Gallery
Enjoy our gallery which showcases some of the exciting maritime history to be found in Australia and our region – on the seas, in our museums and in the archives! We encourage our members to share their favourite images to the gallery.
The painting “Port Melbourne Steamers 1954” by John Woodlands depicts the “James Paterson” in the busy Port of Melbourne. The tugboat was built in 1902 at South Shields, England, and was named after James Paterson, a Scottish immigrant who came to Melbourne in 1852, and established a large business which included a towage business in port Phillip Bay.
Image Credit: John Woodlands
The wreck of the Star of Greece in 1888 at Willunga was one of South Australia’s worst maritime disasters.
Image credit: Artist George Frederick Gregory, ca. 1888, State Library of South Australia, B12016.
https://digital.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/nodes/view/550
The Adelaide Steamship Company’s passenger and cargo ship SS Koombana was purpose-built for the Northwest trade. In 1912 it disappeared in a cyclone between Port Hedland and Broome, W.A., and remains one of Australia’s outstanding maritime mysteries.
Image Credit: Alan C. Green, State Library Victoria H91.250/1542
https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE932909&mode=browse
The steam whalechaser Cheynes IV with whale oil storage tanks at Whaleworld Museum, Albany, Western Australia. Over 180 years of commercial whaling in Australia ended with the closure of the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company in 1978.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Old and new transport routes intersect at an Aboriginal bark canoe scar tree, located on the road verge at Currency Creek, South Australia.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Sport or lifestyle? Either way surfing has had a profound influence on Australian culture, with numerous world champions shaped by the world-class point breaks at Kirra, Narrabeen, Angourie, Bells Beach and Northwest Western Australia shown here.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
The Western Australian Maritime Museum located on historic Victoria Quay, Fremantle opened its doors to the public in 2002, showcasing Western Australian and Indian Ocean maritime history.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
A Collins Class submarine passes shipping in Cockburn Sound as it slips out of HMAS Stirling, Fleet Base West, Garden Island.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
The Batavia longboat replica operated by the Batavia Coast Maritime Heritage Association, moored in Geraldton, Western Australia.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Archaeologists excavate a sealers’ shelter dating to around 1820-22 at Elephant Point, Livingstone Island, South Shetland Islands in 2014. Note whale verterbrae stools and tables and whalebone rib roof beams.
Image Credit: Michael Pearson
A group of large sailing vessels at anchor off Sandridge (Port Melbourne) in 1863. Small boats are seen in the foreground, the nearest of which contains a harbour pilot or ship’s officer. On the far right is the tower and chimney of the Victoria Sugar Company. It was a prominent landmark for vessels sailing through the heads and across Port Phillip Bay to the two piers at Sandridge.
Image Credit: Sandridge [Port Melbourne] from Hobson’s Bay (1863)”, a lithograph by French artist Francois Cogne (1829-1883) and published by Melbourne printer Charles Trodel as part of a series called The Melbourne Album. (State Library of Victoria, image 30328102131686/plate 11
Aboriginal people fishing in a river in bark canoes, South Australia ca. 1894-95.
Image credit: Artist William Anderson Cawthorne, Kuree Paltee. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, V/95.
https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/collection-items/kuree-paltee-william-anderson-cawthorne-ca-1894-1895
Pallawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal people) with bundled paperbark boats used for coastal and offshore voyaging, observed at Schouten Island, Tasmania during Baudin’s visit in 1802.
Image credit: Artist: Charles Alexandre Leseur
The maritime cultural landscape of Galle, Sri Lanka reflects its rich history as a major port on the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ connecting Asia, India, the Middle East and Europe.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
The galleries of the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum at Huskisson, NSW, tell the stories of Aboriginal and European use of the region. Huskisson was an important regional shipbuilding centre for over 100 years from the 1860’s.
Image Credit: Peter Ridgway
Snorkellers inspect the wreck of Batavia (1629), Houtman Abrolhos Islands, Western Australia.
Image Credit: Howard Gray
MV Aurora Australis was purpose-built for the Australian Antarctic program. It was the central platform for Australia’s Antarctic and Southern Ocean research for a record 31 years, between 1989 and 2020. It was known affectionately as the ‘Orange Roughy’.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
A busy scene as workers load up traditional wooden 'phinisi' at the Old Port, Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, 2015.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Shipwrights tools at Armfields Slipway Wooden Boats workshed, Goolwa, South Australia.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Archaeologists excavate a sealers’ shelter dating to around 1820-22 at Elephant Point, Livingstone Island, South Shetland Islands (2014).
Image Credit: Michael Pearson
The Blackwall frigate Carlisle Castle, built 1868 leaving Gravesend, U.K. It was lost with all hands in the same gale that wrecked the ship City of York off Fremantle in 1899.
Image credit: A.D. Edwardes Collection, State Library of South Australia, PRG 1373/2/48
https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/PRG+1373/2/48
SS Great Britain was the first ocean-going ship with a screw propeller, and the largest ship afloat when built in 1843. Between 1852 and 1876 it made 32 round trips between Britain and Australia carrying an estimated 15,000 immigrants, as well as the first English cricket team to tour Australia in 1861.
Image credit: Artist Unknown, ca. 1860s, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, ML 81.
https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110327921
Mural of a trading ketch at Penong, South Australia. Carrying about 20-30 tons of goods, wooden ketches and schooners were the semi-trailers of their day, and were a lifeline to communities, trading between small ports up and down Australia’s coast.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Painted ship depictions show the importance of maritime connections at Jabrin Fort, built 1675, Oman.
Image: Patrick Baker, WA Museum
An small unidentified wooden wreck appears at low tide in Bunbury, Western Australia.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Launched in 1988, in 2000 the Sydney ferry Collaroy briefly shone in the world spotlight when it carried the Olympic flame across Sydney Harbour for the Summer Olympic Games.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Historic wooden vessels lying at Constitution Dock, Hobart.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Shipping containers stacked in Fremantle Port. An estimated 90% of the world’s trade is transported by sea, with 60% of that transported in containers. The average size of container ships has doubled in the last 20 years, with the largest ships capable of carrying 24,000 containers.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Armfields Slipway Wooden Boats workshed, Goolwa, South Australia.
Image Credit: Ross Anderson
Peter Milton MP and archaeologist Karen Townrow inspect the Penguin Digesters at Nuggets, Macquarie Island, 1987. Remains of the wooden buildings that once housed the machinery lie scattered by weather and seals.
Image Credit: Michael Pearson