Our first catalogues reveal the extent of the lost collections exhibited at the Garden Palace Ethnological Court, 1879-1883.

The Australian Museum section of the Court had 2000 items in total, mostly from the Pacific. Of the Pacific items, many came from New Guinea and are probably the collection purchased from Andrew Goldie in 1878, as well as collections from Morton, Broadbent and Smithurst.

Australian Collection

Catalogued for the first time for loan to the Exhibition, 359 of the Australian Museum objects were Australian. These objects had been collected during early contact periods, from areas such as the Clarence River in NSW and the Torres Strait. After the fire of 1882, the catalogue record is all that remains of this irreplaceable early contact material.

First Degree of Merit

Opened on November 11, 1879, the Australian Museum section of the Ethnology Court was awarded the ‘First Degree of Merit’ for the ‘finest collection (ethnological)’ in the Sydney International Exhibition.

After the Exhibition

After the Exhibition, the Museum continued to acquire ethnology and in 1882 it sent the whole collection to the Garden Palace for its new branch museum, The Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum (now called the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse) Museum). Only two months before the Museum was due to open it was destroyed in the Garden Place fire on September 22, 1882.

The collection records bear this out. The items registered between 1880 and the fire are for the most part missing, except for skeletal material from these collections which remained at the main Museum.

Other ethnographic collections at the Garden Palace Exhibition

The catalogue also lists other exhibitors of Ethnological material in the Garden Palace. Mostly these are individuals, with a few institutions such as the governments of Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia, West Australia as well as large displays from the New Zealand Museum, Wellington and Canterbury Museum, Auckland.

Over 40 individuals were also exhibitors, ranging from single items to small collections.