Recent Acquisition Highlights

June 2004

Background

This report offers a review of recent major acquisitions of significance and trends in collection development activity in the National Library. It does not describe the large volume of acquisitions of both Australian and overseas materials that are routinely acquired through deposit, purchase or donation to build the collections.  During the financial year 2003-04 the Library acquired over 400,000 collection items in a wide range of formats.

Australian Printed Materials

The National Library continues to acquire many printed works associated with the European discovery and exploration of Australia.

  • Der Herren Schiffskapitaine Marion du Fresne und de Surville Reisen nach dem nordlichen Theile von Neu-Seeland und dem Sudmeer …/ [edited by Alexis Marie Rochon] Frankfurt; Leipzig, 1788.  The second and best German edition of an important work on Tasmania and New Zealand which gives the first narrative of two important voyages to the Pacific, including the first and second French visits to New Zealand (Surville, 1769 and Marion du Fresne, 1772) and the first French visit to Tasmania (Marion du Fresne, 1772).   The significance of the work concerns Marion du Fresne’s sighting of the northern coast of Tasmania from Blackman’s Bay to North Bay and becoming the first European to establish contact with the Tasmanian Aborigines.  This item has no recorded library holdings in Australia or overseas but is recorded in some bibliographies.
  • Reis rondom de wereld door de zeeen van Indie en China: uitgevoerd met Z.M. korvet van oorlag La Favorite … Zalt-Bommel : Bij Joannes Noman en Zoon, 1834-1836. 7 volumes.  This is the Dutch translation of the French edition of Laplace’s account of his first voyage, 1830-1833 in the Favorite, which included a three months stay in Hobart and Sydney where he collected natural history specimens and made observations.

A number of books related to Australia not previously held in the Library’s collections have been received.  These include nineteenth and twentieth century imprints:

Some interesting fictional works were acquired including pulp and crime fiction from Pioneer books and children’s literature:

  • Gibson. Hell. Sydney, K.G. Murray, ca. 1950.
  • Hume, Fergus. The best of her sex. London, W.H. Allen, [between 1894 and 1914]
  • Hume, Fergus. The crimson cryptogram: a detective story. New York, F M Buckles, [n.d.].
  • Rentoul, Annie R. and Rentoul, Ida . Mollie’s bunyip. Melbourne, Robert Jolley, 1904. Library holds one copy which is in very poor condition. This is the first privately published work of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite and is ‘virtually mint in original paper wrappers’.

The Library is constantly seeking Australian periodicals not represented in the national collection, or individual issues missing from its sets.  Recently this has included The Australian native: a monthly journal … Ballarat, Australian Natives Association.  Vol. 1 nos. 1- 12 (1882-1883), and 14 issues of the Invincible detective magazine covering the period 1950 – 1953.

Australian documentary heritage is also represented by more ephemeral or insubstantial material, and the National Library collects a varied selection documenting aspects of Australian life.  Some examples of recent acquisitions include sport and the theatre:

  • Souvenir programme, Australia vs Rhodesia, Queens Ground, Bulawayo, 11th, 12 thand 14thNovember 1949.
  • Official souvenir of Australian cricket tour of India, 1959-60. Bombay, The Board of Control for Cricket in India, 1960. The Library has very little in the collection for cricket programs from Indiaor Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
  • The Anglo-American Sporting Club presents A boxing-dinner evening in aid of The Lord Taverner’s Fund. Our guest of honour on this occasion is Sir Donald Bradman in recognition of his unique and unforgettable contribution to world cricket, LondonHilton, Monday 13thMay, 1974. A Menu/programme with cartoon of Sir Donald Bradman by Roy Ullyett on the front cover.
  • Citizens CommonwealthCommittee. Invitation card to a Smoke Concert tendered to the Imperial Forces & Naval Forces, on Friday evening January 11th 1901, at 8 p. m. in the Centennial Hall.
  • Theatre of Youth. Three broadside programs for performances in Sydney. Programs for 1929 and two for 1930. The Theatre of Youth introduced to Australia a phase of the new and rapidly growing movement to get back to the simplicity of stage art, by relying on the imagination of the audience. These broadsides are the Library’s first acquisitions of this theatre for children. No recorded copies on Kinetica.

