Limited and Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd  

The Tjukurrtjanu exhibition will show a Parisian and European audience how Aboriginal people use art to tell their stories and to ensure the continuation of their culture.

  Exterior of Musee du quai Branly, Paris
Image: Andreas Praefcke
Source: Wikimedia Commons  

Australian artists have had huge success in overseas markets over the years, the Tate Gallery in London holds works by Sidney Nolan; Russell Drysdale enjoyed overseas acclaim as do current Australian artists such as Ron Mueck with his hyper-real sculptures. Yet it can be argued that Australia’s Indigenous artists and their art are currently the best known examples of Australian art in the rest of the world. Indeed, this is the first time that an art exhibition solely developed by the NGV and Museum Victoria has been accepted in a major European venue.

Links:

National Gallery of Victoria - Tjukurrtjanu

Museum Victoria: Collections and Research – Indigenous Cultures

Papunya Tula Artists

MV Blog: Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art

One of the largest insect species we keep here at Melbourne Museum is the Rainforest Mantid (Hierodula majuscula). At around 70mm in length, the adult Rainforest Mantid is not the longest mantid species in Australia, but it is certainly the most buff.

An adult female Rainforest Mantid on the hunt for prey
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Minibeast Wildlife  

Its powerful raptorial forelegs are equipped with razor-sharp spines that allow the mantid to pin and immobilise live prey. A resident of north Queensland rainforests, the adult's solid green colour enables it to all but disappear amongst the foliage. A mantid on the hunt may remain perfectly still for hours, waiting for the right prey to present itself. Looming over its meal and appearing to "pray", the mantid finally strikes with lightning-fast accuracy and shows its true colours as another of nature's perfect predators.

The life of the Rainforest Mantid begins as one of up to 400 hatchlings from the ootheca – an egg case laid by the female 40-60 days prior. Often attached to the underside of a branch or leaf, the hatchlings emerge downwards and crawl over one another to clear the way. The nymphs must disperse from their brothers and sisters, as once they start eating, any prey small enough is fair game - including each other! At this stage, H. majuscula nymphs are less than 10mm long. As the nymph moults and grows, it may vary from greens to browns and reds, but is invariably green by its final moult.

Mantid nymphs hatching and moulting for the first time after emerging from the ootheca.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Minibeast Wildlife  

A superb hunter, the Rainforest Mantid's best weapon is its vision. Its large, compound eyes boast a wide field of vision, enhanced by its head's extraordinary range of movement. As a result, the Rainforest Mantid hunts primarily during daylight hours.

Large eyes dominate the Rainforest Mantid's triangular, highly mobile head.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Minibeast Wildlife

An adult mantid is able to prey on not only a large selection of insects, but may also attack small lizards and frogs. After securing the prey with its raptorial forelegs, the mantid devours it alive. These mantids often eat the nuisance parts first, such as an insect's powerful kicking legs.

Insect prey is usually consumed head-first to reduce the chances of it getting away.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Minibeast Wildlife

The Rainforest Mantid lives a solitary life and may never come into contact with another of its species after hatching until it is time to breed. Only the mature male of this species is capable of flight, so it is left to him to navigate the precarious expanse of tropical rainforest to find the perfect a female who is ready to mate. In contrast to hunting, night seems to be the preferred time for mating (though it may begin during or continue into daylight hours). As a flying male is quite vulnerable, it is thought that breeding takes place in the dark to reduce the risk of aerial predators.

However, there is still one major group of insect predators active at this time – the microbats. To combat this, many mantid species including H. majuscula have evolved a single ear on the lower side of the thorax, capable of picking up the ultrasonic sound frequencies of the microbats' echolocation signals. If the male mantid in flight detects such a signal, he immediately dives and weaves in such a display of evasive manoeuvres that he has been compared to a fighter jet.

In the dark, mantid eyes are much less effective. To counter this, a female of the breeding inclination sends out pheromones to attract suitable males. Once the male locates a female, he tempers his approach until the correct moment. He may wait hours within thirty centimetres of her, before rushing her in a mad frenzy and attaching himself to her back with his forelegs. If he is lucky, he will have attached himself a way that prevents her turning around to eat him. If he is unlucky, he may immediately become a meal. Either way, the Rainforest Mantid male can continue to mate even with his head completely missing. It's not all bad news for the male's genes: by becoming an extra meal, he may give his offspring a greater chance of survival by nourishing the female through the month of egg incubation.

This male is one of the unlucky individuals that has not survived the mating process.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Minibeast Wildlife  

Rainforest Mantid females may live for up to a year. Though males may be capable of living just as long, their risky lifestyle results in a lower average life span. However, if a male survives mating, he may go on to mate with many more females and live to a ripe old age.

Whether you know it best from the Bible, the Torah or Nick Cave's song The Mercy Seat, you might not know that the common phrase 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' has Mesopotamian origins.

Left: Acrylic eye prosthesis made by Loyer Artificial Eyes, Burwood,Victoria, circa 1999. (HT 23234) | Right: Porcelain artificial teeth made by DeTrey's Diatorics, circa 1925. (HT 11829)
Source: Museum Victoria

It describes principle of retaliation – a harsh system of justice that permits someone suffering an injury at the hands of another to return like for like. The concept was first documented in the Code of Hammurabi, an upright stone pillar inscribed with 282 Babylonian laws by King Hammurabi (1792–1750 BC). It was uncovered in modern-day Iran in 1901 and is exhibited in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. 

Code of Hammurabi on display in in the Musée du Louvre.
Image: Nick Olejniczak
Source: Used under CC BY-NC 2.0 from nicholasjon  

Detail of the cuneiform script on the Code of Hammurabi.
Image: Boris Doesburg
Source: Used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 from batigolix  

Museum Victoria is borrowing a cast of the code from the Australian Institue of Archaeology to display during The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia exhibition. The cast, purchased by the AIA in 1968, is an exact replica made in very limited edition by the Musée du Louvre.

Much of the code addresses contracts, payments, terms of transactions and marriage laws, but a handful of laws are paraphrased in the well-worn 'eye for an eye'. In the 1915 translation of the Code of Hammurabi by LW King, the contributing laws are stated explicitly:

196. If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.

200. If a man knock out a tooth of a man of his own rank, they shall knock out his tooth.

But it's not as simple as that. In Babylonian society, there were three distinct social classes: the freemen, the second-class citizens, and at the bottom of the heap, the slaves. If a slave suffered the injury, retribution was less about flesh and more about cash:

199. If one destroy the eye of a man's slave or break a bone of a man's slave he shall pay one-half his price.

The Code's rules, penalties and payments are a fascinating (and often contradictory) glimpse into the lives and values of the Babylonians. For example, if you leased a field and your crops were lost to the storm god Adad, it was your own problem. Yet if you hired an ox to work your fields and it was eaten by a lion, the loss was borne by the ox's owner. If the ox's death was caused by a god, an oath to that effect absolved the hirer of any responsibility. (It sounds like ox-hiring was a tough gig in Babylon.)

King Hammurabi's legacy persists and many of the philosophies of his code still ring true today. It established concepts such as medical malpractice, penalties for negligence and the role of government in resolving family matters like inheritance and divorce. Another important idea enacted in the Code of Hammurabi was assumed innocence, whereby both parties in a legal dispute were required to provide evidence of their claims – even if the evidence was no more than an oath that a god killed your ox.

Links:

The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia exhibition at Melbourne Museum

1915 translation of the Code of Hammurabi by LW King (PDF, 128 KB)

Code of Hammurabi in the Musée du Louvre

Your Question: What exactly is the role of the Discovery Centre within Museum Victoria?

We play a very important role in making sure that you can access your state collection and this happens with requests made in person over the desk in the Discovery Centre, via the telephone, by snail mail and of course by email, and sometimes even by fax!

Visitors using the resources in the Discovery Centre
Image: Jo Philo
Source: Museum Victoria  

Every day when we come into the Discovery Centre we don’t know what the day will hold. Our inbox is jam packed with enquiries sent to us via our online enquiry form sent from many different people, with many different requests. The Discovery Centre is also responsible for responding to the various questions and comments that are posted on the different sections of the Museum Victoria website, the information sheets, the blog posts and the Collections Online webpages.

Visitors meeting Murray, the Murray Darling Carpet Python, in the Discovery Centre
Image: Jo Philo
Source: Museum Victoria  

We are responsible for handling and responding to your research based enquiries for access to Museum Victoria collections and experts. This could be anything from an identification request along the lines of 'what is this spider?' or 'what type of bird made this nest?', or I’d like to find out more about dinosaurs, or CSIRAC - we handle them all. We can also help you with accessing the collection; perhaps your grandfather donated a camera to the collection and you would like to see it. Well, we can help. And of course, we can help with the donation process if you have a significant item that you would like the museum to consider acquiring.

Jo and a visitor checking out the frogs in the Discovery Centre
Image: Kate Brereton
Source: Museum Victoria  

The Discovery Centre also assists academic researchers with access to the collection for study and learning. We can also help you with getting copies of images from the collection, maybe to add to a family album or your family history research. Of course, there are also the requests we receive from publishers for copyright requests, or other state museums for object loans and historical societies for conservation advice. 

If you would like to know more about the Discovery Centre Team, we are all blog authors so you can read a few lines about us, and of course see a happy snap too!

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre

Immigration Discovery Centre

Adrienne creates and presents public programs at Melbourne Museum and coordinates Museum Victoria's lecture series.

A new major exhibition is coming to Melbourne Museum this year called The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia. To learn more about the history and significance of Mesopotamia, I interviewed an expert in ancient civilisations, Dr Andrew Jamieson.

Can you first tell us a bit about yourself and how you are involved with the exhibition?

I am an archaeologist from the Classics and Archaeology program at the University of Melbourne, and for the past 25 years I have been working on archaeological projects in the Middle East. I'm helping with the development and presentation of The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia at Melbourne Museum, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of my knowledge at some public lectures at the museum.

Where exactly is Mesopotamia?

Ancient Mesopotamia corresponds with the area known today as Iraq, north-east Syria and south-east Turkey. The word 'Mesopotamia' is of Greek origin (meso 'middle' and potamia 'river'), meaning the land between two rivers – the Tigris and the Euphrates. Both the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers start in the mountainous regions of Turkey and flow into the Persian Gulf.

It was here, in a land through which the two rivers flowed, that some of the world's first great empires flourished - the Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires.

Statue of King Ashurnasirpal II that was placed in the Temple of Ishtar at Nimrud where Ashurnasirpal established his capital city.
Source: @ The Trustees of the British Museum  

So why is Mesopotamia so significant?

Mesopotamia is important for a number of reasons.  For example, Mesopotamia witnessed experiments in agriculture and irrigation, the invention of writing, the emergence of cities and complex society, and developments in art, literature, science and mathematics. Mesopotamia is also sometimes referred to as the 'fertile crescent' or the 'cradle of civilisation', because the crescent-shaped region was a moist and fertile land, and because the first complex societies emerged in this region.

Why is Mesopotamia relevant to us today?

For me, Mesopotamia is relevant today because it represents the origins or beginnings of western civilisation. Ancient Mesopotamia has a long and rich history that continues to influence our lives.

The Mesopotamians were amongst the first people to build and live in large cities. They also developed many aspects of technology including metalworking, pottery production, glassmaking, textile manufacture and leather-working.

The oldest writing yet discovered comes from southern Mesopotamia and dates to circa 3500 BC. It consists of pictographic signs incised on clay tablets that record the Sumerian language. The earliest writing was used to communicate basic information about crops and taxes. A few centuries later the pictographs were transformed into more abstract cuneiform ('wedge-shaped') characters. This distinctive script was incised on wet clay with a stylus (pen-like instrument), usually cut from a reed. Over thousands of years, Mesopotamian scribes recorded daily events, trade activities, astronomy, myths, and literature on thousands of clay tablets. So successful was this system of writing that it was used over three millennia by the different peoples of the ancient Near East.

Early cuneiform writing tablet, circa 3000 BC. Quantities of barley allocated to officials listed by rank. The impressed circles and half-circles represent numbers.
Source: @ The Trustees of the British Museum  

What can people expect to see in the exhibition?

The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia is specially designed for Melbourne Museum It features over 170 objects highlighting significant episodes of Mesopotamian civilisation, including masterpieces from Sumer, Assyria and Babylon. It is rare for the British Museum to tour such priceless pieces. Some of these objects include an early Sumerian cuneiform writing tablet, a fluted gold cup with spout found in the death pit of the tomb of Queen Puabi at Ur that may have been used for drinking beer, a large stone statue of the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II inscribed in cuneiform giving his titles and lineage, and much more.

Gold cup with spout found in the death pit of the tomb of Queen Puabi. The long spout would have been used like a drinking straw, probably for drinking beer.
Source: @ The Trustees of the British Museum  

The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia is a collaboration with the British Museum. It is on at Melbourne Museum from 4 May to 7 October 2012.

Links:

The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia

Video: What is Mesopotamia?

Video: The Mesopotamian Minute

Pre-purchase exhibition tickets online

Dr Andrew Jamieson at the University of Melbourne

SmartBar logo
Source: Museum Victoria  

On March 1, Melbourne Museum will be presenting SmartBar – an evening event for adults featuring talks by museum scientists and interactive experiences.

As part of the event, the dissection of a road-killed bird will occur to demonstrate how Museum Victoria researchers study these sorts of animals that are brought in by concerned members of the public. This process increases our understanding of animal health, diet, welfare and conservation. The information we gain from this type of research is critical for our understanding of issues that impact Victorian fauna such as climate change and human activities.

SmartBar will provide Museum Victoria a chance to introduce people to the work of the museum, first hand. Beyond our exhibitions, we undertake important and ongoing research to learn more about our fauna, with a view to helping inform its conservation into the future. At SmartBar, we're giving people a chance to learn about some of that work and meet some of our staff in an informal setting. We're hoping this attracts an audience who would not normally attend Melbourne Museum so they too can become passionate, informed and respectful of Victoria and Australia's wildlife.

In earlier communications we described the event in a way which was misinterpreted by some readers. We apologise for any confusion or anxiety this may have caused and would like to thank everyone who has given us feedback on the SmartBar event.

Links:

SmartBar

Your Question: Is the Moon getting further away?

The short answer is yes, the Moon is getting further away - it is retreating from Earth by 3.8 cm per year.

Close-up of Planet Earth with Moon in background
Image: NASA, JPL
Source: NASA, JPL  
The history of the Moon gives us clues about its future. Over 4.5 billion years ago, a planet-sized body collided with a young Earth. Although most of the impact was absorbed into the still-molten Earth, the collision threw debris into space. A large section of this debris solidified in orbit around Earth and formed our Moon. The Moon has been slowly getting further from Earth since then.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon
Image: NASA
Source: NASA  
If we were to fast-forward from the impact event to about 1.2 billion years ago (over 3 billion years after the Moon formed), the Moon was still relatively close to Earth; much more so than it is today. As a result, the Moon’s gravitational effect on Earth was greater, and the tides were 20 per cent stronger than they are today. The Moon would have appeared much larger in the sky, although there was no life on earth equipped to see it.

Earth as seen from the Moon, Apollo 8 Mission
Image: NASA
Source: NASA  
If we fast-forward again, this time 600 million years into the future, the moon will have less influence on Earth - ocean tides will be significantly weaker. From Earth the Moon will appear tiny by today’s standards and events like eclipses will no longer be visible.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Moon rocks land at Melbourne Museum

Dynamic Earth: How the Moon formed

A long-time resident of Melbourne Museum's Mind and Body Gallery has retired from display to be replaced by an equally lovely, but more feminine, colleague. These two extraordinary 19th century anatomical models belong to the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney. Made from papier-mâché at the factory of Dr Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux, they were important teaching aids for budding anatomists at the university.

