Picture Trails: Slideshow trails
Slideshow trails
Art & culture
Geography & environment
History & society
Sport & physical education
Archived trails
Picture Australia and The Le@rning Federation (TLF) have co-created picture trails that blaze a path through the vast tracts of Australia’s visual heritage.
Advertising Australia
A collection of Australian advertisements that shows various advertising techniques. This trail features the work of some of our best known advertising agencies and designers.
Caring for the war wounded
This trail features the work of some of the best known Australian war photographers and war artists. The images display the actions taken by fellow soldiers, medical officers, orderlies and nurses to ensure the survival of the war wounded and their later recovery and rehabilitation.
Cartoons and caricatures
A superb collection of cartoons and caricatures that appeared in magazines, journals, newspapers and books from 1786 to 1950. This trail features the work of some of Australia's best known cartoonists and including many exquisitely designed and executed items.
Colonial life in art
A fascinating collection of oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and lithographs by 19th-century Australian artists. The picture trail features work by some of Australia's most celebrated colonial artists, whose varying styles and emphases were influenced by their work in other mediums such as engraving and cartooning.
Depictions of the First Australians
This is an eclectic collection of images of Indigenous people and their traditions by colonial and post-colonial artists and photographers. Works by well-known artists Benjamin Duterreau, Joseph Lycett, John Skinner Prout, Tom Roberts and John Glover are included.
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A striking collection of colour recruitment posters from the First and Second World wars and beyond. This trail features many of Australia's best known poster artists and designers of the first half of the 20th century.
Innovations and inventions
Features Australian inventions developed between 1876 and 1991. More recent inventions from Swinburne University of Technology conclude the trail.
Mawson in Antarctica
This trail features the work of the celebrated Australian photographer Frank Hurley and it includes photographs taken on Sir Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14.
Racing Australia
'Racing Australia' brings together photographs of Australians racing on water, on land and in the air between 1888 and 1954. Includes images from the Redex Reliability Car Trials and the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. The champion horse Phar Lap is also represented.
Scenes from the Second World War
These images capture, in magnificent detail, aspects of wartime experiences. The work of celebrated Australian war photographers Damien Parer, George Silk and Frank Hurley is featured.
Scenes from the Western Front
A confronting collection of photographs of Australian soldiers in well-known war zones in France and Belgium during the First World War. The trail demonstrates the atrocious conditions in which Australian soldiers fought and the terrible consequences of war. The work of the great Australian war photographer Frank Hurley features strongly in the trail.
See Australia!
'See Australia!' is a collection of travel posters dating from 1920 to 1959 - now viewed as a 'golden age' of poster production - that promote Australia nationally and internationally.
War prisoners and internees
A poignant record of human suffering, courage and survival. This trail contains images of captured soldiers, scenes from prisoner-of-war and internment camps, and freed Australian prisoners returning home after war.
Whaling in the Southern Ocean
A collection of paintings and photographs of the whaling industry in Australia from early colonial times to the 1940s. The photographs provide informative and graphic images of whaling practices over time.
Wild weather
A striking collection of images that depict extreme weather events throughout Australia. The images show the effects of wild weather on natural and built environments and on human lives from early colonial times until the 1950s.