Australian Electronic Publications

The Library’s Digital Archiving Unit seeks out and archives significant Australian websites and other electronic documents as a way of preserving this aspect of Australia’s published heritage material.  The following examples of items recently archived show the diversity of the material being collected and preserved:

  • Linking a Nation: Australia’s transport and communications 1788-1970
  • A scholarly thematic history research project commissioned by the Australian Heritage Commission.
  • The Fanatics - The web site of the colourful organisation formed in 1997 to support Australian sport at home and abroad.
  • State of Australian Cities Conference - Web site and proceedings of the first conference to look at issues facing Australian cities. The Conference was held in December 2003.
  • Chifley Research Centre - The Centre promotes public policy debate and progressive thinking in Australia. The web site includes publications produced by the Centre.
  • Spam - The report by NOIE on the extent of the problems arising from spam and the adequacy of current measures to counter the problems.

Asian Collections

Genji monogatari [The tale of Genji].  Tokyo: Maruzen, 2003.  The Tale of Genji was written in old Japanese in the eleventh century by a Japanese noblewoman, Murasaki Shikibu, and is generally considered to be the world’s first ‘novel’: that is, sustained imaginary prose writings.  The original text was published in the early 12th century.  This limited edition replica set is a scrupulous facsimile published in Japanof the 12th century original in four handscroll volumes. The Tale of Genji was translated into English by Arthur Waley (1935), Edward Seidensticker (1976) and most recently, by Professor Royall Tyler (2001), Emeritus Professor of Japanese, The Australian National University.  The Library holds all three editions but up to now has not possessed any version of the original text.  Two 17th century editions of the Genji monogatari, loaned respectively by the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin and the National Diet Library, Japan, were featured in the Library’s Treasures exhibition.

China Academic Journals [electronic resource].  The Library was successful in negotiating a satisfactory licence agreement with the Beijing vendors of this important Chinese language research resource.  China Academic Journals is a Web-accessible database consisting of full text articles from over 2,000 scholarly journals in politics, government, social sciences and the humanities.

Yonbyon ilbo.A facsimile reproduction in 140 volumes of a major Korean language newspaper published in Chinabetween the years of 1948 to 1973.  The newspaper documents the activities of more than 2 million ethnic Koreans, both refugees and immigrants, in northern China.  The Library’s copy is the only one in Australia.

Overseas Materials

The Dr John Cooper Theosophy Collection was acquired through the Cultural Gifts Program. This important research collection of monographs, journals and manuscript material contains significant material that can now be made available to researchers although it may take some time before the whole collection is brought under bibliographic control.

Ireland: Politics and Society through the Press, 1760-1922 is a comprehensive selection of Irish newspapers and periodicals acquired on microfilm.  It consists of 1,080 reels covering the period from the accession of George III to Irish independence.  No other library in Australia holds the complete set. This significant research resource will complement the Early English Newspapers microform collection, purchase of which was completed in 2002.

The Library received a donation of 196 books from Embassies of the French-speaking countries during Francophonie Week 2004.  The Embassies were from Belgium, France, Romania, Switzerland, Arab Republic of Egypt, Canada, and Mauritius.

1,808 dissertations from the UMI Dissertations on microfiche series were added to the collection.  Many are by Australians studying overseas or on Australian topics.

The Oxford Lectern Bible produced by Bruce Rogers for Oxford University Press, 1935 was purchased from Christopher Busta-Peck, a librarian in USA. The Bible is highly regarded for its beautiful printing and typography.

The provision of access to electronic resources continues to be a priority.  During the last six months, the following resources have been made available:

  • Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) provides access to the full text images of every page of 150,000 titles published between 1701-1800. ECCO offers full-text searching of approximately 33 million pages, allowing researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.  It is based on The English Short Title Catalogue, a machine-readable union list of the holdings of the British Library, as well as those from more than 1,500 university, private and public libraries worldwide.  A wide variety of materials are included—from books and broadsides, Bibles, tract books and sermons to printed ephemera—with works by many well-known and lesser-known authors. These include significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered (including all 500 editions of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe) to enable scholars to make textual comparisons of the works.
  • Nine e-book encyclopaedia titles from the Gale Virtual Reference Library were purchased with no limit to the number of concurrent users, and users will be able to search across all the e-books simultaneously.