Left: Male Auzoux anatomical model as he appeared in the Mind and Body Gallery. Right: Female Auzoux anatomical model before she was installed in the gallery in January.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Dr Auzoux (1797–1880) was a French anatomist who, frustrated at the limited usefulness of genuine cadavers and wax models for learning about the human body, began producing papier-mâché models of humans, animals, organs and plants. Where a human cadaver could only be dissected once and wax models deteriorated from use, papier-mâché was durable, lightweight and could be used over and over again. His models were very popular and continued production after his death. The arrival of plastic in the 20th century superseded papier-mâché as a material, but for decades his models were unsurpassed.

They were formed in lead moulds under high pressure from a mix of papier-mâché, clay and cork. The surface was covered with veins made from linen-covered wire and then hand-painted, varnished and labelled. The handwork means that each model - and there are examples in museums worldwide – has a distinctive character and unique appearance.

Nurin Veis is the curator responsible for the Mind and Body Gallery exhibitions. "We've included a variety of multidisciplinary ways of looking at science and medicine," she explains. "This model is a great example where art meets science which is a rich area that many people are interested in. I think she's beautiful. All that work – each model is individually crafted, not like the plastic anatomical models that are churned out."

The new arrival peering out from the custom-made travel crate that carried her from Sydney to Melbourne.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

Dr Nurin Veis looking at the arm of the female anatomical model.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

The first thing you'll notice is that she is unusually proportioned with a small head and very broad hips. This remains an inexplicable curiosity; female Auzoux models are extremely rare and there aren't many to compare her with.

Nurin is fascinated by the model's odd shape and stance. "It's what they have and haven't fleshed out – her head is so small but they've made such a big issue of her hips. I can't help thinking that the external form was possibly done from sketches. It doesn't look like it's been modelled from life. The discrete way that she's trying to hide her body and all the things that it says about gender roles is very interesting."

The female model's torso opens up to reveal her internal organs but unfortunately there was not room in the showcase to permit this for display. Before she was installed, we took photographs of her insides. She is in wonderful condition for her age but for one thing: she does not have a heart. No one knows if her heart was lost, stolen or strayed; the Macleay Museum has no record of her ever having one.

Conservator Helen Privett opening the female anatomical model's torso to reveal her heartless core.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

Links:

The Human Body exhibition

Macleay Museum at Sydney University

Lack of human cadavers? Turn to papier-mâché medicine (New Scientist blog)

The papier-mache anatomist (Curious Expeditions)

On Sunday 29 January Melbourne’s Chinatown came alive with beating drums, firecrackers, lion and dragon dances, kung fu demonstrations, market stalls, and great food. We went down for a little look to enjoy the spectacle and join the thousands of people from diverse backgrounds who came to celebrate Lunar New Year.

Dragons ready to parade
Image: Nic Davis
Source: Nic Davis  

Monday 23 January 2012 marked the official Lunar New Year – often referred to as Chinese New Year. It is the most important celebration of the year for many communities throughout Asia, including in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. It’s a time for families to reunite and celebrate together, with the festivities often lasting for a whole month from around mid January to mid February.  

Wing Chun demonstration
Image: Nic Davis
Source: Nic Davis  

It is a festival rich with symbolism, designed to bring prosperity and happiness in the New Year. Decorations in cities throughout Asia go up early in January and the streets, stores and homes are riot of colour that rivals the Christmas season in Australia, with houses, streets, shops and businesses, brightly festooned with red lanterns, cherry blossoms, paper banners and other decorations.  

Crowds in Chinatown enjoying the Lion Dance
Image: Nic Davis
Source: Nic Davis  

Contemporary and traditional decorations for New Year
Image: Nic Davis
Source: Nic Davis  

Of course Lunar New Year festivities are not limited to Asia, with Chinese communities throughout the world celebrating the festival. Australia’s long history of immigration from Asian countries means that today the Lunar New Year is one of the biggest celebrations in our diverse calendar of cultural events. Events are held in throughout the country, including in Melbourne’s Chinatown, Footscray, Richmond, Springvale, Box Hill and regional centres such as Bendigo.

A traditional Lion Dance team
Image: Nic Davis
Source: Nic Davis  

Links:

MV Blog: Five things about dragons

Your Question: Does Museum Victoria have the only working Australian-made traction engine?

It is believed that in 1916, Cowley’s Eureka Ironworks of Ballarat built one of Australia’s last steam traction engines. The Cowley Traction Engine, acquired by the Museum in 1985, was restored with the help of about 30 staff and volunteers over 16 years with a total of 10,000 paid hours and 6,000 voluntary hours.

Cowley Steam Traction Engine (1916) at Lake Goldsmith.
Image: Matthew Churchwood
Source: Museum Victoria  

It was dismantled and major mechanical repairs were carried out. New parts were manufactured when the old parts were found to not be restorable or could not be repaired in a way that could be reversed at a later time. Such parts included the steam boiler, the boiler fittings, tender, roof, crankshaft, feed pump, and many of the gears. All components that were replaced have been retained in storage for future reference and research.
 
Scienceworks 10th Birthday Celebration - Cowley steam engine from 1916 in action on the arena.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria  

The Cowley was used to move houses and other timber-framed buildings, as well as hauling logs for the Sawmilling industry in Western Victoria and is unusual in that it has solid sided wheels, rather than spoked ones. This design serves the dual purpose of not only being cheaper to produce, but the wheels can then double as extra water tanks – a handy advantage in the dry Australian bush.

Detail of Cowley Steam Traction Engine at Machinery in Action show
Image: Paoli Smith Photography
Source: Museum Victoria  

In 2001 the Cowley was fully restored and ready to go. It made its debut at the Lake Goldsmith steam Rally and can now be seen at Scienceworks on Machines in Action Days.
Men in the boiler shop at Cowley 's Eureka Ironworks, Ballarat, Victoria, circa 1910
Source: Museum Victoria  

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Podcast: Roll out the Steam Engines!

MV News: Roller returns

Your Question: What is the history of our national holiday?

The tradition of celebrating Australia Day as a national public holiday was established in Australia's first colony, Sydney, and has persevered since the early nineteenth century.

Medal - Australia's 150th Anniversary, 1938: Raising the British flag at Sydney Cove after the landing by Captain Arthur Phillip, January 26, 1788.
Source: Museum Victoria  

Sydney almanacs originally referred to it as First Landing Day or Foundation Day, in celebration of the arrival of Captain Arthur Phillip in Sydney on January 26, 1788. It was not until the thirtieth anniversary of European settlement, in 1818, that Governor Lachlan Macquarie officially created a public holiday in New South Wales. During this time other newly founded colonies were also celebrating their own beginnings, through sporting events, picnics and anniversary dinners.

Australia Day celebrations in Melbourne, 1916: the car in the foreground won first prize for the most decorated car.
Image: Mrs C.M. Chisholm
Source: Museum Victoria  

January 26 in 1888 marked the centenary of European settlement, however attitudes towards the celebration were mixed. The date was primarily associated with New South Wales rather than all the colonies. Nevertheless, the celebrations across Australia assisted to create a greater sense of cohesion between the separate colonies as they attempted to forget Australia's 'convict stain' and focus on the future. From the 1880s this was signified with a movement towards a national holiday, perhaps made easier by the achievement of Federation in 1901. However it was not until 1935 that all Australian states and territories used the name 'Australia Day' to mark the date.

Badge – South Australia Public Service Australia Day, 26 July 1918.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

For Indigenous Australians, for whom the date represented invasion and an irrevocable impact upon their culture, land and population, there was no cause for celebration. During the sesquicentenary events in 1938, approximately 100 Aboriginal protesters gathered in Sydney to present a different view of the celebrations. For the protestors and those represented, Australia Day was instead 'a day of mourning', highlighting the loss of life, land and language that was a cause of the European occupation of Australia.

Badge – ‘White Australia has a Black History,’ Australia, 1988
Image: Heath Warwick (photographer)
Source: Museum Victoria  

The protest demanded new laws that would ensure equality for Aboriginal people in the wider Australian community, such as citizenship rights. From this time, new voices were arising to question the celebratory status of Australia Day. This gained impetus during the 1988 Bicentenary with numerous protests staged across Australia including both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people declaring Australia Day a commemoration rather than a celebration of Australia's history.

Bicentenary display, Windows on Victoria exhibition, Melbourne Museum, 2000-2007.
Image: Benjamin Heally
Source: Museum Victoria  

Material objects, such as badges, coins and t-shirts, have often been disseminated to commemorate Australia Day. Many of these are in Museum Victoria's collection and can be viewed on Collections Online. These items remind us of the different meanings that Australia Day can have for Australia's diverse population. They also provide us with an understanding of the various circumstances leading up to Australia Day's consistent recognition by all States and Territories on January 26 for the first time in 1994, and as we know it today.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Australia Day: History

Australia Day Student Resources: Indigenous Australians

The Summer school holidays in the Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre are bursting with fun stuff for kids to do and learn. We have a variety of books about frogs and Aboriginal dreamtime stories for children and some comfy beanbags to relax in whilst reading.

The Reading Room in the Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre
Image: Kate Brereton
Source: Museum Victoria  

Our reading room has lots of great frog posters and some beautiful illustrations from the Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria. There are some colouring-in activities featuring Tiddalik the Frog, Kouark the Kookaburra and Narrot the Wombat.

And we some new additions to the Discovery Centre family - two Green Tree Frogs!

Green Tree Frogs Litoria caerulea are one of the largest Australian frogs. Their size can range up to 12cm and in their native habitat they are found in all states except Victoria and Tasmania. Green Tree Frogs live in urban areas, forests and woodlands and wetlands they sometimes sit beneath outside lights at night to catch insects that are attracted to the light. 

A Green Tree frog enjoying the holidays in the Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre
Image: Kate Brereton
Source: Museum Victoria  

Our tree frogs do not currently have names so if you have a suggestion pop into the Discovery Centre and let the staff know - we will be picking the best names soon.

If you looking to find out more about Victorian fauna we have two iPads where you can search the new Museum Victoria Field guide app. The app lets you discover interesting information Victorian animals including: diet, habitat, identification, biology, calls and conservation status.

Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre is open every day from 10am until 4.30pm - and we are free. So, do pop in for a visit!

Your Question: Why do scientists study animal poo?

Poo is truly fascinating stuff. Each deposit contains a minefield of information about its owner and the environment it lives in.

Animal poos (scats) come in a multitude of different shapes and sizes. Each species produces its own unique parcels. You can therefore discover which species are present in an area (and how abundant they are) by looking at what they leave behind.

The square droppings of a Common Wombat, Vombatus ursinus
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Minibeast Wildlife  

The relative size of a deposit can also give you an idea of the age/size of he/she who dunnit. Sometimes, it's even possible to determine the sex and reproductive receptivity of the animal (by the smell).

The condition of the scat (taking recent weather conditions into account) will tell you how recently the animal was there – if it's still fragrant and sticky, you know you're fresh on the trail.

An animal's poo can also reveal the diet of the depositor. Long-term studies of scats can provide information about how animals' diets change over time and the seasonal abundance of their food sources.

A broken-up scat of a Thorny Devil Moloch horridus, revealing that it has fed exclusively on ants.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Minibeast Wildlife  

The scats of carnivorous (meat-eating) animals can be an invaluable source of information about the presence and abundance of their prey species. Fur, teeth and bones are not usually digested as they pass through the digestive system and come out relatively intact. As foxes and owls are far better at finding small animals than we are, scats can contain crucial records for scientists studying endangered species.

The scat of a European Red Fox Vulpes vulpes
Image: Karen Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

Poo is also a useful indicator of animal health. Scats contain parasites, hormones and DNA (in the animal's own skin and hair cells). Scientists can therefore use the clues in poos to monitor infections, perform genetic analyses and gather information on stress levels and reproductive state, all without touching or even seeing the animal.

Got a question? Ask us!

Links:

Square Poo

Dinosaur Poo 

After four years, and hundreds of questions, the Discovery Centre's online Question of the Week and Your Questions articles are moving house to the MV Blog.

Horse team moving a house from Creswick through Allendale, Victoria, circa 1909. (MM 001930)
Source: Museum Victoria  

We will still be answering all of your curious and quirky questions, but you will now have the chance to get to know us a little better. The weekly blog posts by the folks of the Melbourne Museum and Immigration Museums Discovery Centres will appear as Your Questions here on the MV Blog. This is the place to go to read about interesting facts, see curious objects, and become the person everyone wants on their pub trivia team. Read all the weird and wonderful questions the museum staff are asked, and even better, find out the answers!

Links:

Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre Question of the Week archive

Immigration Discovery Centre Your Questions archive

Where would we be without our donors? Thanks to the generosity of our supporters and donors, Museum Victoria's collections (and thus, the collections belonging to all Victorians), research, exhibitions and facilities are much enriched. To acknowledge our donors and express our gratitude, we held an official thankyou event at Melbourne Museum last month.

Guests viewing Twycross collection objects at the donor thankyou event.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

Sarah Myer (Trustee, Yulgilbar Foundation and Myer Foundation, wife of Baillieu Myer) and Tim Hart (Director IMT) at the event.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

Recent donations to Museum Victoria include:

• An omnicycle from 1880
• An important collection of butterflies
• A slab of tiger eye that features in Dynamic Earth
• Pendle Hall Dolls' House
• Support for a research fellowship
• Assistance with the upgrade of the Immigration Museum Discovery Centre
• The Twycross Collection of decorative arts
• Support of the Bunjilaka redevelopment

On the evening, Senior Curator Lindy Allen toured the guests through the Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic exhibition and specially selected Twycross Collection objects were on display.

Lindy Allen (Senior Curator - Anthropology Northern Australia) talking to donor Ross Field and his wife in the Ancestral Power exhibition. Ross donated a significant selection of butterflies to MV.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

Many of our donors have given objects of tremendous personal significance to the museum, and it is quite an honour to be entrusted with them. Financial support has enabled valuable research projects and much-needed exhibition renewal. As MV CEO Patrick Greene said, "It was wonderful to meet so many of our generous supporters, and be able to thank them personally. Whether the donation is a priceless object or financial support, it is greatly appreciated and supports the work of our exhibitions, research and programs."

Martin Carlson (Treasurer, Hugh D. T. Williamson Foundation), with Will and Margie Twycross beside selected items from the Twycross collection they donated to MV.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

Links:

Donate to MV

Here is episode two of 'Meet Me at the Museum', a video series about our collection.

We marvel at how particular specimens made it into our collection.

Let us know what you think in the comments section. And be sure to see our previous episodes if you haven't already.

Watch this video with a transcript.

Ursula Smith works in the natural sciences collections at Museum Victoria. Though a palaeontologist by training she finds all the collections fascinating and swings between excitement at all the cool stuff in them and despair at the lack of time to look at it all.

I’ve been asking the people who work with MV collections what some of their favourite items are, starting with Dermot Henry, the Manager of the Natural Sciences Collections.

Dermot's speciality is geology and he’s looked after the geosciences collections for many years. When asked what his favourite item was he took care to tell me that he didn’t have a favourite because there are so many fascinating objects, but when pressed he picked the Murchison meteorite as "probably the most famous and scientifically important rock in the collections."

The Murchison meteorite is one of 16 meteorites known from Victoria, and is rare in that it was actually observed falling, rather than just being found on the ground, so it came to scientists fresh (other than some surface dirt from falling into mud and cowpats and the like). It exploded in the atmosphere over Murchison, Victoria, about 160km north of Melbourne, on 28 September, 1969 and fell over an area around 35km². So when we talk about 'it' we’re really talking about lots of broken pieces of a single object.

  Display in Dynamic Earth.
Image: Ursula Smith
Source: Museum Victoria  

These pieces are on display in Dynamic Earth and are just a very small portion of what was collected. The largest piece found weighed nearly 7kg though many more were just a few grams each. In total, around 100kg was collected and over 80kg of that made it into science collections. While a lot of the material went overseas (mostly to the Field Museum in Chicago who have nearly 52kg and the Smithsonian in Washington DC who have nearly 20kg) some remained in Australia. Over 7kg stayed at the University of Melbourne and much of this was later donated to Museum Victoria. We have about 3.5kg and only the largest pieces that are on display; we also have lots of smaller pieces.

