The New Maritime Museum

The new Western Australian Maritime Museum on Victoria Quay, Fremantle was opened to the public on Sunday, December 1 by the Premier of Western Australia, Hon Dr Geoff Gallop. The development of the new Western Australian Maritime Museum is a Western Australian State Government initiative.

The building looks out towards the western horizon, another symbol of the Museum’s intention to look outwards to Western Australia’s contemporary role in the Indian Ocean region. The site for the Museum was chosen because of its great historical and cultural significance and its position in the working port, making it the ideal place to tell the stories of Western Australia’s early explorers, trade routes, naval defence, migration and the cultural richness that has resulted.

The New Galleries

As the first Museum of the Indian Ocean, the new Western Australian Maritime Museum looks at the past and our future as a community on the edge of the Indian Ocean. With significant historic objects and boats that highlight Western Australias sporting and adventure heritage, the exhibitions tell the stories of human endeavour that bring to life our maritime past.The exhibitions have been developed by the Western Australian Museum in conjunction with Melbourne design company Cunningham Martyn Design.

The new Museum has six themed galleries:

• The Indian Ocean-
• Tin Canoe to Australia II
• Fremantle and the Swan River
• Hooked on Fishing- Cargoes
• Naval Defence

Maritime History and Archaeology

The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory's Maritime Gallery houses the largest museum collection of Southeast Asian historic boats and ethnographic watercraft in Australia and possibly in the world. The Gallery has a permanent display of 21 boats and canoes.Darwin is often regarded as being part of the Southeast Asian region because of its closer proximity to Asian cities such as Singapore and Jakarta, rather than Australian cities such as Sydney, or Melbourne.

The Maritime Gallery clearly reflects this regional bias, indeed the collection policy that has driven the acquisition of this unique collection over the last 25 years, has demanded it. The region, defined as "North Australia (the area to the north of Broome on the west coast and Townsville on the east coast), Southeast Asia (including southern China) and the westernPacific (as far east as the islands of Fiji) has the greatest diversity of boat types from which to choose anywhere in the world.

Individual craft displayed in the Gallery include, an Australian pearling lugger (actually gaff, rather than lug rigged), a Vietnamese refugee boat, a Chinese refugee boat, Indonesian perahu lambo (gunter rigged sloops) and a perahu lete lete (lateen rigged). In addition, there are several smaller planked craft and double outrigger canoes including a fine Balinese jukung.

One of the most outstanding Indonesian boats on display was specifically commissioned by the MAGNT and built in a traditional manner by a boat building community in south-east Sulawesi. Known as a perahu padawakang, this type of historic boat was the kind of vessel that the Makassans sailed the Timor and Arafura seas during the nineteenth century to reach northern Australia in search of trepang, turtle shell and other marine products.

Several examples of watercraft from the western Pacific are also on display. These include a very rare balangut, an inter-island trading canoe from Riwo near Madang in Papua New Guinea, a war canoe from the Solomon Islands and beautiful single outrigger canoe from Fiji. There are also a number of single outrigger canoes.Recognised by many scholars as a vital source for future studies in maritime technology and cultural studies, the maritime historian, archaeologist, anthropologist, school group or enthusiast will not be disappointed. The Maritime History andArchaeology section also undertakes maritime heritage surveys and administers the Historic Shipwrecks Program in the NT for the Australian Government.

Maritime Gallery

The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory's (MAGNT) Maritime Gallery houses the largest museum collection of Southeast Asian historic boats and ethnographic watercraft in Australia. The Gallery has a permanent display of 21 boats and canoes. Darwin is often regarded as being part of the Southeast Asian region because of its closer proximity to Asian cities such as Singapore and Jakarta, rather than Australian cities such as Sydney, or Melbourne.

The Maritime Gallery clearly reflects this regional bias: indeed the collection policy that has driven the acquisition of this unique collection over the last 25 years, has demanded it. The region, defined as ‘North Australia’ (the area to the north of Broome on the west coast and Townsville on the east coast), Southeast Asia (including southern China) and the western Pacific (as far east as the islands of Fiji) has the greatest diversity of boat types anywhere in the world.

Individual craft displayed in the Gallery include an Australian pearling lugger (actually gaff, rather than lug rigged), a Vietnamese refugee boat, a Chinese refugee boat, Indonesian perahu lambo (gunter rigged sloop) and a perahu lete lete (lateen rigged). In addition, there are several smaller planked craft and double outrigger canoes, including a fine Balinese jukung. One of the most outstanding Indonesian boats on display was specifically commissioned by the MAGNT and built in a traditional manner by a boat building community in south-east Sulawesi. Known as a perahu padewakang, this type of historic boat was the kind of vessel that the monsoon traders (known as the Macassans) sailed the Timor and Arafura seas during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reach northern Australia in search of trepang, turtle shell and other marine products.

Several examples of watercraft from the western Pacific are also on display. These include a very rare balangut, an inter-island trading canoe from Riwo near Madang in Papua New Guinea, a war canoe from the Solomon Islands, and beautiful single outrigger canoe from Fiji. There are also a number of single outrigger canoes.

Marine Painting

As early as colonial times, Atlantic ports such as Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Charleston were established hubs of American commerce. It was common for wealthy ship owners, mariners, and merchants to commission pictures of the boats and activities by which they made their living. Following British and Dutch models, many artists specialized in marine paintings.