Manuscripts

The Library has acquired manuscripts relating to two famous colonial figures who, among many other activities, both owned and edited newspapers.  John Pascoe Fawkner started the Launceston Advertiser in 1828. Seven years later he led an expedition to Port Phillip Bay, thereby becoming one of the founders of Melbourne.  In 1838 he issued the first newspaper, the Melbourne Advertiser.  As there was no printing press in Melbourne, the first nine weekly issues were handwritten and copies are now extremely rare.  At a sale in Melbourne, the Library bought a copy of the ninth issue, to add to the issues 1,2, 8 and 10 which were already held.  In 1850 Henry Parkes, who was later five times Premier of New South Wales, set up as the owner-editor of The Empire, the main organ of liberalism and radicalism in the colony.  In 1858 the paper collapsed and Parkes was faced with near-bankruptcy.  The Library has received a group of papers of one of the trustees, the wealthy merchant Samuel Gordon, which includes many letters of Parkes.

Shipboard diaries of emigrants are relatively common, but the journal kept by the Reverend William Trollope on his voyage to Australia on the John Munn in 1849 is full of incident.  His daughter died within a few days of sailing.  During the five months at sea there was continual friction over poor provisions, dissension over religious services and drunken, riotous behaviour.  In an attempted mutiny, the captain was rescued by passengers, who then had to take the watches.  At Adelaide Trollope gave his account of the voyage to the local press and was then abused by the ungrateful captain.  The journal was purchased at a Melbourne sale, along with four pamphlets by Trollope: The Roman Catholics of Port Phillip and their champion (1850) and three sermons that he later delivered in Hobart.

At the same sale the Library bought some letters written to Sir Arthur Streeton by other artists and political figures, including Nellie Melba and Blamire Young.

Possibly the ablest of the early Governors-General was Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, who arrived in Australia shortly before the outbreak of World War I and remained until after the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1920.  His correspondence and despatches were received nearly fifty years ago and have been used by innumerable historians.  His family have now deposited the diaries that he kept in Australia, written in an italic hand in a mixture of English, Scottish Gaelic and bad French.  Written without restraint, they will be an important source on Anglo-Australian relations during a critical period.  Another Anglo-Australian diarist was the composer, pianist and oarsman Frederick Septimus Kelly, who was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  His 1907-15 diaries, which have just been published by the Library, record the life of a wealthy young man who moved effortlessly in the highest political, social and cultural circles in Englandand Australia.  The final diary has not been discovered, but the Library has received a transcript made in the 1920s which record his experiences at Gallipoli and France right up to the time of his death.

The journalist Keith Murdoch, who was four years younger than Kelly and of much humbler origins, lived in Englandin 1908-9.  Whereas Kelly went to concerts and parties, Murdoch attended lectures and sought treatment for his dreadful stammer.  He nearly obtained a post on the Pall Mall Gazette, but in the final interview, ‘my speaking collapsed’.  Dame Elisabeth Murdoch has donated the letters that the young Murdoch wrote from London to his clergyman father, which give a different picture of the man who was to become one of the most powerful newspaper owners in Australia.

In more recent times, two of the most outspoken journalists, with close connections with political leaders, have been Francis James and Phillip Adams.  James was the editor of The Anglican in Sydney, a man with strong views on a range of domestic and international issues, especially the Vietnam War.  He visited China several times and was imprisoned there from 1969 to 1973 on a charge of espionage.  He died in 1992 and Joyce James has now presented a substantial collection of his papers.  Phillip Adams has been prominent for over thirty years as a filmmaker, newspaper columnist and broadcaster.  An accumulator of papers on a grand scale, he has transferred another large instalment.

There have been other major additions of literary papers.  The Library began buying papers of the poet Les Murray in the early 1970s, when he was quite young.  Instalments have followed every few years and, while negotiations have not always been easy, it now has a fine collection of manuscripts, correspondence and other papers of the most famous poet in Australia.  Bob Brissenden was a poet, novelist and academic, who had close links with the Library through the David Nichol Smith Seminars.  He transferred many of his papers in 1990, shortly before his death.   Rosemary Brissenden has now donated further papers, including an extensive family correspondence.  Other writers whose papers have been augmented include Rosemary Dobson and Richard Hall.