Drawer containing pieces of Murchison meteorite.
Image: Ursula Smith
Source: Museum Victoria  

Most of the pieces of rock in this drawer are parts of the Murchison meteorite (though not the big rock on the right – that’s actually a different meteorite of a similar type called Rainbow that was found in Victoria in 1994). Opening the sealed tubes, you can still smell, very faintly, what Dr. John Lovering from the University of Melbourne who organised the collection of the meteorite pieces in 1969 described as "just like methylated spirits – very strong". This was the first indication that the meteorite he was looking at was a rare type called a carbonaceous chondrite. Unlike more common rocky meteorites, a carbonaceous chondrite is packed full of organic molecules and a lot of water; this one is eight per cent water.

The year after it was collected, papers began to appear in scientific journals describing the chemical composition of the meteorite and excitement about its scientific significance began to grow. A paper in the journal Nature describing the discovery of amino acids of extra-terrestrial origin in the meteorite made, if you’ll pardon the pun, quite an impact, and was widely covered in the press, even making it into Time Magazine. Papers are still being published on it – one came out in August this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and a new chromium sulfide mineral, Murchisite (Cr₅S₆), was just reported in American Mineralogist.

To date over 70 amino acids have been identified from the meteorite, only 19 of which are known from Earth. These, and the many other chemicals that have been identified, suggest there could be thousands of complex organic chemicals present. What’s so interesting about these molecules is that they demonstrate that the simple chemical building blocks necessary for life on Earth seem to form quite easily in other places.

It isn’t just the origins of life that the Murchison meteorite may tell us about. It contains tiny pre-solar grains – nano-diamonds and silicon carbides, among others, that formed in supernovas long before our own sun appeared – which tell us a lot about how our own, and other, solar systems formed. But not only that, information from the pre-solar grains in the Murchison meteorite has been fundamental in figuring out a lot about how elements are originally produced and a lot about the structure and mechanics of stars.

So the Murchison meteorite is definitely pretty cool – biologists, chemists, astrophysicists and those of us who just think rocks that fall out of the sky are fascinating all agree on that. As Dermot says, "it’s so unusual and it’s yielded so much information about cosmology, element formation and how the universe works – it’s probably generated more publications than any other meteorite. And it’s Victorian!"

Two pieces of the Murchison meteorite in Dynamic Earth.
Image: Ursula Smith
Source: Museum Victoria  

Links:

Infosheet: Meteorites

Video: The Murchison meteorite story

Dermot A. Henry, 'Star Dust Memories - a Brief History of the Murchison Carbonaceous Chondrite'. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 2003. 20: vii-ix (PDF, 1 MB)

Bugs Alive! highlights not only the highly venomous Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus), but also the diversity of Australian funnel-web spiders. There are currently 35 known species in Australia, and it is likely that more await description. Many southeastern Australians may not be aware that they too may have funnel-web spiders living in their backyard. Don't panic, aside from the Sydney Funnel-web, the majority of Australian funnel-web spiders do not pose a threat to us. In fact, most spiders are harmless. Of the estimated 10,000 species (only about 3000 have been named) that are native to Australia, only two pose a serious threat to human life.

The Australian funnel-web spider family Hexathelidae belongs to the primitive infraorder Mygalomorphae, which includes the trapdoor spiders, mouse spiders, and the large theraphosids (better known as tarantulas). Mygalomorphs can be distinguished from other spiders by having paraxial or parallel fangs (chelicerae), and an extra pair of book lungs.

A typical funnel-shaped entrance to a funnel-web spider burrow.
Image: Colin Silvey
Source: Museum Victoria  

To keep our spiders healthy and stress-free, we rotate them off display so that each individual is on show only one month per year. To do this we must collect spiders from the wild to ensure that we have enough to keep the rotation flowing smoothly. Chloe wrote in April about a previous spider-hunting trip. Last week we went to the Nariel Valley in northwest Victoria, Violet Town in central Victoria and the Central Highlands (Narbethong-Acheron Gap, Victoria) to collect three different species of funnel-web spiders.

Not all burrows contain funnel-web spiders. This one we dug up was occupied by this beautiful Alpine Wolf Spider (Lycosidae).
Image: Colin Silvey
Source: Museum Victoria  

Our first stop was the Nariel Valley where we searched for the mighty Alpine Funnel-web (Hadronyche alpina). This is a newly-described species that is found, you guessed it, in the alpine environments of Victoria and N.S.W. They are impressive spiders with big black hairy bodies, and a mean temper to boot!

After collecting our quota of H. alpina, we drove west towards Violet Town, near Benalla, in search of the Central Victorian Funnel-web, H. meridiana. We had heard reports that a resident in Violet Town had found some in her backyard, and upon contacting her, she agreed to us collecting them. After lifting some old carpet lying on the ground, we found burrows galore! It didn't take us very long to collect all the spiders we needed before setting off to track down our third target species H. modesta.

Exciting stuff! Live Exhibits keeper Adam Elliott excavating a burrow belonging to H. meridiana.
Image: Colin Silvey
Source: Museum Victoria  

Funnel-web spider (H. meridiana) about to be removed from her burrow.
Image: Colin Silvey
Source: Museum Victoria  

Hadronyche meridiana showing off her threat display. If you look closely you might be able to see the paraxial chelicerae that define the mygalomorph spiders.
Image: Colin Silvey
Source: Museum Victoria  

H. modesta, or the Southern Victorian Funnel-web can be found around Victorian cool temperate sclerophyll forests ranging from just north of Melbourne, to the eastern end of the Strzelecki Ranges in South Gippsland. Unfortunately, after much searching, we failed to find any H. modesta. We are always on the lookout for any reports of glossy black spiders that burrow, so, if you live in the eastern or northeastern suburbs and see this spider around, let us know and we might come pay you a visit!

Further reading:

Walker, K.L., Yen, A.L. & Milledge, G.A. 2003. Spiders and Scorpions Commonly Found in Victoria. The Royal Society of Victoria. (Beginner)

Grey, M. R. 2010. A Revision of the Australian Funnel Web Spiders (Hexathelidae: Atracinae). Records of the Australian Museum. Vol. 62: 285–392. (Advanced)

Ursula Smith works in the natural sciences collections at Museum Victoria. Though a palaeontologist by training she finds all the collections fascinating and swings between excitement at all the cool stuff in them and despair at the lack of time to look at it all.

Given that they're the subject of some major research at the museum there's been a lot of talk about blue-ringed octopuses around the Sciences Department at the museum recently. As I grew up in the UK, I've never seen one so when I heard that there was one on display in Melbourne Museum I headed down to find it so I could see what these fearsome beasts I'd heard so much about look like in the flesh. But to my surprise it didn't look as exciting as I had expected - there was not a blue ring to be seen.

So now I know what any Victorian schoolchild should be able to tell you: a blue-ringed octopus only displays those eponymous blue rings when it feels threatened or disturbed and most of the time it's just a plain brown or greyish colour.

Blue-ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa) specimen in a jar on display.
Image: Genevieve Ooms
Source: Museum Victoria  

Despite this specimen's disappointing colouration though, it does have a fascinating story attached to it. Look closely at the label in the picture and you can just see that it bears the slightly ominous "...bit and caused paralysis" which is a transcription of the note made in the museum registration book when this specimen was donated: "This specimen bit and caused paralysis in its captor". As it happens, this is the actual individual, collected on Christmas Day, 1962, that lead to much of the public awareness about the dangers of the blue-ringed octopus.

It perhaps seems a little strange that it wasn't known that this species is so dangerous until so recently - despite the southern species being described in 1883, it wasn't until 1954 that the bite of any blue-ringed octopus was discovered to be deadly. The first recorded fatality – one of only two in Australia to date – was in spring 1954 near East Point, Darwin, but the culprit was originally misidentified because it got away and was then identified based on another octopus the victim's friend pointed out as looking the same. The victim, a 21 year old seaman, Kirk Dyson-Holland, died within two hours of being bitten after picking up an octopus while spearfishing.

For a while, it was largely assumed that the danger of death-by-octopus was restricted to the north or perhaps to people with specific allergies, but then nearly a decade later, on Christmas Day 1962, Arthur Thompson, then 33, was bitten on the hand by a southern blue-ringed octopus at Ricketts Point, Beaumaris in Port Phillip Bay just round the coastline from Melbourne (where they are still found – there was a report in a local paper of one being picked up by a 4 year old just this May). The Registrar of the Alfred Hospital Clinical Research Unit where Mr. Thompson was taken reported:

The patient held it on the back of the hand for a minute of two, and after putting it down noticed a speck of blood on his hand, there had been no sensation of sting or bite. A few minutes later he felt a prickling sensation around his mouth which rapidly became generalized and within fifteen minutes was almost completely paralysed.....Just after admission spontaneous respiration ceased and he was respired for about an hour. Thereafter he made a steady and uneventful recovery of his muscle power. He was well the next day, chest X-ray was clear and he was discharged.

Happily, Mr. Thompson recovered after an hour of artificial ventilation while the poison wore off and nobody has actually been killed by one in Victoria, but the story of this octopus, reported widely in the news, lead to a much greater awareness of the danger of disturbing the blue-ringed octopus. There has only been one reported fatality in Australia since, near Sydney in 1967, partly due to better understanding of the dangers and partly because the blue-ringed octopus is, fortunately, really quite laid back and won't bite unless provoked.

Mr. Thompson's brush with death obviously wasn't the first time someone was bitten by one of these octopuses and it is likely that there have been other deaths before and after, many of which would have been reported as unexplained. In fact, there was an incident a year earlier in December 1961 at Cowes, Phillip Island, with almost identical results: the victim was bitten, felt gradual paralysis until he stopped breathing, was given artificial respiration for a couple of hours and then recovered to be discharged from the hospital on Christmas day exactly a year before Mr. Thompson was admitted. That octopus wasn't kept so we don't know for sure what species it was, but it seems likely that it was also our friend the blue-ringed octopus.

So next time you visit the museum, keep an eye out for this specimen in the Port Phillip Bay cabinet on the ground floor – just turn left as you come past the ticket desk. It won't bite!

Blue-ringed octopus, Hapalochlaena maculosa.
Image: Julian Finn
Source: Museum Victoria  

References:

Report of the first fatality in Australia: Flecker H, Cotton BC (1955). Fatal bite from an octopus. Med J Aust 2:329-331.

Injuries to man from marine invertebrates in the Australian Region. Cleland, J. B. and Southcott, R. V. 1965. National Health and Medical Research Council, Canberra, pp282.

Links:

Australian Women's Weekly article from 1967

Report from the Moorabbin Leader from May 2011

MV Blog post about Julian's research

Marine Life exhibition

When you see sausages at a butcher, or purchase a barbecued fundraising snag, spare a thought for the sausage-shaped marine animals that formed one of Australia's first export industries. The trade in trepang between Chinese, Macassan and northern Australian Aboriginal people is the focus of the Trepang exhibition at Melbourne Museum which closes on 16 October.

The trade of trepang or sea cucumbers dates back before 1700. The product is known by several names: trepang (Indonesian), bêche-de-mer (French), hai-sum (Chinese) and namako (Japanese). While the live animals are shaped like a sausage, the product that is eaten is usually the dried skin (body wall) or pickled intestines. In Japan they are generally eaten fresh.

Namako (sea cucumber) for sale in a Japanese supermarket.
Image: Hector Garcia
Source: Used under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) from kirainet  

Today, trepang fisheries exist throughout the Indo-Pacific area, including Madagascar, Ecuador, Canada, New Zealand and northern parts of Australia. The products are most often consumed in China, Korea, Japan, and some smaller Indo-Pacific islands such as Samoa and Indonesia.

The Australian trade began with 600 tonnes in the early years – about six million live animals – to 11,000 tonnes in the 1990s. This high demand resulted in over-exploitation in some areas because the animals were easy to collect, slow growing and had low reproductive rates. As a result, today's fisheries target deeper water species and are carefully managed, but some species are still over-fished.

A sea cucumber (Stichopus mollis) in its natural habitat.
Image: Julian Finn
Source: Museum Victoria  

So they look like sausages but do they taste like sausages? I asked around. The closest response was from Mel, one of the museum's marine collection managers who has lived in Japan.

"I've only eaten sea urchin [a related echinoderm group] which tasted like mushed-up prawns, but I've heard sea cucumbers taste rubbery."

Nonetheless they are a delicacy for some. Sea cucumbers are rumoured to have anti-inflammatory and aphrodisiac properties, although the latter may be based more on the shape and behaviour of the live animal rather than any scientific proof.

Exhibitions about science and technology are notoriously difficult to keep up-to date because those scientists just won't stop discovering and inventing things! Curator Kate Phillips encountered an example of this last week, after someone spotted a discrepancy between two Melbourne Museum exhibitions, Darwin to DNA (2000) and 600 Million Years: Victoria Evolves (2010).

Both exhibitions compare the similarity of DNA between chimpanzees and humans. The earlier exhibition states that there is less than two per cent difference while the more recent exhibition declares a 96 per cent similarity. While the numbers don't seem to agree, they're not necessarily incorrect because they compare different aspects of the genomes.

Young adult male chimpanzee.
Image: Frans de Waal, Emory University
Source: Used under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 from Wikimedia Commons.  

Kate explains:

"The discrepancy comes about because these two exhibitions were developed ten years apart and the understanding of DNA has changed over that time. In 2001 the draft human genome was published and a final version in 2004. In 2005 the draft chimp genome was published and could be accurately compared to the human one. The percentage similarity that came out of this comparison was 96 per cent. Before this time the similarity was probably based on comparing known genes, and therefore was working with less information."

"However the percentage you come up with also depends on how you make the comparison – on which bits of the genome you compare and that could also account for the discrepancy. If you compare genes, we are more similar, if you include the non-coding sequences, we are slightly less similar. Really 98 per cent and 96 per cent are both indicate great genetic similarity."

Chromosomes of a human male. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and chimpanzees have 24 pairs.
Source: National Human Genome Research Institute  

We love that someone noticed this because it means that people are reading exhibition text closely, and keeps us on our toes. It's also, as Kate concludes, a pointed demonstration of "the scale of scientific discovery in the area of genome research over the last ten to twenty years."

Links:

The Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium (2005) 'Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome' Nature, Vol 437 pp 69-87.  (PDF, 4.3 MB)

Media release from NIH News, 'New Genome Comparison Finds Chimps, Humans Very Similar at the DNA Level' (2005)

Prior to becoming a keeper with the Live Exhibits team at Melbourne Museum, my knowledge of grasshoppers was quite limited. Locusts were probably the type of grasshopper of which I was most aware, due to their high numbers during the warmer months. They are also responsible for the must-have car fashion accessory adorning the front of vehicles, in the form of flywire to stop cars from overheating. In truth, locusts are just one of an estimated 700 species of grasshopper in Australia.

The Common Toad Hopper (Buforania crassa) is an inquisitive creature.
Image: David Paddock
Source: Museum Victoria  

Live Exhibits keeps many different types of grasshoppers and I am quite intrigued by them all, but the species which first caught my attention was the Common Toadhopper (Buforania crassa) from Central Australia. They are not particularly big - females are approximately 60mm long and males 40 mm long - and contrary to their name they rarely hop or jump, preferring to walk around. They have been described as an inquisitive grasshopper and that is what drew me to them. As with pets at home, if you are looking after an animal and you buy it a new toy or feed it a new food then you hope that they will enjoy it or get a reaction from it. I found that not too long after I added food they would be on it or in it. This included pollen, orthopteran mix (made up of muesli, fish flakes and other ingredients), and various forms of foliage, such as abelia, emu bush, acacia, and callistemon. You soon find out that they have their favourites - I would say that callistemon is in the top two.

Common Toad Hopper (Buforania crassa) eating callistemon, one of its favourite foods.
Image: David Paddock
Source: Museum Victoria  

Like most grasshoppers, Common Toadhoppers use camouflage to hide from predators. As you can see from the picture, once they are perched on a rock or stick during the daylight hours they can be very difficult to see. If they are brought up on a light sand substrate then their colours will reflect that.

