Sketching Australia

A new book was added to the collection just in time for the S.T. Gill exhibition at the State Library of Victoria.

The book is "S.T. Gill & his audiences" by Sasha Grishin, has been jointly published by the National Library and State Library.

The cover of the book is a depiction of Gill's 'Doing the Block'

The Block, on fashionable Collins Street, was a stylish shopping strip in the 1880s. It was also a famous spot for promenading and people-watching, an activity known as 'doing the Block'. He completed this lively painting three months before his death at the age of 62, when he died a pauper on the steps of the Post Office.

Samuel Thomas Gill, or STG as he was universally known, was Australia's most significant and popular artist of the mid-nineteenth century. For his contemporaries he epitomised 'Marvellous Melbourne' basking in the glow of the gold rushes. He worked in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales and left some of the most memorable images of urban and rural life in colonial Australia. A passionate defender of Indigenous Australians and of the environment, Gill in his art celebrated the emerging quintessential Australian character. This is the first major comprehensive book to be devoted to Gill and presents a radical reassessment of one of the most important figures in Australian colonial art and reproduces, in some instances for the first time, some of the most startling images from nineteenth-century Australian art.

The exhibition "Australian sketchbook : colonial life and the art of S.T. Gill" is in the Keith Murdoch Gallery until 25th October. If you can't make it to Melbourne there is also an online version. But it doesn't quite measure up to standing in front of the originals. I had a quite moment in front of his 'The Duff children' 151 years after the event.

And while I was familiar with Gill's goldfield watercolours, I was unaware of the origin of his  'Country NW of tableland' (in fact I normally call it 'Doctor Hunger & Captain Thirst' after the cover of the book which had it as the cover).
Gill made this watercolour drawing in 1846 while on the privately funded Horrocks Expedition (of Horrock's Pass fame) to the South Australian interior. In this sweeping panorama, Gill adopted a well-known strategy from Romanticism by showing two figures, seen from behind, contemplating the vastness of nature and thus drawing the viewer into the scene depicted. The taller figure with the gun is Horrocks, the other with a sketchpad is Gill – one claiming and naming the country in front of him, the other recording it.

 A rare opportunity to see more than 200 of Gill's paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints at the exhibition or in the book.

Time and calendars

The 8th Thing is Calendars - electronic calendars and their uses.

'Explore your phone's calendar app and its alert function'. Yes I do that have even been known to set the second alert for some appointments. 

The calendar on the library's website utilises Google Calendars and has the ability to copy its events to your calendar. 
My emails are via Outlook and Yahoo's Mail app, both with calendar functions.
We use Envisionware's PCRes to book library public computers, great that it also counts down their session time and alerts them when approaching the end of the session (has stopped lots of arguments). In some branches it is coupled with LPTOne print management which  governs printing from the pcs (which has stopped even more arguments resulting from 'accidentally' generated copies). 
Have had experience with ticketing sites like Eventbrite for event registrations that prompt your calendar. 

Then there's a whole array of online calendars you encounter when registering events booking, training, conferences, etc.

The electronic reminder/alert is a great assistance to ring a bell/send a message when something may have slipped by the human calendar.

Yet I think there's still a role for the humble print calendar in conjunction with the electronic - even if it is just for it's art.

Our first casuality

Great news about a lecture at the Melbourne Museum – “Beneath the waves at Gallipoli”

While the battlefields of Gallipoli are etched in the Australian psyche, the hidden underwater relics of the war are generally overlooked.

Tim Smith, a leading maritime archaeology practitioner and Executive Director of Heritage Victoria, will talk about his work mapping underwater cultural heritage sites associated with key World War One Australian actions, including:

• the AE2 submarine sunk in the Dardanelles Strait, Turkey (1915), and the forthcoming June expedition

• the centenary search for the AE1 submarine sunk off Papua New Guinea (1914)

• battlefield landscape surveys at ANZAC Cove and Suvla Bay

• recent survey work at the wreck of the World War One battle cruiser HMAS Australia I off Sydney

• J-Class submarines in Melbourne and more.

Details: 2014 Heritage Address with Tim Smith: Beneath the Waves at Gallipoli

When: Monday 14th April 2014

Location: Museum Theatre, Melbourne Museum, Carlton Gardens

Start: 6 pm

Bookings: discoverylectures@museum.vic.gov.au by 11th April

Being fascinated with the fact that AE1 was our first submarine, but its loss before the Gallipoli campaign has meant it has been largely glossed over in favour of the land battles and the loss of the AE2. The AE2 was scuttled in the Dardanelles on 30th April 1915, as part of the Gallipoli campaign.

His Majesty’s Australian Submarine AE1 was launched in the yard of Vickers Ltd at Barrow-in-Furness England on 22nd May 1913. She was commissioned at Portsmouth on 28th February 1914 under the command of Lieutenant Commander T F Besant, RN. She was the first of two E Class submarines built for the fledgling Royal Australian Navy.

HMAS AE1 - Royal Australian Navy's first submarine at Portsmouth in 1914

Both submarines sailed from England and reached Sydney on 24th May 1914. They were, manned by 3 Royal Navy officers and a mixed crew of 32 sailors from the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy.

At the outbreak of World War 1 (4th August 1914), AE1 joined the naval forces assigned to the capture and occupation of the German Pacific colonies. With AE2, she took part in the surrender of Rabaul on 13th September 1914.

The destroyer HMAS Parramatta and AE1 were patrolling in the Bismarck Sea east of the Duke of York Islands on the 14th. The two vessels met, but the weather was hazy and visibility was down to about 5 miles when the Parramatta lost sight of the submarine. Despite a search by 5 Navy ships no trace was ever found. The loss of the AE1 was the first major tragedy for the Royal Australian Navy. (from http://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-ae1)

Last known image of AE1, 9 Sep 1914 with Yarra & Australia in the background