After the overwhelming success of Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries, which attracted thousands of tourists and locals to the Library’s Ground Floor Gallery, the Friends are looking forward to a different type of exhibition—one devoted to exploration and adventure. Burke & Wills: From Melbourne to Myth will be a travelling exhibition presented in conjunction with the State Library of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia. It will open on the 27th of this month but, because that date is so close to Easter, our usual ‘early bird’ talk by the curator, in this case the noted environmental lawyer and art historian Professor Tim Bonyhady, will take place on Sunday 7 April. We invite you to hear Tim speak before you enjoy afternoon tea and a tour through the Gallery.
Few colonial events, and certainly no other Australian explorations, have elicited so much art. Visitors to the exhibition will learn a great deal about the courage, vision and possible foolhardiness of the explorers through the rich array of art, manuscripts and objects brought together from private and institutional collections. Significantly, this exhibition will be the first to take this extraordinary story and explore its impact on Australian culture from the 1860s to the present. A journey to Innamincka in South Australia, close to the site of the famous ‘Dig’ tree, is one proposal for this year’s cultural trip away for the Friends of the NLA. Please contact Committee member Warwick Bradney (02 6232 4372) if you would be interested in joining a more comfortable and less tragic, twenty-first-century expedition. §§§ Conflicting dates mean that ‘Encounters with Indigenous Australia’, the seminar we hoped to bring you in April, has been rescheduled for later in the year. It will coincide with the launch of the Bringing Them Home book, co-edited by Doreen Mellor, an Indigenous writer and curator currently managing the Library’s Bringing Them Home Oral History Project, and Anna Haebich, award winning author of Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800–2000. It is anticipated that the seminar program, with cooperative input from organisations such as AIATSIS, ATSIC, the National Gallery and the National Museum, will follow three main themes: Before European Settlement; Encounters with Kultja and Walking the Path of Reconciliation. §§§ Exploration is an endlessly fascinating topic and one to which several members of the Friends have contributed recently in the form of publications. In November last year, Melbourne University Press published The Search for the Inland Sea: John Oxley, Explorer, 1783–1828 by Richard Johnson. Oxley was Surveyor-General for New South Wales and explored eastern Australian from Queensland to Tasmania at various times. Among his discoveries were the Brisbane River and the site of the city of Brisbane. Richard Johnson has kindly agreed to speak to the Friends about researching his book over a ten-year period. Leave your theodolites at home but come along to the Friends lounge on Wednesday 20 March 12.30 pm. Admission is free. Lee
Kirwan |
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