Common Toadhoppers are masters of camouflage. Their colours can vary depending on what colour substrate they are brought up on.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria  

Toadhopper perfectly disguised to match the branch it's sitting on.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria  

Their reproductive cycle is very interesting. Grasshoppers generally breed in the summer months with the male perching on the female's back, either mating or guarding her from other males. The female then deposits her eggs in the soft sand and plugs them with a foamy substance. Our toadhopper populations here at Melbourne Museum vary seasonally and in some enclosures we currently have none at all, but we can see where females have deposited their eggs. Grasshopper eggs are good at withstanding drought periods. Normal incubation time for Common Toadhoppers is 1-3 months but it can be as long as 1-2 years, the eggs simply waiting for the right conditions. We can recreate those conditions, simulating warmer days with longer heat and light periods, and heavy rain through flooding the enclosures with water. Then hopefully not too long afterwards, little toadhopper nymphs will appear and even though they may not live up to the second part of their name, these grasshoppers certainly love eating grass.

A young Common Toadhopper.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria  

In the meantime, come along to Melbourne Museum and visit our male Common Toadhopper, featured in the arid section of our Habitats display in Bugs Alive!.

Toadhoppers are in the arid habitat display in Bugs Alive!.
Image: David Paddock
Source: Museum Victoria  

The Forest Gallery is one of the icons of Melbourne Museum – a cool temperate rainforest merging into drier eucalypt forest complete with creek, ponds and waterfall, all in the heart of a major city.

The gallery is dominated by large gum trees, wattles and southern beech, which have been growing consistently under the close supervision of Live Exhibits horticulturalists for more than 10 years. This is a ‘Forest in a Box’, a museum gallery in which the living trees must be strategically pruned on a regular basis in order to maintain the desired effect.

A view from above the fire poles at the northern end of the Forest Gallery, giving some idea of the height of the pruning operation.
Source: Museum Victoria

Last week arborists from ArborCo visited the Forest Gallery for an annual prune of the larger trees. The arborists must scale remarkable heights to reach the crowns of the trees, even before they commence their work.

Crew Leader Andrew Caldecott prepares to climb a Southern Beech for the annual trim.
Source: Museum Victoria

Great attention is paid by the arborists to the health and safety of both themselves and the trees. Much of the preparation is done on the ground, and the pruning operation is planned weeks in advance. It must be done in such a way that preserves the natural shape of the tree and promotes growth in the right directions.

Arborist Joel Creech makes his way up a gum tree towards the upper canopy.
Source: Museum Victoria

During their visit, the arborists also apply their skills to climbing one of the poles which houses the Forest Gallery’s wind gauge. The gauge is used to monitor wind speeds, and Museum staff will occasionally close the gallery temporarily if the wind becomes too strong.

Malachi Ewan at the top of a fire pole cleaning the wind gauge.
Source: Museum Victoria

Branches removed by the arborists are recycled on site into mulch, to be used on gardens throughout the Museum. When suitably aged, some of the mulch will be returned to the Forest Gallery to sustain the trees from which it came.

Left: ArborCo’s Gary Lambert feeds a steady stream of branches through the chipper. | Right: Brendan Fleming from the Live Exhibits Unit begins moving mulch back onto gardens around the museum.
Source: Museum Victoria

During the pruning operation, some of the branches cut from the Forest Gallery are tested to monitor the long term health of the trees. Foliage samples taken from new growth in the upper parts of the canopy can tell much about the trees’ nutrient content. Dr Peter Hopmans from Timberlands Research collects samples and uses them, in conjunction with soil samples and trunk diameters, in an ongoing review of plant health.

Dr Peter Hopmans from Timberlands Research collecting foliage samples, watched by Brendan Fleming and Customer Service Officer Veronica Barnett.
Source: Museum Victoria

The Forest Gallery combines ancient geology and the power of water with living birds, reptiles, fish and frogs. It also exemplifies indigenous and European use and management of forests, and the role and impact of fire. But the heart of the forest is the giant trees that stand above all else, and ongoing management should ensure their existence for many years to come.

Links:

MV News: Forest gets a haircut

Pruning saves the Forest from the storm 

The stars of the Bugs Alive! aquatic display Green Diving Beetles (Onychohydrus scutellaris) are remarkable for their ability to store air and dive underwater to hunt food and find mates. They are found Australia-wide and on warm nights are attracted to lights. Recently on the Gold Coast there was a report of thousands of these beetles coming into the lights on the foreshore and the ground around the lights was a black moving mass.

Adapted to a life in the water, Green Diving Beetles have streamlined bodies, paddle like hind legs with swimming hairs and an amazing ability to store pockets of air so they can dive under water for extended periods of time.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

Although sometimes they can be locally common they are predators and tend to live in water bodies, like dams and lakes at densities that do not deplete prey numbers too much; once prey numbers get too low, these beetles fly to a new water body and establish themselves there.   

Adults lay their eggs in the water where tiny predatory larvae hatch out. The larvae spend their entire larval stage in the water before digging into the muddy banks of ponds and pupating. Once mature, the adults can either hang out where they emerged or fly and disperse to other areas where the food source is more readily available.

Over the last 12 months in Victoria, like many parts of Australia, has had increased rainfall which allows the beetles to disperse and breed at a greater rate than over the last few years of drought. Live Exhibits staff are predicting a great summer for Green Diving Beetles and they may turn up a bit more often in the Melbourne metropolitan area. Live Exhibits staff will be heading out equipped with torches, nets and wadders to see if we can hunt down these incredible animals.

Green Diving Beetles can be voracious feeders; here a group of them are feasting on a dead fish at the Melbourne Museum.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

These beetles are active predators and scavengers and add a great degree of movement and colour to our Bugs Alive! display. As they forage they constantly return to the surface of the water to replenish their air supply which they hold under their elytra (wing covers). They eat other aquatic invertebrates and in the wild will sometimes attack vertebrates such as small fish and tadpoles.

Dr Gillian Bowen is the Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Ancient History, Monash University. Join her for "Tutankhamun’s wardrobe", an exploration of Ancient Egyptian attire, Tuesday 26 July 2011, as part of the Tutankhamun Tuesdays Public Lecture Program.

Dr Gillian Bowen.
Source: Dr Gillian Bowen

In 1922, when Howard Carter first opened the virtually-intact tomb of Tutankhamun, he astounded the world with the vast array of treasure. Among the items, which received little attention from the public but were meticulously recorded by Carter, was the king’s wardrobe: his underwear, tunics, kilts, gloves, socks, shoes and sandals. This is the only substantial collection of items from a royal wardrobe to survive from ancient Egypt.

Many of the garments were poorly preserved as the cloth had disintegrated over the millennia and the elaborate beadwork had fallen off. To preserve these precious items, Carter employed Alfred Lucas, a chemist and specialist conservator. Surprisingly, other clothes were in perfect condition. The garments, along with the iconography such as that shown on the gilded throne, allow us to glimpse the wardrobe of Tutankhamun and his queen, Ankhenenamun. The items represent the height of fashion in the late 18^th Dynasty.

Amongst the garments, Carter counted around 145 loincloths, which functioned as underwear, and 81 pieces of footwear. Some of the ceremonial clothes are made of the finest linen which resembles silk and the embroidery and beadwork on these garments and the shoes is exquisite. The marquetry sandals are made of wood, leather, bark, plaster and the decoration is in gold. The scenes show the traditional enemies of Egypt, the so-called “nine bows” on which the king tramples. These items were made by specialist craftsmen as well as the women in the king’s harem. Very few items from Tutankhamun’s wardrobe are on display in the Egyptian Museum and this talk offers one of the few opportunities to view images of the garments.

A photograph by museum entomologist Dr Ken Walker has just won a coveted place in the annual international Leica calendar. In 2012, the company’s calendar will feature microscope photographs, and Leica put out a call for entries. Ken’s photograph of the head of a tiny, undescribed lichen moth in the genus Chamaita (family Arctiidae) was one of 12 selected.

The winning photograph of the head of a male lichen moth.
Image: Ken Walker
Source: Museum Victoria

The photograph, as well as being incredibly beautiful, is an important diagnostic tool.  This species is a pest in palm plantations in New West Britain, Papua New Guinea. To assist those who need to identify it, the species has its own page , featuring the winning photograph and others, on PaDIL (Pests and Diseases Image Library).

Says Ken, "It’s a great recognition for the photographic skills we have developed here over the past six years to have an image to be used in the high-quality calendar." The competition was open to anyone using Leica microscope and camera equipment; the prize is a Leica EZ4 dissecting microscope. This prize will go right back into PaDIL’s suite of specialist technical equipment to create more photographs like this one. 

Links:

PaDIL

Adrienne is a Senior Programs Officer at Melbourne Museum. Adrienne, David, Bernard, Tim, Beth, Alexandra, Lisa and Sonia can be found in the Mysteries of the Nile room these winter school holidays. Come visit!

Where do you find six kilometres of antique gold thread? 9,000 fake jewels? A printing company that embosses gold onto paper and is affordable? Egyptian palm trees? How do you make ancient Egyptian costumes when they really wore very little?

Being a materials expert and quantity surveyor should be on the job description for Programs Officers who develop and deliver the school holiday programs at Melbourne Museum. Once the team has done the fun bit of thinking up what will be educational and fun, it’s a nail biting time searching for materials, doing lots of calculations, working with designers, talking to suppliers, writing requisitions, praying for timely arrivals of the orders, training our wonderful volunteers and communicating to everyone else what’s coming up. And that’s before the holidays begin.

D-day arrives. Or is that H-day? From the start of the holiday period, there are day-by-day questions – will we run out of anything? Should we reorder and when? Can we afford it? Why are so many people turning up? Why is that little girl back again – wasn’t she in just yesterday? (How many pendants has she actually made so far?)

Beautifully coloured and bejewelled pharaoh pectoral pendants made by holiday program participants.
Image: David Perkins
Source: Museum Victoria

Last holidays our visitors made 7,000 postcards. In summer, 11,650 earth capsules. We’re planning on 9,000 pharaoh pectoral pendants being made these holidays. And for every 3 – 12 year old that makes a pendant, there will also be grandparents, prams and babies, mums and dads, big sisters and brothers, all  in the school holiday program space. The Mysteries of the Nile room is packed, with kids busy writing hieroglyphs and creating their pendants, donning costumes and posing Egyptian style, reading books and playing games, watching a mummification show and even wrestling Nile crocodiles.

Kids enjoying the school holiday program.
Source: Museum Victoria

Is it worth it? Do we love it? More importantly, do they love it? We’ve been asking people what they think. “We come here every school holidays at least once because the kids love doing these activities. They are just great”.  They can reel off all of the things they’ve made in the past few years and it’s satisfying to hear. “What you’ve done is provide people with something to do, somewhere to sit if you need to be quiet, a fun corner for costumes and an educational show”. The parents 'get it’ and the kids love it.

Links:

Melbourne Museum school holiday programs

Immigration Museum school holiday programs

Scienceworks school holiday programs

A common question about the Tutankhamun exhibition is whether King Tut's funerary mask and mummy are on display.

Tutankhamun’s funerary mask and mummy are two of the most valuable artefacts in the world and the Egyptian Government has ruled that neither can travel outside Egypt because they are too fragile. The object pictured on promotional material for the exhibition is actually Tutankhamun’s canopic coffinette, an exquisite miniature replica of King Tut’s sarcophogus. Four of them were discovered in his tomb, each holding vital organs. The canopic coffinette that is on display in the exhibition at Melbourne Museum held his liver. Like the funerary mask, it too displays the face of the Boy King.

 Tutankhamun's golden canopic coffinette, which held his mummified liver. A cropped image of this exhibition artefact features on promotional posters.
Source: Egyptian Museum, Cairo

The funerary mask is display in Cairo at the Egyptian Museum and has not left Egypt since the 1970s. It is quite different to the coffinette and sarcophagi not only in size, but because it portrays his head and shoulders only and does not show his hands holding a ceremonial flail and crook.

Tuthankamun's famous funerary mask, on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Image: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen
Source: Used under CC BY-SA 3.0 courtesy of Bjørn Christian Tørrissen

As for his mummy and sarcophagi, these could never be displayed in the exhibition because they have never left the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Nevertheless, a replica of his mummy and a multimedia projection of the many layers of sarcophagi can be seen at Melbourne Museum in the National Geographic gallery, which is located outside the exhibition entrance.

GIVEAWAY

We have two tickets to Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs to give away to a blog reader. To enter, leave a comment on this post by noon (local time) on Friday 16 July with your answer to this question:

What would you ask Howard Carter if he were still alive?

Links:

kingtutmelbourne.com.au

FAQs about Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

Curators Michael Reason and Deborah Tout-Smith were delighted to welcome Judith Durham, lead singer of the 1960s folk-pop group The Seekers, when she dropped in to today to see her dress in The Melbourne Story exhibition. "It's mind-blowing. That's my dress, and it's on display in the museum!" she exclaimed as she saw it for the first time in many years.

Judith Durham next to her dress in The Melbourne Story, on loan from the National Film and Sound Archive.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria

The dress is on loan from the National Film and Sound Archive and is featured in the Melbourne music history section. Judith donated it and other outfits to the NFSA some years ago. "I love it. It was so suited to me as a person," she said. She was pleased to give Michael and Deborah some more information about how and when she wore it.

Judith bought the dress from a South Yarra boutique to wear for a Channel Nine special program called The World Of The Seekers. It became an iconic outfit when a photograph taken during the film shoot at Como House appeared on the cover of The Best of The Seekers 1968 compilation album.

Links:

MV News: A dress of its own 

The Melbourne Story

In 2007, Museum Victoria research scientists described the world's tiniest starfish, the Paddle-spined Seastar. Here are three of them under the microscope last week, filmed by Ben Healley.

Like all starfish, these animals are powered by many legs called tube feet. Each has a sucker on the tip which is how they crawl around and hang upside down under rocks. On the video they appear transparent so are difficult to see moving out from underneath each arm. They stick to the glass and drag the animal across the surface.

They don’t have eyes but they do have eyespots. You can also see these on the video. They are the dark patches at the tip of each arm, on top of the animal. Detecting light and dark, they help the animal tell if it is under a ledge or on top of it, or whether something large, like a possible predator, is passing overhead.

Interestingly, the individual pictured in reports when this species was discovered has five legs, not six. According to MV curator Dr Tim O'Hara, "it’s typical for this species to have six arms but every now and then, you’ll get an uneven split during reproduction and end up with a five-armed individual.”

Links:

MV News: Tiny star

Garden Wolf Spiders, Lycosa godeffroyi, are commonly found on the prowl around Victorian gardens at night.They are modern spiders, or araneomorphs, in the family Lycosidae and they differ from many other spiders through their prey capture technique. Wolf spiders are active hunters that chase down their prey.

Wolf spider, Lycosa godeffroyi
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

During the day wolf spiders seek cover in vertical burrows, often utilising discarded invertebrate burrows, however they will dig their own if necessary.

Wolf spider emerging from its burrow
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Wolf spider peering out of its burrow, using its posterior eyes
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Wolf spiders are attractive spiders, ranging in colour from black to orange-brown with striking grey patterns on their carapace. Males have large bulbs on their pedipalps and females are typically larger and more robust than males. They are common throughout southern Australia in a range of habitats.

 Wolf spider
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

Males court female through a series of leg drums and vibrations while ‘dancing’ with his forelegs.  If the female is receptive she will allow him to approach.  The male will then present the female with a sperm package on one of his palpal bulbs, (as spiders do not have penises) which she will store and use to fertilise her eggs.

Female wolf spider carrying her egg sac
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Sometime after fertilisation the female produces an egg sac, which she carries with her (even while hunting) under her abdomen. 30 – 40 days later the eggs hatch producing up to 200 spiderlings. The spiderlings do not immediately disperse; instead they ride on their mother’s back for a few weeks.  When they are ready to fend for themselves they disperse via silk strands.

