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Sustainable Futures Collection
Image: Bark - Queensland Ash
Source: Museum Victoria
This collection encompasses a diverse range of material in the fields of animal husbandry, agriculture, economic botany, food technology and textile technology.
The most significant element of the collection relates to agricultural equipment manufacturer and innovator H.V. McKay. The history of this agricultural enterprise spans from its inception in the 1880s to the present day and forms one of the largest industrial collections in Australia. It provides a window on Australian innovation, agriculture, manufacture, working lives and community life.
The collections take on new meaning with passing time. The large collection of wax models of fruit and vegetables, originally developed for 19th century international exhibitions, now plays a vital role in contributing to our understanding of contemporary issues of biodiversity.
Significant items:
- Models of agricultural equipment commissioned by Museum's first director Frederick McCoy in the 1860s.
- Early stump jump plough and stump jump plough models.
- Early Victorian windmills made James Alston and John Abrahams.
- McCook Collection of models, photographs and trade literature relating to windmills.
- Dethridge irrigation meter.
- Humble & Nicholson portable steam engine.
- Cowley steam traction engine.
- Quinlivan 4-wheel-drive traction engine model.
- Ferguson TEA-20 tractor.
- H.V. McKay Collection: the original McKay farm smithy, 1906 stripper harvester, HST header harvester, Sunshine auto header, rare Sunshine tractor, equipment models, business archives, trade publications, films and photographs.
- International Harvester Collection: comprising images, trade literature, newspaper clippings and documents relating to the marketing and manufacture of agricultural equipment by the American based International Harvester Company.
- Daniel Harvey Collection of trade literture and photographs relating to a small specialist firm producing orcharding and fruit grading equipment at Box Hill.
- Women on Farms Gathering Collection.
- Trade literature of agricultural equipment manufacturers and distributors, including over 12,000 product catalogues and brochures and 3,500 advertisements.
- Extensive collection of economic botany samples, much of it originally displayed at 19th century exhibitions - including items prepared by government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in the 1860s.
- More than 1,900 wax and vegetable fruit models with sketch books and moulds, many of which depict varieties no longer grown commercially.
- Jack Chisholm Fencing Collection - including 1,200 samples of barbed wire and fencing tools.
- May Vale painted timber samples - including many rare and endangered native Australian timbers.
- Pacific Hydro wind turbine.
Items per page: 10 50 (showing 1 - 10) 1542 items
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Van - Itinerant Worker's, circa 1940s
Itinerant worker's travelling living van or cabin (also know as a 'drover's van'), built in the 1940s by Mr Frank Rockliff, near Berrigan, New South Wales. The cabin is constructed fr ...
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Taxidermy Specimen - Leadbeater's Possum, Gymnobelideus leadbeateri, Lake Mountain, Victor ...
Male specimen of a Leadbeater Possum collected in March 1971 at Rotunda, Lake Mountain Road. The leadbeater possum is an endangered marsupial found only in Victoria, Australia. It was ...
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Nest Specimen - Leadbeater's Possum, Gymnobelideus leadbeateri, Victoria, 1991
Constructed of shredded bark and various fibres, this nest was created by a captive female over eight nights in an enclosure on Des Hackett's premises in 1991. Des Hackett was a long-te ...
Images: 4 -
Nest Box - Leadbeater?s Possum, Lake Mountain Plateau, Black Saturday Bushfires, February ...
Nest box collected by a Parks Victoria ranger involved in the Leadbeater?s Possum Recovery Program. The nest box was recovered from the Lake Mountain plateau on the Echo Flat ski trail ...
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Pea Sample - Victorian Dun, Pisum sativum, (Fabaceae), 1880-1960
Sample of split peas in glass jar with stopper. Split peas are the dried, peeled and split seeds of peas, Pisum sativum.
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Rice Sample - Brown Japanese, Dressed, (Gramineae), 1880-1960
Sample of brown Japanese rice, dressed, in glass jar with stopper.
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Rice Sample - Rangoon, Oryza sativa (Gramineae), 1880-1960
Sample of Rangoon rice in glass jar with stopper. Rangoon rice is a variety of Paddy rice.
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Pepper Sample - Black, Piper nigrum (Piperaceae), 1887
Sample of Black pepper seeds from India contained in a glass jar with stopper. This was collected and prepared by T.N.Mukharji as part of his work for the Indian Botanical Gardens. It w ...
Images: 1 -
Bucket - Strathewen, 7 Feb 2009 (Bushfire Damaged)
Green plastic bucket, deformed by heat, which was Bill Putt's last line of defence on Black Saturday, 7 February 2009. He was well prepared to defend his mud-brick home in Strathewen bu ...
Images: 4 -
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Digital Video Recording - 'Rosewood: Before and After the Fire', Black Saturday Bushfires, ...
Bill Putt lives in Strathewen and is best known as one of the founding members of Australian progressive rock band Spectrum. In 2007 he composed a piece of music as a birthday gift for ...
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