Historians of various kinds are well represented in recent acquisitions.  They include correspondence files and draft articles of the Irish Australian historian Oliver MacDonagh, who was the foundation Professor of History at Flinders University.  Miriam Dixson, whose book The Real Matilda was one of the first feminist interpretations of Australian history, has transferred drafts of her books and articles, many of them dealing with Australian identity.  The journalist and Pacific historian, Robert Langdon, who was in charge of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau for many years, left a very large collection of papers which his daughter has donated to the Library.  Richard Magoffin has passed over correspondence and other papers relating to his research on the origins of ‘Waltzing Matilda’.  The ‘History Wars’ are documented in a growing number of collections, a good example being the papers of the publisher Peter Ryan, whose attack on the reputation of Manning Clark was a key event in the continuing war.

Other acquisitions have included papers of the geographer and environmentalist George Seddon, the photographer Juno Gemes, the folklorist June Factor, the gallery director Anne Von Bertouch, and Kenneth Binns, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Librarian from 1928 to 1947.  The files of Edith Waller, who was secretary of the Friends of the ABC, are a useful source on the politics of public broadcasting.  A very large collection of papers was presented by the expatriate actor, producer and writer Peter O’Shaughnessy.  Finally, a few sporting manuscripts have been purchased: a letter of Hubert Opperman written during the Tour de France in 1928, a letter of Don Bradman written during the 1930 tour of England, and a handwritten article by Bill O’Reilly on the art of spin bowling.

Maps

Four rare atlases and 64 rare maps were acquired by the Library during the period December 2003-May 2004.

The Astronomia-Teutsch Astronomei is a very rare and unusual mid-sixteenth century German astronomical atlas, published by Cyriaco Jacob zum Barth at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1545. Written in Gothic German, it is a detailed study of astronomy and includes over 90 small woodcut illustrations with text showing astrological symbols, horoscopes, armillary spheres, diagrams of the constellations, astronomical and planetary diagrams. A significant aspect of the work is a windhead world map, oriented to the south, and with the southern hemisphere landmass titled Australia—the proper noun form of the Latin word Australis – some 250 years before its use by Matthew Flinders.

The very attractive and unusual German school atlas titled D. Vogel’s Schul-Atlas was compiled by Karl Vogel and published in Leipzig around 1841. It was issued in a loose-leaf format without a title sheet, the collection of maps housed in a gilt-edged box with clasp. The work consists of 16 hand-coloured maps of the continents of the world, with more detailed maps of parts of Europe. Significant physical features such as deserts and mountain ranges are shown as well as the political states of that time. Surrounding each map plate is a detailed and highly decorative border featuring either native peoples and plants of the region or, in the case of the European plates, notable buildings and monarchs. A later hand has added, in manuscript, information such as names and life-dates of the persons depicted. The borders have also been hand-coloured. Accompanying the plates are 17 hand-written pages providing an index and additional information about the maps. The work is very rare with only one other copy known to be in a listed public collection—at the Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Schwerin, Germany.

A pair of late nineteenth century German thematic atlases featuring very detailed climatic maps of the Indian and PacificOceanswereacquired. Indischer Ozean: ein Atlas von 35 Karten, die physikalischen Verhältnisse und die Verkehrs-Strassen Darstellend, mit einer erläuternden einleitung und als Beilage zum Segelhandbuch für den Indischen Ozean and Stiller Ozean: ein Atlas von 31 Karten, die physikalischen Verhältnisse und die Verkehrs-Strassen Darstellend, mit einer erläuternden einleitung und als Beilage zum Segelhandbuch für den Stiller Ozean were published in Hamburg in the 1890s.

The Map Collection’s coverage of nineteenth century geological maps of Australia was significantly improved by the acquisition of a collection of 64 maps of Australia by a number of pioneering geologists. The collection includes R. Brough Smyth’s 1875 map of Australia, Arthur Everett’s 1887 map and manuscript annotations regarding mineral occurrences in New South Wales by Arthur Liversidge.

Music and Dance

Recent music acquisitions illustrate the variety of people who have a passionate and active interest in collecting, preserving and making accessible music materials of significance to Australia and its people. A collection of approximately 2,500 sheet music items of individual songs and music from a range of Broadway and West End musicals was purchased from Mr Peter Pinne. Dating from the early 1900s to the present day, the collection comprehensively covers a musical genre that has had enormous popularity and influence in both Australia and overseas, through the stage, film and television.