Female wolf spider covered in her spiderlings
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Female wolf spider carrying her spiderlings
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Wolf spiders are not aggressive by nature; they will however defend themselves if provoked. The anatomy of their feet – they have three claws and no hair tuffs on the tips of their legs – means they cannot negotiate slippery surfaces. This makes them good pets because they are easy to house and care for in a glass jar or terrarium.

Wolf spider, Lycosa godeffroyi
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

Victorian Spiders

Wolf spider infosheet

Dr J. Patrick Greene is an archaeologist and the CEO of Museum Victoria.

At Christmas I read the biography of Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. In January I followed in his footsteps to Egypt, visiting the pyramids on the Giza plateau, then Saqqara to see the Stepped Pyramid of Djoser, then Luxor and Karnak (ancient Thebes, centre of the worship of the god Amun) and finally, across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings.

 Ornately carved pillars at Karnak temple.
Image: Patrick Greene
Source: Museum Victoria

Excavation of Ptolemaic era baths outside the main entrance to Karnak temple.
Image: Patrick Greene
Source: Museum Victoria

To enter the tomb in which Tutankhamun was buried was an extraordinary experience. In 1922 there were over 5000 astonishing objects in the tomb, stacked one on top of the other, that took Carter and his team ten years to carefully remove, record, conserve and then pack for their journey to the Cairo Museum. As I stepped into the burial chamber I felt something of the excitement that Carter had felt as he peered through the sealed blocking wall for the first time. The beautiful sarcophagus is still there, carved with the protective deities with wings outstretched that guarded the young king as he began his journey to the afterlife. So too is Tutankhamun; his mummy has never left the tomb except for a short journey outside for a CT scan a few years ago.

I was lucky enough to have the tomb to myself for ten minutes or so, to absorb the atmosphere and marvel at the paintings on the walls of the burial chamber. Photographs are forbidden, quite rightly, not just to help preserve the pigments of the paintings but also the sense of awe. When some other visitors eventually entered they concluded that the sarcophagus and mummified body were replicas. I was able to reassure them that they were not!

My fascinating journey to Egypt included a visit to the Cairo Museum to see the objects that Howard Carter had so carefully sent down the Nile. Visitors clustered around one object in particular, the famous gold funerary mask that never leaves Egypt. Some of the cases had notes to say that the objects that they normally contained were part of an international exhibition. With pride I knew where they were heading—to Melbourne Museum to be displayed in the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition that opened in April.

 Patrick Greene outside the famous Cairo Museum, where treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun are housed.
Source: Museum Victoria

I couldn't take photographs in the tomb, or in the Cairo Museum for that matter, but elsewhere I was given access to sites and met with fellow archaeologists making exciting discoveries that I was able to photograph. A selection of my images has now been published by Museum Victoria in a book that is hot off the press. Its title? Egypt: a fascinating journey.

Links:

Egypt: a fascinating journey

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

Watch Dr Greene's lecture: 'An Archaeologist Visits Ancient Egypt'

GIVEAWAY

We have a signed copy of Patrick's book to give away to a blog reader. To enter, leave a comment on this post by noon on Thursday 30 June with your answer to this question:

What fascinates you about Egypt?  

UPDATE: Thank you to all the entrants! Patrick has chosen JessB as the winner, saying:

“I was spoilt for choice in deciding the winner of my book.  I had no idea who had written the blog entries as they were shown to me without names attached.  I made a shortlist, and finally chose my winner, which expresses so eloquently the captivating beauty of the artists and crafts people whose creations still speak to us over the distance of time.”

The body of an enormous female Leatherback Turtle was brought to Melbourne Museum on Thursday last week after washing up at Airey’s Inlet.

The two metre female Leatherback Turtle in the Preparation Lab at Melbourne Museum.
Image: Veronica Scholes
Source: Museum Victoria

A member of the public spotted the ailing turtle while it was still alive. Local authorities called the Melbourne Aquarium, which runs the Turtle Rescue and Release Program that rehabilitates tropical turtles that have strayed into cold southern waters. Unfortunately the Leatherback Turtle was too unwell to save and it lived just a few more hours. It was brought to Melbourne Museum early on Thursday morning for post-mortem examination to work out why it died.

Melbourne Aquarium vet, Dr Rob Jones, says it’s only the second Leatherback Turtle to wash up in Victoria since 1999, with smaller species such as Green Sea Turtles and Loggerhead Turtles more commonly assisted by the successful Turtle Release and Rescue Program.

Dr Jones examined the turtle on Thursday afternoon. “The age is difficult to guess,” he explains. “She had an inactive ovary, so she was possibly still immature or had laid eggs within the last six months. But at two metres long, the size suggests she was mature.” He found a small ulcer in her intestine that was probably from parasite, and signs of dehydration, but no clear cause of death. “It was disappointing not to be able to find the answer.”

The skeleton of the turtle will become part of the Museum Victoria research collection, since complete skeletons of this species are rare. The museum will also retain soft tissues for the DNA collection and barnacles and mussels from its shell for the Marine Invertebrates collection.

Barnacles on the turtle's shell.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria

The Leatherback Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) is the largest living turtle and has the widest distribution of the sea turtles. Their soft shells are unique; other species have tough protective plates called scutes as a kind of external armour, but Leatherback Turtles have small bones embedded in tough leathery skin. Another distinctive feature of these animals is their diet – they eat mostly jellyfish and have evolved a mouth full of fleshy spines to grip their soft prey. They migrate long distances in search of food, often visiting southern waters near Victoria between January and May when the sea is warm.

Inside the mouth of a Leatherback Turtle. The fleshy spines are adaptations to a jellyfish diet.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria

Leatherback Turtles are critically endangered and have suffered serious declines due to human activity. They are often drowned in fishing nets or choke when they mistake plastic bags for food.

Marine wildlife in need of rescue should be reported to the Department of Sustainability and Environment. 

• Report stranded, entangled or sick penguins, turtles and seals to DSE on 136 186. 
• Contact the Whale and Dolphin Emergency Hotline on 1300 136 017 if you find stranded, entangled, sick or injured whales or dolphins.

Links:

Melbourne Aquarium Turtle Rescue and Release Program

WWF: Leatherback Turtles close to the brink

Shark Bay World Heritage Area: Leatherback Turtle fact sheet

BIRD: Leatherback Turtle

In March this year, MV scientists spent 10 days surveying the biodiversity of the Lake Condah area in a program called Bush Blitz. The project could never have happened without the collaboration and assistance of the Gunditjmara community, the Traditional Owners of Budj Bim lands around Lake Condah.

On Friday last week, the museum was pleased to return the hospitality and show a group of Budj Bim rangers and Traditional Owners around the collection stores and laboratories of the Natural Sciences Department.

Budj Bim rangers in the Ornithology store, surrounded by the museum's collection of bird specimens.
Source: Museum Victoria

Head of Sciences, Mark Norman, led a tour through the ornithology, entomology and marine collection stores. The bird collection was their favourite but the giant squid in its huge tank of ethanol was a special highlight too.

 Mark Norman showing an amazing but somewhat pungent giant squid specimen.
Source: Museum Victoria

Today’s visit was a chance to show the rangers what has happened to the Lake Condah specimens they helped to collect, and the sort of research done in the museum. We hope they’ll visit us again soon. Until then, here's a reminder of the significance of Lake Condah and the aquaculture practiced there by Gunditjmara people for thousands of years. In this video, Joseph Saunders explains eel farming and traditional life at Lake Condah.

Links:

Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape

Poking around in Victorian coastal tide pools is good fun. You can feel the sucker feet of a sea star as it walks over your hand, or watch crabs scuttle about grazing on algae. But one thing you should never do – and I remember being told this from a very young age – is bother a blue-ringed octopus. Blue-ringed octopuses (genus Hapalochlaena) are some of the most venomous marine animals in the world yet we don’t know much about them.

Southern Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa) photographed in Port Phillip Bay during the day.
Image: Julian Finn
Source: Museum Victoria

There are currently four species of blue-ringed octopus recognised but MV curator Dr Julian Finn reckons he’s about to change this. He has just received a three-year grant from the Australian Biological Resources Study to sort out how many species there are worldwide. From his preliminary studies, he estimates there could be closer to 20 species with over half of these living in Australian waters.

With joint investigators Dr Mark Norman, Head of Sciences, Dr Jan Strugnell from La Trobe University, and Professor Chung Cheng Lu of National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, Julian will use comparative anatomy and molecular techniques to confirm how many species there are. He’ll map the distribution of each species and produce an identification key to help others identify blue-ringed octopuses.

Southern Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa) photographed in Port Phillip Bay at night.
Image: Julian Finn
Source: Museum Victoria

Julian will also assay the venom of each species to determine which are the most toxic to humans. The bite of a blue-ringed octopus delivers a hit of tetrodotoxin which is found in the octopus’s saliva. Tetrodotoxin has a devastating effect on the nerve system; it blocks sodium channels and causes breathing difficulties, numbness and paralysis. There is no antivenom and without immediate medical intervention, the risk of death is high. Thanks to this project, we’ll better understand one of our most notorious marine creatures and have more information to assist with treating blue-ringed octopus bites.

Southern Blue-ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa) photographed in Port Phillip Bay at night.
Image: Julian Finn
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

Australian Venom Research Unit: blue-ringed octopus

This episode of Married to the Job features Sarah Edwards, Discovery Program Manager for Museum Victoria.

In the spirit of tradition, we ask Sarah to tell us about herself and her work by showing us something old, new, borrowed and blue.

Watch this video with a transcript

Links:

Discovery Programs

I was fortunate enough to attend a session of Fresh Science this week. The intensive program takes 16 early-career researchers from around Australia and develops their skill in science communication.

The participants are at the start of their scientific careers: some are part way through a PhD, some have completed PhDs, others are doing post docs or beginning work in leading science organisations. These people are creative and inspiring – the best, freshest minds that will lead Australian science into the future.

2011 Fresh Science participants at Melbourne Museum.
Image: AJ Epstein
Source: Science in Public

You may have heard on Monday about a smart bandage that changes colour when the wound is infected, or seen a saw shark on the news last night. These are just two of their discoveries with more to appear in the press in coming weeks.

The greatest part of the day was the opportunity to meet people from television, radio and newspaper. They told us how they hear about and choose the stories that make the news. Remarkable considering they have to make decisions before most of us even get out of bed!

Mount Stromlo Observatory, where one of the Fresh Science researchers is working.
Image: Lauri Väin
Source: Used under Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 from Lauri Väin

The 'bootcamp in science communication', as the organisers phrase it, is supported by the Federal Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, and New Scientist Magazine, with Melbourne Museum hosting a number of events for the program

Links:

Fresh Science

The Age: Chameleon bandage helps wounds to heal

Craig is a Melbourne writer with an interest in natural history. He has been a museum volunteer in Birds and Mammals for several years. He wrote this piece for the Volunteer Newsletter in 2004.

Long-billed Corellas only ever seem to make the news when they are causing trouble. I guess this item won’t help their reputation.

I’m part of a project going through the Melbourne Museum’s vast collection of bird skins, checking their registration, or lack of it, in the EMu database. Historical specimens from legendary sources such as John Gould, William Blandowski, Baldwin Spencer and Donald Thompson are commonplace here, along with those collected by Museum staff and many collaborators in the birding community.

We all know how important the Museum is to safekeeping our heritage. We usually think of this happening in a rather abstract, institutional way, with these grand collections. But it can be quite personal.

Amongst the hundreds of items checked so far, it was a surprise to come across one specimen with a personal letter of introduction carefully placed beneath the reposing bird. “Cocky” was a Long-billed Corella (Cacatua tenuirostris) donated in 1980 by a family in Croydon. The letter is countersigned by Alan McEvey, a former Curator of Ornithology and a legendary bird man in his own lifetime. It gives us a brief biography of Cocky who had lived to the age of 80 or 90.

Cocky the Long-billed Corella with his letter of introduction.
Source: Museum Victoria

In his early life Cocky lived for many years in a hotel in Bridge Road Richmond. Eventually he was ordered from the front bar by the police for bad language. Apparently it shocked the ladies passing by. Was Richmond really more genteel in the early years of the twentieth century than now? Hard to believe.

After this indignity Cocky lived in the back shed of the hotel, where he picked up the talk from the two-up games, the sly grog and illegal betting. “C’mon Bill, put a bob on a horse,” he would urge, along with numerous other colourful sayings. All this could still be heard out in the street and the passing ladies were still getting upset. A woman who worked at the hotel as a maid eventually offered Cocky to take home for her 10-year old son. She was the widowed grandmother of the donor and Cocky was handed down in the family for the next 50 years.

Her son removed Cocky, hitherto immobile, from his small cage and exercised his wings and rubbed his feet with olive oil until he could walk. He would sleep on the boy’s bedhead. But he started tearing the skirting boards apart calling; “Rats, rats, scald the buggers!” so he was put in an aviary. When he swore a cup of water was thrown over him. He stopped swearing but still talked until the end.

The letter concludes: “I have looked after him for 20 years please take care of our friend”.

Links:

Ornithology Collection

Welcome to the first instalment of Museum Victoria’s Bug of the Month. At any time, more than 100 species of invertebrates are resident at Melbourne Museum, under the care of the Live Exhibits Unit. These creatures can be seen in Bugs Alive! and the Forest Gallery, and they pop up in other places such as the Children’s Museum and even Amazing Backyard Adventures, currently showing at Scienceworks.

Face to face with the Small Hooded Katydid.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

This month’s bug is the Small Hooded Katydid, also known as Phyllophorella. The name doesn’t adequately describe the large size of this species, which can grow up to 8cm long. Although this katydid has been around for millennia, it was only described by scientists and given an official scientific name two years ago.

Adult Small Hooded Katydid.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

Small Hooded Katydids are found in North Queensland, from around Cairns all the way to rainforest near the tip of Cape York. They are one of the biggest katydids in Australia, but their closest relatives, the Giant Katydids (Siliquofera grandis) are easily the largest, measuring up to 13cm in length.

A katydid feeding on broad bean leaves. If you look closely you can see the katydid’s ear, a small opening located on its foreleg at the left of the photo.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Small Hooded Katydids are vegetarians, feeding on a range of rainforest plants amongst which they are remarkably well camouflaged. Some specimens even have irregular white or brown patches on their wings, which are identical to the spots found on leaves. The veins on the wings also mimic the vein pattern of leaves, so adults can be very difficult to find in the wild. For this reason, they were thought for a long time to be rare, but are actually quite common.

Close-up of a katydid’s wing, showing the leaf-like pattern of veins and brown spots.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Unlike most other katydids, males of this species don’t call to attract females, so no-one knows how they find each other in the rainforest at night. However, both adults and nymphs can produce a rasping sound when disturbed, by rubbing the bases of the back legs against the body.

A young nymph living behind the scenes at Melbourne Museum
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

The ‘hood’ of these katydids, after which they are named, is most obvious in juveniles such as these two below. The pointed spine on each side of the hood is also most prominent at this stage.

A juvenile female already bears the sabre-like ovipositor at the end of the body with which she will later lay eggs.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

A juvenile feeding on organic matter, photographed in rainforest north of Cape Tribulation
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

Small Hooded Katydids are currently on show in the ‘Enormous Numbers’ display in Bugs Alive! at Melbourne Museum.

Small Hooded Katydids in Bugs Alive!
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

References:

Rentz, D.C.F., Su, Y.N. & Ueshima, N., 2009, Studies in Australian Tettigonidae: The Phyllophorinae (Orthoptera: Tettigonidae: Phyllophorinae), Zootaxa, 2075:55-68

Rentz, D., 2010, A Guide to the Katydids of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 214pp.

