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Due to planned maintenance, a number of eresources will be unavailable on Sunday 19 August. This includes Ancestry Library Edition, Ebooks and ProQuest.

Stories

Showcasing people, places and ideas inspired by the collection and the library community.

Stories

Featured stories

The Story of May Gibbs

May Gibbs, author, illustrator and cartoonist, has captured the hearts and imaginations of generations of Australians with her lovable bush characters and fairytale landscapes.

Hope you're still going strong! [tennis] c. 1916, colour postcard by May Gibbs

Shooting the war: Australia's first Oscar

by Margot Riley

'There'll be so much to be done when this is all finished…So many big subjects to be covered where the right kind of film will be useful.' Damien Parer (1943)

Damien Parer

Voyages of Discovery

Europeans had been searching for rich new lands in the Southern Hemisphere long before Captain James Cook arrived on the east coast of Australia in 1770. Explore the State Library's incredible maps, journals, drawings and books.
Map of the world
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Photography

ANZAC Day captured in 2015

by Elise Edmonds

One hundred years after troops landed at Gallipoli, the Library commissioned five professional photographers to document how the people of New South Wales spent 25 April, 2015.

Under the sun: 15 artists respond to Dupains's Sunbaker.

by Claire Monneraye

Max Dupain’s Sunbaker has inspired an exhibition of contemporary and thought-provoking artworks. 

Max Dupain Sunbaker image

Frank Hurley's World War I Photography

by Alison Wishart

Frank Hurley's photographs of the western front in 1917 and the Middle East in 1918 are arresting and iconic.

Men in silhouette walking along duckboards in the western front, 1917.

Colour in darkness: hand-coloured photographs from WWI

by Elise Edmonds

In the early 1920s, an exhibition of war photographs toured Australia, attracting crowds and enthusiastic reviews. Many of the photographs had been taken by Australian servicemen and were enlarged and coloured at Colarts Studios.

A photograph of a city street, crowded with people holding black umbrellas

Hitting the slopes: a young woman’s alpine adventure in the 1930s

by Margot Riley

Thoroughly modern Miss Emily Chambers of Burwood, NSW, was always eager to try the latest fad.

Emily Chambers on ski slopes

Australian Photo Review

by Geoff Barker

 The longevity of the Australian Photo-Review marks it as the most significant in terms of insights into the development of photography in Australia 1894 through to the last issue which appeared in December 1956. It is now available online.

Australian Photo Review Journal Covers

Shutterbug Jitterbug Bondi Visionary

The photographs of George Caddy are an astonishing modernist record of Bondi Beach and its people during a remarkable era. 

The life and lens of photographer George Caddy

The Holtermann Collection: photographic documentation of goldfields life in Australia

In 1951, a hoard of 3,500 glass plate negatives from the nineteenth century was discovered in a garden shed in Chatswood.

Horse and cart struggling through muddy street as men watch

Maps

Voyages of Discovery

Europeans had been searching for rich new lands in the Southern Hemisphere long before Captain James Cook arrived on the east coast of Australia in 1770. Explore the State Library's incredible maps, journals, drawings and books.
Map of the world

Thomas Livingstone Mitchell: mapmaker

A larger-than-life character whose passions included the study of fossils, poetry and the mechanical and scientific arts, Mitchell looms large in Australian colonial history.

The Tasman Map: two voyages to the southern ocean between 1642 and 1644

The story of the Tasman Map is a tale of mystery, discovery and a chance finding on the Nullarbor Plain.

Matthew Flinders: placing Australia on the map.

Flinders proved that Tasmania was an island, traced the coasts of the Australian continent and was the first person to use ‘Australian’ to describe the inhabitants of this land. He named nothing after himself.

Mathew Flinders portrait

Captain Cook’s voyages of discovery

Terra Australis Incognita – the unknown southern land. The existence (or not) of this mysterious, mythical place had been puzzled over since it was first hypothesised by the ancient Greeks and Romans

Old map of the Great Pacific Ocean with words a chart of the Great Pacific Ocean as desribed by Mr Banks and Dr Solander in the year 1772

Eora: the lives of Indigenous Sydney before European settlement.

Delve deep into the stories of Indigenous Sydney before European settlement. created through a close and innovative interrogation of the European records of early colonisation.

Drawing of harbour foreshore with people around a fire, a canoe in the foreground.

The Dixson map collection reveals the history of European exploration and settlement of the Pacific

Explore the extensive collection of 16th to 20th century maps donated by Sir William Dixson.

Antarctica: modern adventures

Like many other nations, Australia was looking to the future after the turmoil of the Second World War. Several countries saw Antarctica as a potential source of territory, fishing and mineral resources.

a1782006h.jpg

Conrad Martens and George Edwards Peacock - Sydney Artists

Artists have always been attracted to the natural beauty of Sydney Harbour and its foreshores. Darling Point particularly, with its natural beauty and impressive villas, was a popular subject for both artists and photographers alike.

Latest stories

Contact Prints

by Nicola Teffer

Portrait of Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung people from the 1870s show how photography shaped race relationships in the nineteenth century. 

Members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are advised that this story contains names and images of deceased people.

Australia and the bomb

by Kyle Harvey

Peace activism in Australia has a rich and complex history.

ANZAC Day captured in 2015

by Elise Edmonds

One hundred years after troops landed at Gallipoli, the Library commissioned five professional photographers to document how the people of New South Wales spent 25 April, 2015.

Shooting the war: Australia's first Oscar

by Margot Riley

'There'll be so much to be done when this is all finished…So many big subjects to be covered where the right kind of film will be useful.' Damien Parer (1943)

Damien Parer

Featured

Splendid Species

by Margot Riley

The Library is delighted to announce the complete digitisation of its renowned "pattern" set of 681 folio-sized plates for  'The Birds of Australia' by John Gould. 

Image of penguins from Birds of Australia

Matthew Flinders: placing Australia on the map.

Flinders proved that Tasmania was an island, traced the coasts of the Australian continent and was the first person to use ‘Australian’ to describe the inhabitants of this land. He named nothing after himself.

Mathew Flinders portrait

Record Catch

by Dr Ruth Thurstan

Merging history and science, a Library fellowship tracked 80 years of fishing off the east coast of Australia.

Ulladulla snapper fisherman, 1959, by Jeff Carter, PXD 1070