News archive 2004

By Road Trail - From the cycle car of 1904 to the sports car of the 1980s, from motor rallies in 1911 to the V8 supercar series in 2000, motor transport has become a major form of recreation and travel for many Australians.

Browse our By Road trail for a selection of images on the different makes, models and uses of motor transport throughout Australia's history.

By Rail Trail - The history of the railway in Australia dates back well before Federation, with each of the colonies having their own railways. After Federation in 1901 most of the states were linked by rail, providing Australians with more opportunities in the areas of industry, travel and leisure.

Take a journey By Rail for a selection of images relating to railways - from the interior of a railway carriage in 1910 to the first electric railway in Sydney in 1968 - and discover the important role the railway has played in Australian society.

Picture Australia welcomes another division of the CSIRO: Scienceimage. Scienceimage is the CSIRO's image library specialising in science and nature images. Browse over 2000 images of animals, insects, landscapes, microbiology and CSIRO scientists at work.

Picture Australia has brought together a collection of political cartoons, showing the lighter side of Australian politics and poignant images of international issues and warfare.

Covering political cartoons from as early as the eighteenth century, the trail includes caricatures of past and contemporary politicians, and touches on issues such as international relations, immigration, education, defence and the economy. Follow our Political Cartoons Trail and discover how political cartoons provide valuable commentary on political issues of the day.

For further information on the history of Australian political cartoons and political cartoons in general, take a look at Australian Political Cartooning - A Rich Tradition

This month's new Fashion trail highlights Australia's relationship with fashion from the early nineteenth century until today.

The trail covers different facets of Australian fashion, including images relating to casual and evening wear, wedding attire, sportswear, uniforms, cosmetics and jewellery, shoes, hairstyles and even portraits of influential Australian designers.

Browse the Fashion trail to see how changes in society have both reflected and shaped fashion for Australian men, women and children throughout the decades.

This month PicutreAustralia welcomes another Queensland participant - Logan City Council Libraries. Logan City, located in the heart of south-east Queensland, midway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, is Queensland's third largest city.

Consisting of five public libraries, the collection contains a range of materials documenting the history of the Logan District. The photographic collection, consisting of 1600 images, dates from the 1870s and follows the growth and development of the area including people, places, industry, landscape and community activities.

Logan City Council Libraries has digitised images in its collection and provides electronic access to these items through its History Clicks! database.

The City of Sydney Archives have joined this month with over 19,000 images of the City.

Most images date from between 1900 and the present day and include photographs taken by Council agencies as part of their business activities as well as those donated to the Archives by the public.

The City of Sydney Archives images are also available in ArchivePix, City of Sydney's digital photograph bank.

In this Year of the Built Environment, we are celebrating Australia's built heritage: from weather board cottages, to national icons such as the Sydney Opera House and the urban landscape of roads, bridges and parks. View the new Built Environment trail for images of buildings, places and structures in which we live, work and play.

For further information about the Year of the Built Environment browse the Year of the Built Environment 2004 website.

The millionth Picture Australia image which comes from the Australian War Memorial's collection is that of heroic Australian army nurse Vivian Bullwinkel, the sole survivor of the Banka (Sumatra) massacre of World War II.

The Australian War Memorial has created the Bullwinkel Collection Highlight, providing links to information and other images relating to Vivian Bullwinkel.

For more information about Picture Australia's one millionth image, view the Media Release.

In a national celebration of ANZAC day and Vivian Bullwinkel's achievements during wartime and as a civilian, a picture trail has been developed drawn from the collections of Picture Australia contributors showing women and war.

Follow our new Women and war trail for a selection of images relating to women and war.

Have you been amazed at what you have found on Picture Australia? If you have some interesting strories on the images you found searching Picture Australia, please tell us about them. How has Picture Australia had an impact on your research? What did you find on the website that you weren't expecting? Send your personal stories to Picture Australia.

Read below a selection of the stories about how Picture Australia has assisted researchers.

