AMplify - Conversations at the Australian Museum

This talk was presented as part of the Australian Museum's HumanNature series on 26 February 2019. HumanNature: Connection and cooperation in a time of climate change In his urgent call to action, Birch identifies the powerful roles that First Nations ecological knowledge, environmental activism, scholarship and creativity can play in addressing the impact of climate change, particularly on vulner...

This talk took place at 1pm, Tuesday 2 September in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum as part of the Australian Museum's Lunchtime Lecture Series. Australian film legend George Miller traces his multi-award winning engagement with film to the ritual Saturday matinee in his hometown of Chinchilla, Queensland. After a stint at medical school he became a filmmaker, going on to create the...

Layne Beachley is widely regarded as the most successful female surfer in history, and is the only surfer, male or female, to claim six consecutive world titles (1998-2003); she went on to win a 7th world title in 2006 before retiring in 2008. In this inspiring conversation with AM Director Kim McKay, Layne reveals the source of her drive to be the best of the best, involving the loss of her mothe...

From copy girl to editor at the age of 23, Ita Buttrose’s boundary-pushing career at The Telegraph, Cleo, The Australian Women’s Weekly and The Sunday Telegraph won her status as a feminist icon. The legendary media trailblazer, businesswoman, best-selling author and 2013 Australian of the Year continues her active leadership role as a committed community and welfare contributor. This talk took pl...

This event took place in the Hallstrom Theatre, Australian Museum, Sydney, on 14 June 2018. Join Alice Te Punga Somerville as she explores the histories and possibilities of Indigenous gardens in the Pacific region. Colonial projects have long been bound up, in a variety of ways, with the movement, growth and exploitation of plants. But these projects have also traded rhetorically on particular un...

This event took place in the Hallstrom Theatre, Australian Museum, Sydney, on 12 July 2018. Join Catriona Sandilands (York University, Toronto) on this adventure into the complex and fascinating worlds of plants. Sandilands is particularly interested in people’s relationships with botanical others, including shifting understandings of what plants are and what they can do. In this time of accelerat...

Live at the AM: HumanNature Lecture Series, Oron Catts by Australian Museum

Live at the AM: 2018 Eureka Prizes Launch by Australian Museum

This lecture took place at the Australian Museum on 23 April 2018. How do different human cultures give shape and meaning to the idea of climate? Join Mike Hulme, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cambridge, as he explores some of the many fascinating ways climates are historicized, known, changed, lived with, blamed, feared, represented, predicted, governed and, at least putativel...

How does giving and receiving take form in, and give form to, our living world? While most discussions of gift-giving focus on exchanges between humans, Deborah Bird Rose is also captivated by the many forms of connectivity and flow that are integral to ecological processes. Drawing on her research with Indigenous people, Rose asks: what might it mean to understand gift giving as central to, and m...

The icy expanses of Antarctica were an unforgiving frontier for early explorers. Among them was Sir Douglas Mawson, who faced frostbite, exposure and exhaustion in his journeys across the frozen continent. He passed some of his time writing love letters to his wife back home. But how did he stumble on a meteorite in all that ice and snow? Behind every object is a story – join Charles Wooley and Ki...

Early British settlers were so flummoxed by the platypus that they thought it an elaborate hoax, created by stitching a duck’s beak onto the body of a mole. But Australia’s greatest charlatan is an entirely different creature to behold. Behind every object is a story – join Charles Wooley and Kim McKay as they reveal some of the Treasures at the Australian Museum.

One of the most significant objects in the Australian Museum’s collection is a humble, hand-crafted bird-shaped pestle. Its invention marked a crucial moment in human history, upon which entire civilisations grew. The influence of the simple stone object stretched all the way to the Pacific, where this story takes a sudden, violent twist. Behind every object is a story – join Charles Wooley and Ki...

The wilful and wanton destruction of the Tasmanian Tiger is a sad reminder of the importance of conserving our natural history. Charles Wooley reveals the tragic tale of the man who shot the world’s last Tasmanian Tiger in the wild. And the team tells the story of resurrecting the world’s rarest insect, now living on a lonely volcanic rock at sea.

Mel Ward started life on the stage as an acrobat and comedian. But something about the creatures he found on the beach as a child kept calling him back to the sea. But what drove him to collect 25,000 crabs from around the world? And what exactly is eccentric dancing? Behind every object is a story – join Charles Wooley and Kim McKay as they reveal some of the Treasures at the Australian Museum.

Working in a museum in the 19th century was a hazardous occupation. In 1831, the Australian Museum’s inaugural custodian William Holmes accidentally shot himself with his own shotgun, while collecting a cockatoo. But the sudden demise of museum curator, Darwinian and “guardian angel” Gerard Krefft, was more curious still. Behind every object is a story – join Charles Wooley and Kim McKay as they r...

Sydney in the early 1800s was a fledgling colony, full of convicts, soldiers, settlers and social climbers – the kind of town where you might win and lose your fortune in a single day. With the release of Australia’s first bank note and the subsequent gold rush in NSW came the whiff of financial security. But how did a large gold nugget go from an abandoned mine shaft to a government office corrid...

Step inside the treasure that is the Westpac Long Gallery, Australia’s oldest gallery in the nation’s first museum. When it opened to the public, in 1857, a quarter of Sydney’s population queued to witness its wonders of nature and culture. The gallery now houses the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum. Behind every object is a story – join Charles Wooley and Kim McKay as they reveal some of th...

Michael Mel by Australian Museum

Live at the AM: Journeying to Jordan - Adventures in Archaeology by Australian Museum

The AM held its annual AMRI Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony on Wednesday 9 August 2017, designed to recognise eminent researchers and science communicators who have made outstanding contribution to science and biodiversity conservation. This year, the 1971 Lord Howe Island Environmental Survey Group led by ex-AM Ecologist, Dr Harry F. Recher has been awarded the 2017 AMRI Lifetime Achievement...

Kids are full of difficult, challenging questions. Why are we destroying the reef? Why won't we accept refugees on our shores? Is it ever ok to tell a lie? Each of our minor and momentous decisions shape the world we’re making for our children. In this episode of AM Live, Dr Simon Longstaff offers engaging approaches to teaching children how to think and behave ethically. Dr Simon Longstaff is the...

Kim McKay talks to Laura McBride, Creative Producer, Programs, Exhibitions and Cultural Collections at the Australian Museum in the latest episode of AMplify for NAIDOC Week.

Kim McKay talks to Sharni Jones, Manager, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Island Collection at the Australian Museum in this latest episode of AMplify.

In the latest episode of AMplify, Kim McKay talks to Gillian Scott, Manager, Exhibitions at the Australian Museum.