Women with clever hands from three parts of Australia – Arnhem Land, Wagga Wagga in NSW and Victoria – shared their passion and skill in basket-weaving today, to mark the opening of the travelling exhibition Women With Clever Hands: Gapuwiyak Miyalkurruwurr Gong Djambatjmala.This exhibition features vivid and intricate fibrework by women artists of Gapuwiyak in Arnhem Land.

Three of the artists – Lucy Malirrimurruwuy Wanapuyngu, Kathy Nyinyipuwa Guyula and Anna Ramatha Malibirr – are at Melbourne Museum for the exhibition opening and to demonstrate their craft. Curator Dr Louise Hamby worked on this exhibition with the artists and the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. She explained that fibrework of this region had its own characteristic style and the purpose of the exhibition was to share this with other communities in Australia.

Following the launch of the exhibition on Friday morning, the three groups of women exchanged stories about their work, techniques and materials and examined baskets and other fibre objects in the MV collections.

Curator Antoinette Smith showing fibrework collection objects to the visitors.
Source: Museum Victoria

The Gapuwiyak artists use the natural fibres from plants that that grow in their area, such as pandanus, which is a real challenge to collect because of its rows of sharp spines and its habit of growing in wet, buffalo-riddled country! The outer layers of pandanus are stripped away and the core is dyed with local materials.

The Women of Wagga Weaving (WOWW) group brought in an array of works produced by Wiradjuri Elders and other women. Melanie Evans spoke about how much the women love the opportunity to meet regularly, share their work and learn side by side. They have met with the Gapuwiyak artists several times through the collaboration between the Gapuwiyak Cultural Centre and the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and been deeply inspired by it. A small group of Wiradjeri women with Melanie Evans and Linda Elliott from the Wagga gallery also travelled to Gapuwiyak in 2010.

Women from WOWW talking about their fibrework.
Source: Museum Victoria

Three Victorian artists also spoke about their work: Vicki Couzens, Bronwyn Razem and Marilyne Nicholls are renowned fibre artists with works in major private and public collections. They told stories about learning their art and how it is sacred to them, and the importance of sharing the knowledge and giving guidance and instruction about these skills to younger people.

This glimpse into culture and skill of basket-making made me aware that these women are not just craftspeople and artists, but botanists, ecologists and geologists. Each variety of fibre comes from a particular plant, which is understood in terms of its country. Finding fibre means understanding soil types and the environment the plant requires to grow, as well as the biology and anatomy of the plant to know when and which parts to harvest. The preparation – stripping, drying, dyeing – is yet another level of knowledge.

The Gapuwiyak artists will hold a weaving demonstration at Bunjilaka at Melbourne Museum today. Come along and see how it is done!

Women With Clever Hands is on show at Bunjilaka until 28 August 2011.

Links:

Women With Clever Hands at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery

Early this morning, there were a few people on the Melbourne Museum plaza staring at the front of the building, watching a team of abseilers cleaning the glass facade. It's quite amazing seeing people dangling off the building, especially when you're at your desk and an unexpected visitor drops in!

Crew of window cleaners at work on the facade of Melbourne Museum.
Image: Forbes Hawkins
Source: Museum Victoria

People on the plaza watching window cleaners at work.
Image: Nicole Alley
Source: Museum Victoria

A view from the inside: window cleaner at work at Melbourne Museum.
Image: Forbes Hawkins
Source: Museum Victoria

The crew will be onsite for a few days to clean all the hard-to-reach windows around Melbourne Museum.

In the early hours of Saturday 7 May, an intruder stole an important cultural object from Melbourne Museum. Police are investigating the theft, and Museum Victoria appeals for its safe return.

Central Australian spearthrower stolen from Melbourne Museum.
Source: Museum Victoria

The item is a spearthrower from Central Australia. It is approximately 80cm long and is made from mulga wood. Carved into the item is a series of circles and lines depicting waterholes, creeks and claypans in Pintupi country.

If you have any information about the stolen object, please contact Melbourne Museum or the police.

Nick Alexander from CSIRO Publishing visited the MV Library last week in search of gliding mammals. He’s working on the production of an upcoming book by Stephen Jackson called Gliding Mammals of the World.

The book will cover certain groups of mammals - squirrels, possums and lemurs - that have evolved traits for soaring between trees, such as extra folds of skin along the sides of their bodies. Victorian gliding mammals include Squirrel Gliders, Sugar Gliders and Yellow-bellied Gliders.

In Gliding Mammals of the World, 19th century artworks from our rare books will accompany an introduction to the historical context of gliding mammal studies. Some of the early European natural history illustrations are, in Nick’s words, 'rather fanciful' but the new book will be beautifully illustrated by Peter Schouten who is renowned for his accurate and naturalistic wildlife illustrations.

You can look forward to the publication of Gliding Mammals of the World later this year.

Links:

CSIRO Publishing

Stephen Jackson

Peter Schouten's site 

Have you noticed the unusually high population of golden orb-weaving spiders (Nephila edulis) in Melbourne this year? They're usually very rare this far south but I’ve spotted dozens of them in the inner-city suburbs over recent months. Our online visitors have too; in the past three months, we’ve received over 50 comments on this Question of the Week about these spectacular spiders.

Discovery Centre gets a lot of queries about spiders and whether they’re dangerous, often after they’ve received a lethal dose of insect spray, so it’s delightful to see that most of the recent comments simply marvel at the size, beauty and architectural skills of these spiders. Lots of people have told us they are quite fond of their backyard Nephila and some have even given them names! We’ve heard about Bertha, Gloria, Holly, and, I confess, I’ve named the one that lives near me Nefertiti.

Nefertiti the large female Nephila edulis.
Source: Museum Victoria

Because people are so interested, I thought I’d dig up a bit more about Nephila edulis. They are more often found in northern Victoria, NSW and QLD where there has been a bumper spider season, too. Professor Mark Elgar from the University of Melbourne has studied these spiders for many years, travelling to Euroa each spring to collect specimens for behavioural studies. He recently commented in the Shepparton News that high summer rainfall “has provided a lot more food for flying insects, which become food for spiders. They really are much more abundant than I've seen for a long time and next year we'll see the same thing.”

Nefertiti sits in her large golden web all day, unlike the nocturnal and more common Garden Orb-weaving Spider (Eriophora sp.), which tears down and rebuild its web almost daily. Nefertiti leaves her web up until it’s so ratty that it needs to be repaired and her home is adorned with a rather gruesome array of dead insects. Professor Elgar and his colleagues showed that this vertical band of detris is a stockpile of food but also serves another intriguing function; it attracts more food. The spiders deliberately incorporate bits of rotting vegetation to make their larders irresistable to flies.

The underside of a large mature female Nephila edulis on her web. In the background is her egg sac and hanging in her web is a detrius band of dead insects.
Source: Museum Victoria

Another fascinating aspect of Nephila biology is the difference in size between males and females. While females are generally much larger than the males, within males there is a big variation in size. Professor Elgar and colleagues investigate how this has evolved. It’s a complex question with no definite answers and lots of factors to consider.

A pair of golden orb-weaving spiders illustrating the difference in size between males and females. The tiny male is on the left while the large female, feeding on a moth, is on the right.
Image: Bill & Mark Bell
Source: Used under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) from Bill & Mark Bell

Male N. edulis have two strategies when it comes to approaching a female. The risk of being mistaken for her lunch is pretty high so it pays to be careful. One tactic is to crawl onto the web on the same side as the female, while another is to approach from the opposite side and cut a hole in the web. Small males are more common than large males and they tend to use the first strategy. They also mate for longer and father more of the female’s offspring. However there are costs to being small, too: smaller males are more often eaten by females than large males. Furthermore, if there are a number of males loitering around the edge of a female’s web, large males beat small males in the battle to reach the female.

I don’t know if she was courted by a large or small male (or both - these spiders mate several times), but Nefertiti has laid a clutch of eggs in a golden silk sac. In spring her eggs will hatch and her babies will disperse on the wind to start the whole cycle again. Keep an eye out for them later in the year! Meanwhile, if you’d like to see a golden orb-weaver up close, visit the Orb Wall in Bugs Alive! at Melbourne Museum.

The golden silk egg sac of Nephila edulis.
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

Victorian Spiders

B. T. Bjorkman-Chiswell, M. M. Kulinski, R. L. Muscat, K. A. Nguyen, B. A. Norton, M. R.E. Symonds, G. E. Westhorpe and M. A. Elgar. 2004. Web-building spiders attract prey by storing decaying matter. Naturwissenschaften 91:245-248

J. M. Schneider, M. E. Herberstein,  F. C. de Crespigny, S. Ramamurthy and M. A. Elgar. 2000. Sperm competition and small size advantage for males of the golden orb-web spider Nephila edulis. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 13: 939-946

The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is dominating the media at present but I imagine it's keeping the souvenir industry just as busy. Commemorative tea towels, spoons, biscuit tins and more are issued at every royal milestone. Some people are serious collectors of royal memorabilia while others of us merely dabble, often for its kitsch value.

Like many workplaces, staff at the museum tend to have a favourite, personal coffee mug. There are not one, not two, but three much-loved royal wedding coffee mugs belonging to people who work in the online department:

 Staff mugs commemorating three different royal weddings. From left to right: my Charles and Di mug, Dave's Charles and Camilla mug, and Reuben's Kate and Wills mug.
Source: Museum Victoria

But wait... have a close look at the mug on the right... that's not Prince William!

Do you have any royal memorabilia? Why do you think it is so popular?

Links:

Royal wedding commemorative medals on Collections Online

Aston Gibbs, Acting Manager, Collection Location Systems.
Image: Emma Hutchinson
Source: Museum Victoria

Why is Aston so happy? She’s jubilant at the completion of the History and Technology Lantern Slide Collection Rehousing project!

Collection managers, database gurus, History and Technology curators, conservators, photographers and many others joined in a huge, coordinated project to rehouse the museum’s entire lantern slide collection – that’s over 10,000 individual items – into new, custom-made storage systems. Lorenzo Iozzi, senior collection manager for the image and AV collections, has been coordinating this mammoth task for months, culminating in an intensive, week-long effort to ready the collection for its move from Scienceworks to collection stores at Melbourne Museum.

Eloise Coccoli, Assistant Curator for Collections Online, keeping the lantern slides in order.
Image: David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria

Collection Registration Officer Emma Hutchinson with the new storage system for the lantern slides.
Image: Lorenzo Iozzi
Source: Museum Victoria

Staff photographing lantern slides.
Image: Ria Green
Source: Museum Victoria

MV's lantern slides are a fascinating, eclectic snapshot of all manner of topics from the Victorian era to the early 20th century. Comprising a light source, a lens and a transparent image, magic lanterns were the precursor to the slide projector and were very popular entertainment before the advent of film. Some of the more complicated projectors had multiple lenses and projected slides with intricate moving components. The video below demonstrates a magic lantern show.

The museum's collection has come from a number of sources; the Francis Collection, containing over 5500 items relating to pre-cinematic technology, comprises is a large portion of it. Before the relocation project, some lantern slides were stored in wooden crates that were as old as the slides themselves, unregistered and inadequately described simply because there were so many of them.

It’s a huge achievement for all involved:

• they rehoused, registered and barcoded the entire collection of 10,600 lantern slides
• they photographed 3,400 lantern slides to preservation standard
• they prepared 2,000 object records and 4,600 photographs for upload to Collections Online

And you know what? Not a single one of the fragile glass slides was broken in the process! Congratulations, team!

The huge crew who all pitched in for the lantern slide project.
Image: David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

Lantern slides on Collections Online

The Magic Lantern Society (UK)

There are a lot of sparkling gems and minerals on display in Dynamic Earth but on Tuesday morning there was a new temporary exhibit with an unusually personal label...

Engagement ring planted in an exhibition showcase in Dynamic Earth.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria

But who put it there? And why?

Simone sees the showcase.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria

It was all part of an elaborate surprise marriage proposal by David to Simone. She thought she was visiting the museum to take some promotional photographs. All seemed perfectly normal until she spotted the showcase containing an engagement ring and the label asking 'Simone, will you marry me?'

Congratulations David and Simone! It was a lot of fun for the museum to be in cahoots with the lucky groom-to-be.

The newly-engaged couple, David and Simone.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria

We have many different types of snail here at Melbourne Museum. They range from the very well-known Common Garden Snail (Cantareus aspersa), which was introduced into Australia from Europe in the early 1800s, to Australia’s largest snail, the Giant Panda Snail (Hedleyella falconeri), from the forests around the border of New South Wales and Queensland. There are many differences between the snails in our collection but one trait that they generally share is what they eat. Most snails are herbivorous and feed on plant matter or fungi – much to the frustration of many gardeners. However, some snails have different eating habits and they are in fact carnivorous. We have one such predatory creature here.

Carnivorous snail feeding on a Common Garden Snail.
Image: David Paddock
Source: Museum Victoria

Now, a snail is not exactly known for its speed, but these snails actually chase down and eat other animals, feeding on worms and other molluscs, including snails. While what they eat is different, the way that they eat is exactly the same. Snails have a radula – a tongue-like structure covered by rows of rasping teeth. To see the feeding structure (mouth) of a snail, place it on a clear glass sheet and watch from below.

Carnivorous snail eating a Common Garden Snail.
Image: David Paddock
Source: Museum Victoria

These pictures were taken here at Melbourne Museum in our back-of-house animal care facility. The smaller carnivorous snail (Terrycarlessia tubinata) is eating a Common Garden Snail. A few days later all that was left of the victim was an empty shell!

If you are interested in snails and would like to see some of Australia's biggest species, come along to Melbourne Museum and see our Rainforest Snails and Giant Panda Snails on display now in Bugs Alive.

Links:

Infosheet: Land snails of Victoria

MV Blog: Snail of a surprise

This guest post is by Chloe, a Live Exhibits keeper at Melbourne Museum.

At Live Exhibits we like to keep a range of funnel-web species. This way we can represent not only the infamous Sydney Funnel-web spider, but the majority of Australian funnel-web species in our exhibits.

As it had been six years since Live Exhibits’ last trip to Nariel Valley, it was time for Jessie, Patrick and I to pack up the car and head off on a field trip in the to find some Alpine Funnel-webs (Hadronyche alpina).

Alpine Funnel-web, Hadronyche alpina.
Image: Chloe Miller
Source: Museum Victoria

Local resident Mrs Brown originally alerted the museum’s Discovery Centre to the presence of a population of Alpine Funnel-webs in the Nariel Valley and more particularly her front lawn. Young funnel-webs emerge from their mother’s burrow, find an attractive burrow site, and then burrow down, which makes for high density populations. For us, this leads to quick collection of multiple specimens.

After finding three funnel-webs around our campsite it was time to head off to Mrs Brown’s place, where she showed four large burrows. We started digging holes in the mud more than 30cm deep, a process much more lengthy than expected, using only a desert spoon to dig, trying not to destroy Mrs Brown’s lawn or injure the spiders. Finally we produced four plump female funnel-webs (which were less than happy about being disturbed) then we balanced them on a spoon to be transferred into their new glass homes.

Alpine Funnel-web, Hadronyche alpina
Image: Chloe Miller
Source: Museum Victoria

Soaking wet with seven funnel-webs under our belt and no sign of any more, it was time to head off to Omeo.

The following day drove up the windy, fog-covered hills to Mt Hotham, where we began our search for Alpine Thermocolour Grasshoppers (Kosciuscola tristis), Alpine Blistered Pyrgomorphs, (Monistria concinna), Mountain Katydids (Acripeza reticulata) and Alpine Katydids (Tinzeda albosignata).

Left: Alpine Katydid, Tinzeda albosignata. Right: Alpine Thermocolour Grasshopper Kosciuscola tristis.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

On warmer days these invertebrates would be sitting up on small bushes and grass clumps, enjoying the sun. However on cooler foggy days, like the day of our visit, many of the invertebrates sink lower into the foliage to protect themselves against the elements, making our search a little harder and much wetter. Thankfully I had donned plastic pants and a rain coat which made the perfect outfit, although they didn’t help the situation in my boots, which contained enough water to fill a small lake.