"Picture Australia is making an enormous contribution to a project to publish the Australian Dictionary of Biography on the Internet at the end of 2004. Users of the ADB online will find links with Picture Australia's images".
Darryl Bennet - Australian Dictionary of Biography

"I'm doing some family research and the family name is "Smith" - sadly this makes things very hard! They lived in Pinkenba on the Brisbane River. Imagine my amazement and incredulity to discover a beautiful photograph of the "Smith family girls in Pinkenba" in the 1890s. My grandmother, nee Violet Smith, was a great slash and burn artist with family photographs and documents , so the find was truly wonderful".
Judy Bell - Librarian, Chinchilla Library Queensland

"I have found Picture Australia to be a very useful service. I attended the launch at Maroochydore and Redcliffe public libraries and saw how excited the local communities were at having their photographs valued more widely. I have used Picture Australia to find images of Pialba schools for a "from this to this" presentation".
Professor Susan Bambrick - University of Southern Queensland

"I was undertaking a biography of William Lithgow in 2002-2003. I had been able to assemble many facts about his life but there was one thing missing that would round out the whole picture. His portrait, but who would hold such a picture? Finding his portrait on Picture Australia brought many answers to the question - What manner of man was Lithgow? His story may not have otherwise been told. Lithgow's glory and humanity lay in this portrait of a public servant from the National Library's collections. Thank you for a great contribution to Australian history and biography".
Gordon Beckett (author: William Lithgow, colonial Auditor-General : an account of his contribution to fiscal management in colonial New South Wales, Colonial Press, 2003)

"I discovered about 90 images of Old Parliament House on Picture Australia, including some from the 1940s showing flocks of grazing sheep with Parliament House in the background…. I found the picture trails a delight. I followed the Old and New Parliament House trail and the Military and War Trail. I am going back to view the trail on lighthouses".
Heather Campbell - West Australian researcher searching for images to illustrate the story of offices used by Australian Prime Ministers during the years of the Second World War

"I work in cultural heritage landscape research in Tasmania and Picture Australia is an absolutely invaluable research tool for me. I always start here, because it brings together an enormously large database of imaged landscapes across many Australian states and Territories. I am able to compare images across libraries and determine which is the most suitable for the piece of work I'm completing, something previously not possible".
Gwenda Sheridan - Tasmanian landscape historian

Two new image collections come on board this month, the first being The Australian National University.

A selection of 326 images from the University Archives and the Noel Butlin Archives Centre are now available via Picture Australia. There are images of early Canberra taken between 1945 and 1950 when the ANU was being established and items from the archives of pastoral companies, trade unions and businesses that were collected by Noel Butlin and his collegues as source material for their studies.

The Australian National University is the 5th University to join Picture Australia.

The second new institution joining this month is State Records of New South Wales.

Images from this collection capture life in New South Wales in much of it's richness and diversity, from the beaches of Sydney to the rural areas of country New South Wales.

The Wollongong City Library is the 10th Public Library to join Picture Australia. Their images feature the Illawarra District, from 1832 to date and are taken from the collections of Wollongong City Library and Illawarra Historical Society.

These images are also available in the Illawarra Images collection.

The images from the Swinburne Visual Archive join Picture Australia this month. These images from the Swinburne University of Technology collection, which dates from 1914, provides a random historical tour through education at Swinburne over most of the last century, protraying staff and students engaged in social activities, sporting activities and official functions.

Many of the photographs depict students undertaking classroom activities in art, carpentry, chemistry, science, commerical studies (such as typing), domestic science, engineering, trades, as well as cake decorating, car decorating, astronomy, blacksmithing and dressmaking.

The addition of these images helps to add another important aspect of Australian life to Picture Australia. Take a look at the images from Swinburne University.

The addition of images from the National Portrait Gallery to Picture Australia is an exciting development for the service. The collection features portraits of the people who have shaped our nation. Works range across time: from figures in colonial history such as Governor and Lady Grey and Bungaree, the Aboriginal Cricket team of 1886 (Australia's first touring side), to contemporary icons such as Deborah Mailman and Ian Thorpe; and across media: including paintings, photographs, sculpture, cartoons and drawings, ceramics and textiles.

A selection of 224 images are digitised and available on Picture Australia.

The Australian Heritage Commission has recently changed its name to the Department of the Environment and Heritage, Heritage Division. Their images are now referred to as the Australian Heritage Photo Library on Picture Australia. Over the next few months we hope to add the image databases of other divisions of the Department of the Environment and Heritage which are listed on the main department website.