The first American marine paintings centered on the ports themselves, which were often viewed across the water as if from the deck of a ship. These harbor scenes frequently included ship traffic and illustrated mercantile activities along the wharves, suggesting the prosperity of America's flourishing maritime industry. In ship paintings, a harbor view might indicate the vessel's home port, as in Thomas Chambers' New York Harbor with Pilot Boat "George Washington".

Throughout the nineteenth century, proud ship owners commissioned individual portraits of their commercial vessels and racing yachts. Marine painters became skilled not only at precisely delineating the rigging of sailing ships but also at capturing effects of water and sky. The standard format showed the boat broadside, under full sail or steam, generally with other craft in the distance and perhaps a glimpse of the far shore.

In the mid-nineteenth century, marine painting shifted emphasis from man to nature. No longer interested in illustrations of commerce, artists like John Frederick Kensett and Fitz Henry Lane strove to capture the spiritual qualities of sea and sky. These scenes may include ships and human figures, but the true subject is the mood evoked by the crystalline atmosphere and pervading sense of serenity. Now called luminist works, these paintings indicate a change in the prevailing attitude toward the natural world.

Martin Johnson Heade and Thomas Moran were interested in more naturalistic representations. The unearthly calm of luminist works was replaced by realistic seascapes in which the viewer can almost hear the crashing surf. Winslow Homer added figures to this natural realism and reintroduced the human element to marine painting. His works focus on man's relationship with nature, and he uses the sea to embody nature's power. It is a constant and varied element, depicted both as provider of subsistence and a life-threatening force.

The impressionists favored another aspect of marine painting--that of leisure. Their interest in the sea had more to do with light and color than using a body of water as a dramatic device. Their stylistic methods provided artists with new ways to present intimate aspects of the sea, such as the picturesque coves and seasides dotted with revelers represented by Maurice Prendergast.

Twentieth-century artists experimented with a variety of styles and techniques in their interpretations of the sea. Modernist John Marin captured the ocean's energy with exuberant brushwork and abstract geometric shapes. Mark Rothko used surrealist-inspired biomorphic forms to suggest sea creatures in a primordial marine world. Albert Christ-Janer's lithograph combines the brilliant color of sun, sea, and sky with the rhythmic patterns of foaming waves. Vija Celmins approaches total abstraction in her quiet, meditative ocean views.

Maritime Art Beside the Canal

Plans are in the pipeline to install artwork with a maritime theme to enhance the entrance to the Canal Basin.

The artwork will take the form of a marine buoy, currently located at Piazza Terracina, mounted on a granite plinth. The buoy, which is a similar design to the one that marks safe water at the entrance to the estuary, is to be moved and restored with a flashing light in the centre. It will stand on the plinth, which is to be engraved with a wave design, and will incorporate a section of the poem, "The Seafarer", translated from the Exeter Book, and interpretative information. The work will be located on the area known as Kings Arms Isthmus between Canal Basin and the entrance to Riverside Valley Park.

The plans, which have been submitted for Council planning approval, show the park entrance improved with more trees, new seats and lighting.

Proposals are also being developed for removing inappropriate fencing, and widening the cyclepath, as part of the wider Riverside Valley Park improvements which were developed from the public consultation held in 2003-4.

The cost of the cycleway and lighting are to be funded by Sustrans and Devon County Council. Exeter City Council has approved a budget of £130,000 for the rest of the improvements.

Maritime Art Beside The Canal

Plans are in the pipeline to install artwork with a maritime theme to enhance the entrance to the Canal Basin.

The artwork will take the form of a marine buoy, currently located at Piazza Terracina, mounted on a granite plinth. The buoy, which is a similar design to the one that marks safe water at the entrance to the estuary, is to be moved and restored with a flashing light in the centre. It will stand on the plinth, which is to be engraved with a wave design, and will incorporate a section of the poem, "The Seafarer", translated from the Exeter Book, and interpretative information. The work will be located on the area known as Kings Arms Isthmus between Canal Basin and the entrance to Riverside Valley Park.

The plans, which have been submitted for Council planning approval, show the park entrance improved with more trees, new seats and lighting.

Proposals are also being developed for removing inappropriate fencing, and widening the cyclepath, as part of the wider Riverside Valley Park improvements which were developed from the public consultation held in 2003-4.

The cost of the cycleway and lighting are to be funded by Sustrans and Devon County Council. Exeter City Council has approved a budget of £130,000 for the rest of the improvements.

Our Maritime Heritage

The Northern Territory’s maritime heritage extends to all human activities connected to the sea and in some cases to inland waters and river systems. It includes places, buildings (such as custom houses), structures (such as lighthouses, jetties and wharfs) as well as shipwrecks, aircraft wrecks (in the sea), sites of maritime industry, objects, stories, archival records (about maritime matters) beliefs, meanings, artworks (maritime rock art) and numerous uses of the sea.

The Northern Territory has a rich, diverse and interesting maritime history which began with the arrival of Indigenous Australians some 60,000 years ago. It includes Australia’s first maritime industry, the ‘trepang trade’, introduced by the ‘ Macassans’ (the 18th and 19th century monsoon traders of Indonesia), who first visited our shores (c.1700-1907) before European occupation (1788) to collect marine products which were traded as far as China.

Maritime heritage is an important part of our identity. Other activities associated with the sea, other than trade include fishing, pearling, shipping, underwater communication cables, military campaigns (WWII), immigration, refugees (the American war in Vietnam) and tourism. All of these have helped shape our identity and locate us firmly in our region.