Foggy conditions for collecting invertebrates at Mt Hotham.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria

During the morning of searching, Patrick’s alter ego Taxon Boy didn’t let us down, helping us bag 48 Thermocolour Grasshoppers, 7 Alpine Katydids, 1 Mountain Katydid, 12 Alpine Blistered Pyrgomorphs and a female Alpine Wolf Spider (Lycosa sp.).

Alpine Wolf Spider, Lycosa sp.
Image: Chloe Miller
Source: Museum Victoria

We made one final stop on our long drive back to the museum to collect some eucalyptus for our stick insects; here Taxon Boy also stumbled across some large Garden Orb-weavers (Nephila edulis) which you can now see on display in the Orb wall in Bugs Alive! at Melbourne Museum.

Garden Orb-weaver, Nephila edulis.
Image: Alan Henderson
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

Infosheet: Spiders of Victoria 

MV Blog: TV Crew in Bugs Alive

The Live Exhibits Unit has taken on three new full-time keepers in recent months, who you might see working in the Forest Gallery and Bugs Alive at Melbourne Museum.

Dave Paddock hails from Wellington Zoo, Healesville Sanctuary and Werribee Open Range Zoo. He has travelled the world as a sightseer and tour guide. His favourite animals at Live Exhibits change depending on the day – today it is the toadhoppers in Bugs Alive, which Dave will blog about in the near future.

David Paddock getting out of the mud.
Source: Museum Victoria

As the photo illustrates, Dave is specialises at getting out of sticky situations on field trips. He also loves bushwalking and does an expert baboon impression. Dave has only one enemy – a cockatoo called Jake at Wellington Zoo.

Rowena Flynn has been a postie, horticulturalist and Art and Environment teacher with a degree in Asian Studies and honours degree in Political Science. She’s been a casual keeper on Live Exhibits since 2006 and her proudest moment is becoming a full-time keeper.

Rowena Flynn about to hit the surf.
Source: Rowena Flynn

Rowena once navigated with a compass from Kathmandu to Italy in a truck, and now travels Australia looking for the perfect wave. Her favourite animal is Mrs Moloch, the Thorny Devil, who can be seen feeding on ants from time to time in Bugs Alive.

Chloe Miller also goes by the name Sugar Rose and her favourite animals are chameleons, even though she’s volunteered with Orang Utans in Borneo.

Chloe Miller with a monitor lizard.
Source: Chloe Miller

Originally from Alexandra in central Victoria where she worked for Parks Victoria, Chloe has an Animal Science degree and was also a Customer Service Officer at Melbourne Museum. She has a killer bowling arm and her favourite music is the soundtrack to the movie ‘You’ve Got Mail’.

During the recent Bush Blitz biodiversity survey at Lake Condah, there was one insect that intrigued even the staunchest vertebrate biologists — the Mountain Katydid (Acripeza reticulata).

In this video, Patrick, Rowena and David from Live Exhibits talk about these unusual katydids and how they're establishing a colony of them at Melbourne Museum.

Watch this video with a transcript

Katydids are in the family Tettigoniidae, otherwise known as bush crickets or long-horned grasshoppers due to their very long antennae. The name 'katydid' comes from the noise that they make by rubbing their wings together which, in some species, sounds like katy-did, katy-did.

Bush Blitz is a three-year biodiversity discovery program supported by the Australian Government, BHP Billiton, Earthwatch Australia and Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network (TERN) AusPlots.

Links:

Mountain Katydid on Caught and Coloured

MV Blog: Bush Blitz finds

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs opens to the public this morning, and to ensure she was the first person into the exhibition, a very excited visitor has been waiting at Melbourne Museum since 7:40am.

 Pam and Brian at the front of Melbourne Museum.
Source: Museum Victoria

Pam and her husband Brian have travelled all the way from Albury to be here for the first session. Pam is clearly a big King Tut fan; she's even wearing him around her neck!

Tickets for the exhibition are selling fast and many sessions are sold out. Be sure to pre-purchase your tickets online.

Links:

kingtutmelbourne.com.au

The story of Leadbeater's Possum is so interwoven with the history of Museum Victoria that there was no better place to celebrate it than at Melbourne Museum last Sunday.

This tiny, highlands marsupial was first described by the museum's director, Sir Frederick McCoy in 1867, who named it Gymnobelideus leadbeateri after our first taxidermist, John Leadbeater.

By the 1900s, it was thought extinct. No one saw it for decades. Charles Brazenor, later to become director of the museum, published a plea in 1946 for naturalists to find the creature to no avail. In 1961, a young museum employee changed the fate of Leadbeater's Possum. The amazing story of its rediscovery is recorded in this short film by Curator of History of Science, Rebecca Carland:

On Sunday 3 April, exactly 50 years after his first glimpse of a wild Leadbeater's Possum, Eric was honoured at a ceremony jointly organised by Parks Victoria, Friends of the Leadbeater’s Possum and Museum Victoria. On behalf of the museum and the people of Victoria, Robin Hirst presented Eric with a print of Leadbeater's Possum from the Prodromus of Zoology.

L-R: Robin Hirst, Director of Collections, Research and Exhibitions; Eric Wilkinson; CEO Patrick Greene and curator Rebecca Carland.
Image: Liza Dale-Hallet
Source: Museum Victoria

Eric handed a young sapling of Mountain Ash as a symbolic baton of care to a representative of the of the group HELP (Help the Endangered Leadbeater's Possum). Four Year 7 students started HELP in 2009 to raise awareness of the plight of the species and to gather funds to assist in its future survival. Eric spoke about the inspiring work they've done so far, and the important role of the next generation in protecting our state's faunal emblem.

Jo Antrobus from Parks Victoria with students from St. Margarets School, Berwick, special guest speaker and environment ambassador Sheree Marris and Lake Mountain mascot Lenny Leadbeater. Lake Mountain is home to most of the remaining Leadbeater's Possum habitat.
Image: Liza Dale-Hallett
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

YouTube video - Leadbeater's Possum: Our state emblem under fire

The Age article: Hello, possums! Breed saved from extinction 50 years on

Leadbeater's Possum on Collections Online

Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum

I just heard of a crab species with the scientific name Tutankhamen. Crab Tut! Kind of cool considering we are about to open the world-famous Tutankhamun exhibition.

Tutankhamen cristatipes has a spiny triangular body, pointed nose (the rostrum) and elongated claws that look like a plumber’s wrench. It is quite small, with a body 15 mm wide and legs about 30 mm long

Tutankhamen cristatipes
Source: Rathbun, M.J. (1925) The spider crabs of America. United States National Museum Bulletin, 129, 1-613

Tutankhamen cristatipes was named in 1925 by Mary J. Rathbun (1860-1943). In total, she described 1147 new species and subspecies, 63 new genera, one subfamily, three families and a superfamily.

“A few years earlier, King Tut’s tomb was uncovered and I think she could have named it in the Pharaoh-fever that swept the world at that time,” crustacean expert and PhD colleague Anna McCallum tells me.

Mary Jane Rathbun at work. She began as an unpaid assistant to her brother, Richard Rathbun, and was later employed as a curator at the Smithsonian Institution.
Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives via Wikimedia Commons.

Crab Tut is almost as rare as King Tut too - it is known from only two specimens. Both Tuts had exclusive habitats: the king in the Egyptian deserts and the crab in deep waters on the outer continental slope off Florida. And they both reside in hard outer skeletons: King Tut in his sarcophagus, Crab Tut in its carapace.

I couldn’t find what colour Crab Tut is, but I’d like to dream it’s as colourful as the gold and blue sarcophagus of King Tut. This is definitely one cool character of the crustacean world.

Links:

kingtutmelbourne.com.au

Mary J. Rathbun on Wikipedia

So you've bought your ticket and popcorn, picked up your 3D glasses and chosen your seat at IMAX Melbourne. For you, it's a time to sit back and relax. However, in the projection booth at the back of the cinema, it's a highly-skilled dash to prepare the next film for screening.

David Booty, Senior Technical Advisor for IMAX Melbourne Museum, might be the projectionist setting up your film. He's been in the IMAX business since 1988 and sometimes has just seven minutes between shows to change over the huge reels of IMAX film. In this video he tells us about the unique projection system while he's rushing around to set up the next show.

The annual Melbourne Food and Wine Festival starts tomorrow and MV is hosting events at Melbourne Museum, the Royal Exhibition Building and the Immigration Museum. It seemed the perfect time to ask the History and Technology curators to suggest some foodie collection items for a series of MFWF posts.

It's hard to imagine Melbourne's food scene without an Italian influence. The flush of Italian migrants that arrived here following World War II brought with them the foundations of the café culture so prevalent across Melbourne today. Some early cafés still survive; Don Camillo near Victoria Market, and Pellegrini's in Bourke St being two well-know examples. Many Italian migrants also started food manufacturing businesses to satisfy the appetites of the migrant population, and, increasingly, the wider community that embraced Italian cuisine. One of these businesses, La Tosca, was founded in 1947 and still produces pasta today.

'La Tosca' Ravioli label for labelling tins of food produced by La Tosca Food Processing Company in the 1970s.
Source: Museum Victoria 

Curator Moya McFadzean talks about the La Tosca roller in this video from The Melbourne Story website:

La Tosca tools and package labels are on display in The Melbourne Story exhibition, which is also the venue for Melbourne's Culinary Story. This festival event features special guest Charmaine O’Brien, author of Flavours of Melbourne, a Culinary Biography and Victorian wines and produce. If you mention MV Blog when booking you will get the MV Members discount  - call 13 11 02 for bookings.

Links:

Selling Pasta to Melbourne - the La Tosca story

Marvellous Melbourne: Café Culture

Borghesi Family Collection on Collections Online

MV Melbourne Food and Wine Festival events

What's going on here behind the aquatic invertebrate display?

A Water Scorpion in Bugs Alive hanging out while the TV crew sets up.
Source: Museum Victoria

Saturday morning TV show Kids' WB have been shooting in Melbourne Museum's Science and Life Galleries today, with a special visit to Bugs Alive this afternoon. Some of the museum's young visitors were very excited to see hosts Lauren and Andrew but for the resident insects, it was all in a day's work.

Chloe from Live Exhibits and Kids' WB hosts Lauren and Andrew filming in Bugs Alive.
Source: Museum Victoria

Chloe, one of our Live Exhibits keepers, brought out some special big invertebrates for Lauren and Andrew to hold. Let's just say that Andrew enjoyed this bit more than Lauren...

Chloe shows Lauren and Andrew a Spiny Leaf Insect.
Source: Museum Victoria

You can see Melbourne Museum featured on Kids' WB when this epidsode screens on Channel 9 at 10am on 5 March.

Today we launch our new vodcast series, Married to the Job, where we chat to museum staff. In the tradition of museum object and specimen collecting, we ask them to tell us about themselves and their work by showing us something old, new, borrowed and blue.

So let’s meet John Retallick, Public Programs Officer here at Museum Victoria.

Watch this video with a transcript

Have you ever looked down at the footpath in Melbourne's CBD and wondered about those 20cm round bronze plaques that seem to lead a trail through the city? Well, they are the path of the Golden Mile Heritage Trail. This walking tour explores Melbourne's buildings, laneways, streets, characters and history from its beginnings through to modern times. And, on a beautiful sunny Melbourne morning last week, I went to discover what it was all about!

The tour started at Federation Square, on the intersection of Swanston and Flinders Streets, one of Melbourne's liveliest spots for over 150 years. Our tour guide set the scene for the rest of the walk, describing the history of the buildings around us. From the 1852 gold rush era St Paul's Cathedral on one corner to the famous Young & Jackson's pub of 1861 opposite; from the Federation era opulence of Flinders Street Station of 1910, to the ultra contemporary public spaces of Federation Square, this intersection provides a physical snapshot of the city's history.

Sandridge Bridge
Image: Nicole Davis
Source: Museum Victoria

We next walked along the Yarra talking about how Melbourne was built up around this spot from its beginnings as an Aboriginal meeting place to the coming of Europeans to today. We chatted about some of the characters in the city's early history, such as John Batman, John Pascoe Fawkner and Robert Hoddle, and how they shaped the city. Our guide also pointed out interesting sites like the outlet for the creek that runs under Elizabeth Street and the Sandridge Bridge. This Bridge was originally a railway bridge and was the line that took immigrant passengers from Port Melbourne to Flinders Street Station before embarking on a new life in Australia. Now a pedestrian bridge, its sculptures and text panels explore the waves of people,from Melbourne's Indigenous inhabitants onward who have crossed the river on this spot.

Immigration Museum was next, where the tour officially starts. I turned tour guide for a few minutes, guiding our guide through the Immigration Discovery Centre and explaining what we do here.

The Travellers, Sandridge Bridge
Image: Nicole Davis
Source: Museum Victoria  Rutherglen House, Highlander Lane
Image: Nicole Davis
Source: Museum Victoria

We then meandered through some of my favourite sites in Melbourne - its laneways! I got to pop my head inside the Mitre Tavern and found out the fascinating history of the Savage Club, plus discovered a new spot I hadn't previously known about and will definitely be popping back to. Rutherglen House is an 1850s bluestone residence/warehouse located on Highlander Lane. Today it's still a private residence!

After our little laneway exploration, we wandered up Collins Street discussing the progress of Marvellous Melbourne and the boom and bust of the 1880s to 1890s. Despite the many modern office blocks that I always feel characterise Collins Street, there are actually a surprising number of buildings from the 1870s to 1900 period that survive. There are some fabulous opulent buildings like the Gothic ANZ bank building on the corner of Elizabeth Street and the adjoining Stock Exchange. I also really enjoyed seeing the way the 1890s Rialto and Winfield buildings have been incorporated into the Intercontinental Hotel and Rialto Towers.

Rialto Building from Collins Street
Image: Nicole Davis
Source: Museum Victoria

The tour ended another hour later with some of Melbourne's famous arcades: the Block Arcade from the 1890s; Howey Place, next to which the famous Cole's Book Arcade was once located; and the controversial Capitol Arcade, developed in the 1960s.

As you can see the tour was densely packed and I could write reams on more of the great stories that our guide had to impart. He was amazingly knowledgeable, gave fabulous detailed accounts, and brought to life Melbourne's history for me. Most of all, he answered my constant questions with good grace and love of his subject. As a student of urban history, it was a fascinating insight and a great opportunity to talk with someone who had an in-depth knowledge of these places. If you want to get to know Melbourne, whether you're a visitor or a local, I highly recommend going on one of these walking tours.

Links:

You can see more images of the tour and find out how to book on the Immigration Museum Website.

Bernard in Public Programs didn't just receive a gory makeover for his stint as a security guard in the Science and Life commercial; he also needed a haircut to tame his unruly locks.

 Going, going, gone... Bernard's wild curls are trimmed off.
Source: Susan Bamford Caleo

But don't worry, the trimmings were put to good use... as nesting material for the finches and wrens in Melbourne Museum's Forest Gallery. In the wild, these birds salvage tufts of animal hair to line their nests and provide a soft bed for their chicks. During the birds' breeding season, Live Exhibits collect all sorts of materials that will make good nesting matter. This includes coconut fibres, fleece from sheep and horse hair to name a few. Staff stockpile material in spring and disperse them out in small amounts throughout spring and summer.

 Trimmings from Bernard's haircut.
Source: Museum Victoria

Rowena from Live Exhibits had the strange task of scattering the hair around the Forest Gallery early one morning. When I told her it was Bernard's, she said, "I don't know if it's better or worse, knowing who it belonged to!"

Rowena scattering the hair in the Forest Gallery for birds to use.
Source: Museum Victoria

The Melbourne Gallery was filled with beautiful harmonies this morning as a group of Maori performers sang and danced to farewell Phar Lap's skeleton, which will return to New Zealand next week.

Maori performance group Te Waka Raukura sing and dance in front of the Phar Lap Reunion display.
Image: Ben Healley
Source: Museum Victoria

Performers from Te Waka Raukura.
Image: Ben Healley
Source: Museum Victoria

A performer from Te Waka Raukura.
Image: Ben Healley
Source: Museum Victoria

On loan from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the skeleton has been on display next to Phar Lap's hide since September 2010 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Melbourne Cup.