Musical sketches and scores of the Australian composer Richard Meale were also acquired, with much of the collection gathered from his rainforest retreat in Mullumbimby. Australian composer Elena Kats Chernin offered materials relating to her collaboration with choreographer Meryl Tankard on the ballet Wild Swans, providing a glimpse into the world of Australian artistic collaboration.

Dr Albrecht Dümling, a 2004 Harold White Fellow and musicologist from Berlin, has donated a small but valuable collection of music scores and recordings of composer Sydney John Kay (1906-1970), who was born in Leipzig and lived in Sydney from 1937-1955, working as a musical arranger, composer, theatre producer and director. Kay was one of the subjects of Dr Dümling’s research project on German speaking refugee musicians in Australia.

Recent additions to the Library’s dance material reflect the diversity of dance in Australia. Material has been acquired from Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, documenting ballet, early modern dance, multicultural performance and current innovation. Dance acquisitions have been made in all the Library’s special collection formats.

A manuscript collection was acquired from the estate of Margaret Lasica, pioneer of modern dance in Victoria; ephemera and multimedia items were donated by the Brisbane-based group Igneous Inc; a PhD thesis on the work of Malaysian-Australian choreographer Kai Tai Chan was received from its author Garry Lester; a portfolio of exhibition prints from photographer Alex Makeyev documented productions by the Adelaide-based company Leigh Warren and Dancers; and items of ephemera were received from TasDance. In addition, oral history interviews were recorded with two luminaries of the Australian Ballet, artistic director David McAllister and principal dancer Steven Heathcote. An interview was also recorded with Lucy Guerin, contemporary choreographer whose work combines movement with new technology, including computer generated movement.

Oral History

In the field of the arts, Dr Michelle Potter recorded interviews with the artistic director of the Australian Ballet, David McAllister and Principal Artist Stephen Heathcote.  Bill Stephens interviewed John Clark, director of NIDA from 1969 to 2004, Elizabeth Butcher, the general manager of NIDA, and veteran cabaret performer Maria Venuti.  James Waites interviewed the actors Doreen Warburton, Melissa Jaffer and Peter Collingwood. He also recorded theatre designer and female impersonator Rose Jackson. Dr Ruth Lee Martin interviewed composer Ann Carr Boyd.  In Perth, John Bannister interviewed the artist Bob Juniper.  In Adelaide, Rob Linn interviewed the glass artist Stephen Skillitzi.

In the field of medical research, Dr Peter Pockley and Dr Susan Marsden made valuable contributions.  In Canberra, Dr Pockley recorded an interview with Professor Rolf Zinkernagel, co-winner with Professor Peter Doherty in 1994 of the Nobel Prize for Medical Research. In Melbourne, he recorded interviews with immunologist Professor Jacques Miller, AC and haemotologist Emeritus Professor Don Metcalf, AC.  Returning to Canberra, he recorded interviews with distinguished microbiologist Professor Cedric Mimms and historian of science Dr Ann Moyal.  In Adelaide, Dr Marsden recorded an interview with Dr Grant Sutherland, AC, Affiliate Professor in the Departments of Paediatrics and Genetics at the University of Adelaide and Director of the Department of Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics at the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital since 1975. 

In the field of environmental research, Gregg Borschmann recorded interviews with Dr Margaret Friedel in Alice Springs and Dr Peter Hitchcock in Cairns.  Dr Friedel is a noted arid-zone environmental scientist.  Dr Hitchcock is a former chief executive of the Wet Tropics Authority. 

In the field of Indigenous history, Professor Peter Read and Jackie Huggins recorded five more interviews for the Seven Years On project. Interviewees included Jackie Huggins herself; Wesley Patten - a successful footballer, actor and company director; Sandra Phillips - the managing editor of AIATSIS Press, Angelina Tabuteau-Moore - a student support officer; and Lester Irabinna Rigney - a senior lecturer and director of Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research at Flinders University.  This project is now in its second phase i.e. each member of this group of interviewees was first interviewed seven years ago.  In Tully, North Queensland, Gregg Borschmann recorded an extensive interview with Indigenous elder, historian and teacher Ernie Grant.