Today's performers, Te Waka Raukura, provided a wonderful send-off for the skeleton. It has been an honour for us to have the skeleton and send thanks to all who made this reunion possible. The Phar Lap Reunion display can be seen until Sunday 30 January.

Media and museum visitors gathered to enjoy the music and dancing.
Image: Ben Healley
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

What's On: Phar Lap Reunion

MV News: Phar Lap reunion

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

MV Blog: The crates have arrived!

First generation iPod in the MV Collection from 2001. It was donated by a journalist who reviewed the device just before its release in Australia. (HT13346)
Source: Museum Victoria

Two new Museum Victoria podcasts by Dr Andi are now available on the MV website to listen to or download. 

The first podcast, part of the series Someone's Gotta Do It, profiles MV's chief tweeter and number one narwhal fan, Jareen Summerhill. Jareen helps Phar Lap manage his Facebook page, too.

The second, Episode 26 in the Access All Areas series, takes the poetry of Ogden Nash to museum experts for the full story on ants, pythons, ducks, coelocanths and more. Exactly how many ribs do reticulated pythons have, anyway?

Links:

Archive: Access All Areas podcasts

Archive: Someone's Gotta Do It podcasts 

iPod on Collections Online

If you have wandered into the Forest Gallery in the new year, you may have noticed that the creek looks much clearer. Just before Christmas 2010, Live Exhibits staff got together to clean ten years' worth of silt and sludge that had built up since the opening of the gallery. It was a tough and dirty job, but the end result was well worth it when the clean water was turned back on.

First we had to drain the creek.......

The Forest Gallery creek drained of its water.
Source: Museum Victoria

...so we could remove all the rocks.....

Removing the creek rocks.
Source: Museum Victoria

...and scoop out all the stinky mud!

Scooping out ten years' worth of mud from the creek's base.
Source: Museum Victoria

With all of the rocks washed and returned...

Squeaky-clean rocks back in position
Source: Museum Victoria

...we could fire up the pump...

The pump that circulates water through the Forest Gallery
Source: Museum Victoria

...and let the water flow. C'est fini!

Sparkling, crystal-clear Forest Gallery creek.
Source: Museum Victoria

Links:

Forest Secrets

Have you seen the Science and Life television commercial? 

We hung around on set and learned all sorts of useful things - what fake blood is made from, how much blood is too much, and exactly what attacks Bernard the security guard at night in the gallery...

What's this conservator doing?

Elizabeth holding a rope...
Source: Museum Victoria 

And this one?

 Sam holding a rope...
Source: Museum Victoria

No, they're not flying giant kites in the Melbourne Museum foyer; they were carefully lowering our replica Duigan Biplane for cleaning last night.

 Lowering the Duigan Biplane for cleaning.
Source: Museum Victoria

This kind of large-scale work takes place once museum visitors have left. It means that conservators can work some strange hours!

The dusty Duigan back on the ground ready for cleaning.
Source: Museum Victoria

The biplane was back up near the ceiling this morning, and the floor was clear for the return of the Deliverette, which has been in storage while the special Titanic exhibition desk occupied its place in the foyer.

Special delivery! The Deliverette van returning from the collection store.
Source: Museum Victoria

It's great to see this unique little van back in the building. It is a prototype small delivery vehicle designed in the late 1940s at the aircraft factory at Fishermen's Bend. The start of the Korean War halted its production. What a shame - the Deliverette would have been perfect for Melbourne's narrow laneways. Perhaps it would have an iconic Melbourne vehicle like our trams.

Links:

Centennary of the Duigan Biplane's first flight

Deliverette on Collections Online

Every now and then, those of us who work at Melbourne Museum receive a polite but slightly troubling email:

"The Preparation Department needs to undertake work today that may generate some odours."

I can’t think of another workplace where stench warnings are a regular occurrence. They’re intriguing, too, because I always wonder what they’re doing down there in the basement.

Our skilled preparators do much as their name would suggest: they prepare things, from animal specimens for research collections to intricate models for display. Their job combines elements of biology, taxidermy, sculpture and painting and their work area is a den of creativity and practicality that is stocked with tools and equipment and art supplies.

In mid-December, a Gray’s Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon grayi) unfortunately was stranded at Portland and died. Given the rarity of this species, and MV’s strength in the study of whales, its skeleton is a valuable addition to our research collection. The preparators perform the somewhat gruesome but necessary task of cleaning the skeleton, and that’s where the odour comes in.

The Preparation Department's collection of rubber gloves - essential tools in this line of work.
Source: Museum Victoria

Preparator Steven Sparrey explained the facilities in which large specimens are prepared. The specimens are placed in a sequence of water baths in the ominously named ‘maceration tank’ which allows the animal’s soft tissues to loosen away naturally from the bones without damaging them. It’s not pretty and it doesn’t smell good. After this, the bones are given a soapy wash and dried thoroughly.

The sealed room that holds the maceration tank (at the back) and cleaning benches.
Source: Museum Victoria

Some astonishingly large vertebrae from the backbone of a whale were on the drying racks. These were prepared for the Melbourne Aquarium from another stranded animal. The bones were quite yellow and Steven explained that the stains are from the whale’s oils, and they would be bleached by the sun once they were properly dry.

Whale vertebrae in the drying racks.
Source: Museum Victoria

Shortly after that, he firmly suggested that we leave the area because the smell tends to cling to clothing. Needless to say, he doesn’t wear his work clothes home on the train. So there you have it – perhaps not one of the most glamourous jobs at the museum, but an essential task to maintain Victoria’s collection of our state's fauna.

Links:

Model-making for Dynamic Earth

Climate change and whale evolution

Fossil unlocks secrets to the origin of whales

Fireworks on New Year's Eve in St Kilda, 1935. (MM 8768)
Image: Cyril Henshaw
Source: Museum Victoria

With Melbourne temperatures predicted to reach 40ºC on New Year's Eve, I'm glad I'll be spending the working hours of Hogmanay in the cool of Melbourne Museum's air conditioning. A perfect time to visit one of our venues before celebrating the arrival of 2011. We're open on New Year's Day, too.

How will you be escaping the heat?

Links:

What's On at Melbourne Museum

What's On at the Immigration Museum

What's On at Scienceworks

The cafe at Melbourne Museum is full of staff each morning seeking a caffeine hit at the start of their workday. This morning, web developer Reuben held out a shiny twenty cent piece, delighted. "Look what I got in my change!" 

 Centenary of Federation commemorative twenty cent piece with the Royal Exhibition Building in the background.
Source: Museum Victoria

According to the Royal Australian Mint, this coin was designed by Ryan Douglas Ladd and Mark Aaron Kennedy of Lara Lake Primary School as part of a student design competition. It portrays our own Royal Exhibition Building which hosted the opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, since it was the only building in Melbourne with the capacity to hold the 12,000 people in attendance. After this first gathering on 9 May 1901, the newly-formed Federal Government sat in Melbourne until the opening of Parliament House in Canberra on 9 May, 1927.

As we sat in the shadow of the Royal Exhibition Building this morning, we couldn't resist a picture of Reuben's twenty cents alongside its inspiration. 2.9 million of these coins were minted so check your pocket; you too may have a little piece of World Heritage among your small change!

Links:

Old Parliament House (now site of the Museum of Australian Democracy)

Opening of the First Commonwealth Parliament of Australia

Numismatics on Collections Online

Coming soon to a telly near you is the new commercial for the Science and Life Gallery at Melbourne Museum. But for those who can't wait until Boxing Day, we've loaded it up on our YouTube channel.

Congratulations to the in-house production team: Bernard Caleo (actor), Tim Rolfe (writer/director), Jenni Meaney (production manager), Stephen Dixon (editor) and Maree Martin (marketing).

Many thanks also to 

• Trish Keating (cinematographer),
• David Chesworth of Wax Sound Media (music and sound design)  
• Act3Animation for the volcano eruption
• Creature Technology Company for the animatronic dinosaurs
• Emma-Jane Redmond for the make-up and fake blood

Links:

Dinosaur Walk

Wild: Amazing animals in a changing world

600 Million Years: Victoria evolves

Dynamic Earth

Melbourne Museum foyer is decked out for the Christmas season! The tree went up this morning and a special case full of beautiful vintage Christmas decorations was installed yesterday. These are borrowed from the amazing collection of Rob and Lee-Ann Hamilton and include fragile glass baubles and a miniature tree made from dyed goose feathers.

Installing the Christmas display.
Source: Museum Victoria

Vintage glass owl decoration on a miniature Christmas tree made from dyed goose feathers.
Source: Museum Victoria

The first of December is the day to start counting down to Christmas Day with an advent calendar. So we thought we’d make an online Museum Victoria advent calendar with random treats and prizes.

At 5pm each day until Christmas Eve, we’ll post a link to a Christmassy collection item through MV’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and ask a question. The first correct answer to the question will be in the running for museum goodies like badges, books, toys and tickets. Come and play!

Links:

Vintage Christmas Decoration display

What happens after archaeologists dig up thousands of pieces of historical material? Where do they go next? And who will care for them in years to come?

These questions were central to a recent symposium at Melbourne Museum. Jointly sponsored by Museum Victoria, La Trobe University and the Australian Research Council (ARC), the symposium was organised by Dr Charlotte Smith, a senior curator at Museum Victoria. The symposium, called Developing sustainable, strategic collection management approaches for Archaeological Assemblages, invited local and international guests to discuss the problem shared by institutions around the world – what to do with boxes and boxes of artefacts.

Rows and rows of archaeological material in storage at Museum Victoria.
Image: Veegan McMasters
Source: Museum Victoria

Charlotte’s curatorial duties include oversight of the Commonwealth Block assemblage, which is the world’s largest 19th century urban assemblage. It comprises 508,000 individual fragments that were excavated from the site bordered by Lonsdale, Exhibition, Little Lonsdale and Spring Streets in Melbourne. It was painstakingly documented and has phenomenal research and exhibition potential, but this is not always the case. Some assemblages excavated in the 1980s arrived at the museum with such scant records that we don't even know where they were dug up.

Some archaeolgocial material is poorly documented; we don’t even know where this particular box of artefacts came from.
Image: Veegan McMasters
Source: Museum Victoria

The idea of sustainability, explained Charlotte, refers to cultural and social sustainability. “It’s making sure we hand on to future generations collections that are manageable.” When it comes to the idea of significance, the perspective of archaeologists and museums are slightly different. “When a museum develops a collection, you can limit your collecting from the start. But in archaeology you can’t make those kinds of decisions because the whole of the record is important and you can’t predict how big it will be.”

Speakers at the archaeological assemblage symposium. L-R: Tim Murray, Nick Merriman, Charlotte Smith, Maryanne McCubbin and Terry Childs.
Source: Museum Victoria

By training museum workers in archaeology and vice versa, both groups better understand the perspective of the other. Museum Victoria has a great working relationship with local archaeologists, but not every institution has access to such experts. Until recently, archaeologists rarely received training in collection management and Charlotte talked about the importance for people to have skills in both areas.

Charlotte is very pleased with the outcomes of the symposium about what she describes as “a huge and interesting problem.” The symposium participants were pragmatic in their approach and agreed that better planning at the dig stage of a project, including on-site significance assessment, would help keep these large, important historical assemblages manageable for future generations.

Links

Unearthing Little Lon

Casselden Place on Collections Online

Archaeology on the World Heritage, World Futures blog

On Monday 15 November 2010, Museum Victoria won two categories at the RACV 2010 Victorian Tourism Awards.

2010 Victorian Tourism Awards Winner logo
Source: Tourism Victoria

Melbourne Museum won the most prestigious prize of the night – best Major Tourist Attraction – and Scienceworks won best Tourist Attraction. Both awards acknowledge the outstanding achievements and successes during the 2009/10 financial year.

Highlights include:

• Melbourne Museum: Opening of two new permanent exhibitions Wild! and 600 Million Years: Victoria evolves and the presentation of two international blockbuster exhibitions (that were exclusive to Melbourne) A Day in Pompeii and Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition.
• Scienceworks: Hosting the international blockbuster exhibition Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, recorded best ever visitation since opening in 1992 (a total of 538,183 visitors) and Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise popped in for a visit too.

Scienceworks was also successful at the Hobsons Bay Business Excellence Awards in October winning the Tourism category. 

Fingers crossed Melbourne Museum and Scienceworks do well at the Australian Tourism Awards in March. 

Wish us luck!  

Titanic comes down, Tron Legacy goes up.
Source: Museum Victoria

It's been a mad week at Museum Victoria. It's the last week of Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition at Melbourne Museum and the crowds have poured in for their last chance to see. It closes on 7 November after an extended season. I took this picture today of workers in a cherry-picker updating the banner on the side of the building. I love that the Irish shipbuilders seem to be watching them work, too. Titanic has been a huge success for the museum and we're so pleased that visitors have liked it so much.

It's also Melbourne Cup Week - makring the 80th anniversary of Phar Lap's win and the 150th anniversary of the first running of the Melbourne Cup. The reunion display of this hide and skeleton at Melbourne Museum also has a new wonderful item borrowed for display, the Centennial Cup. It's so much bigger than you might expect, just like Phar Lap himself!

Speaking of size, did you know Phar Lap was 17.7hh? If you don't know what 'hh' means, have a look at Measure Island, which opened at Scienceworks this week. All your horse and horse-racing measurement questions will be answered!

And of course, another bit of news was announced this week. Coming in April 2011, the amazing exhibition of Ancient Egyptian artefacts in Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs.

Phew! That's a lot of exhibition news for one week!

We were delighted to win an AVIA award for the Panoramic Navigators in Wild: amazing animals in a changing world. If you'd like to know more you can now head to Museum Times for a podcast interview with Tim Rolfe, Head of MV Studios.

The exhibition design team came up with the Panoramic Navigators as an ingenious alternative to traditional labels for the 770+ specimens on display. With the mounts all the way up the wall, labels would have been impossible to read. Sometimes necessity truly is the mother of invention!

Visitors exploring the displays in Wild using the Panoramic Navigators
Image: Diana Snape
Source: Museum Victoria

You can also check out the Wild virtual exhibition without leaving your chair.

In April the Racing Minister Rob Hulls put out a call to reunite Phar Lap's heart, skeleton and hide to mark the 150th anniversary of anniversary of the Melbourne Cup. His heart, which lives in Canberra at the National Museum, is too fragile to travel. However his skeleton, usually on display at Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, was sturdy enough to make the trip.

Now, after months of planning and packing, it's here! It arrived late last night in two custom-built crates.

Phar Lap's skeleton being escorted up from the loading dock at Melbourne Museum.
Image: Karen Jakubec
Source: Museum Victoria

Of course, we can't be sure it's in there until the crates are opened tomorrow by AQIS, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service. Until then the crates will sit quietly in the collection store. We can't wait to see his skeleton and hide displayed side by side on Thursday.

The crates containing Phar Lap's skeleton awaiting quarantine inspection.
Image: Karen Jakubec
Source: Museum Victoria

If you want to know more about the skeleton, have a look at Te Papa's wonderful video about its preparation for travel:

Links:

Phar Lap Reunion What's On listing

In late August, Melbourne Museum became the 50th docking site of the Melbourne Bike Share Scheme. There is now a flock of bright blue bikes parked on the plaza's west end near Rathdowne Street.

Aerial view of the Bike Share Scheme docking spot on the Melbourne Museum plaza. The red rectangle indicates the exact site.
Source: Museum Victoria

Demand for the bikes is expected from Carlton residents and tourists visiting the museum and we'll watch with interest to see how they're being used.

Coincidentally the docking station was installed within a week of the launch of our staff bike fleet. It's great to see the rise of bicycles as shared public transport, especially here in Melbourne where the bike paths are good and getting better.   

Have you used a blue Bike Share Scheme bike to visit the museum?