In the fields of religion, government, law, public policy, literature, history and folklore a number of key interviews were recorded: Criena Fitzgerald interviewed the Chief Rabbi of Perth, Dr Shalom Coleman; Dr Peter Pockley interviewed Canon Rex Davis; Peter Donovan interviewed the former Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia, Dr Bazil Hetzel, AC; John Farquharson recorded interviews with the constitutional lawyer Emeritus Professor Leslie Zines, AO and the former Commonwealth Attorney-General R. J. Ellicott QC; Dr Barry York recorded an interview with ‘the father of multiculturalism’ Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, AO;  Professor Bruce Bennett interviewed Emeritus Professor Harry Heseltine, AO; Dr Susan Marsden recorded an interview with Northern Territory-based historian Dr David Carment; Dr Edgar Waters recorded an interview with the folklore scholar, collector and publisher, Hugh Anderson; Ann Turner recorded an interview with the redoubtable traditional singer Danny Spooner.

In the fields of librarianship and archives administration, Dr Jan Lyall interviewed Janine Schmidt, Librarian at the University of Queenslandand Ray Edmondson, Emeritus Curator, ScreenSound Australia.

Finally, in the field of Australian aviation history, Rob Linn recorded seven interviews, with funds provided from the E.A. Crome Trust Fund. Interviewees are as follows: Len Wilmington, a former air traffic controller, lecturer in air traffic control and bush padre; Dr Rob Lee, a former head of the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation and currently one of the world’s leading authorities on air safety; Neville Probert, the head of the Airworthiness Standards Branch of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority; Mick Toller, the head of the Civil Aviation Standards Authority; David Adams, a leading authority in the field of air safety; Air Vice-Marshall David Rogers, AM, formerly Chief of Staff, RAAF; and Colin Torkington, formerly head of the Airworthiness Standards Branch, CASA.

Pictures

The period December 2003 to May 2004 saw a welcome strengthening of Pictures Collection holdings relating to Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

A watercolour of the Queensland Hotel, 1887, in Roma, Qld, was purchased at Deutscher Menzies Australian & International Fine Art Sale in Sydney on 10 March 2004.  The lively watercolour shows the newly-built hotel with the modern conveniences of telegraph and gas street lighting. Facsimiles of 22 drawings relating to the expedition led by William Oswald Hodgkinson, in 1875-1876, to explore the area between Etheridge and Cloncurry gold fields were purchased from Berkeleows.  Hodgkinson was commissioned by the Queensland government to survey this area of North West Queensland for its pastoral and mining potential. The facsimiles, possibly created by Hodgkinson himself, are the only known visual record of the expedition, and complement the published government report. Two photographic albums were purchased from the sale of the Ron Ramsey Library: an album of photographic views of Toowoomba, 1885-86 and a panorama album by Bob Belbin of Mackay in 1926. These fill gaps in the Pictures Collection’s coverage of major Queensland regional towns. Discussions with the State Library of Queensland before these sales established that the State Library did not have funds available to bid for these items.

Changes in the landscapes of Western and Northern Australia are a major theme of 63 magnificent colour photographs purchased from Perth photographer Richard Woldendorp. Many are aerial shots taken in the 1990s, depicting topics such as contour ploughing, bauxite mining, the effect of salinity on lake systems, burning off in Kakadu National Park and the development of canal estates. The collection also includes portraits of Western Australian artists Brian Blanchflower and Hans Arkeveld.

A collection of 90 glass plate negatives of images used in books by Ion Idriess was purchased at a Charles Leski auction in Melbourne.  Among the slides are several scenes of Broome, including a pearl-shell altar and a view of the divers’ graveyard with Chinese inscriptions on tombstones; portraits of Dymphna Cusack as a young woman; portraits of other authors such as Frank Clune and E.V. Timms; and a delightful picture of a stockman emptying a water bag into the crown of a hat on the ground, so that his dog can drink.

The project to collect photographs of the 2003 bushfires continued. Thirty-three dramatic colour photographic prints of the fires near Omeo, Victoria, were purchased from newspaper photographer Simon O’Dwyer. As a professional photographer O’Dwyer has managed to overcome the difficult light conditions and record the work of volunteer fire fighters, evacuations, and even the strength of the wind. These photographs compliment previous acquisitions which focussed on the 2003 fires in the ACT.

Other major acquisitions for the period included 37 original cartoons by Judy Horacek, a further instalment of photographs of rural life and popular culture from Jeff Carter, and an oil portrait of artist John Wolseley by Judy Cassab.

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