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Author: Daniel Oakman

6 July 2016

Dinosaurs, whiteboards and curators: Making the ‘Life in Australia’ environmental history gallery

Museum and gallery curators have not been served well by popular representations of their craft. There are two primary archetypes. The first is an introverted, nerdy, lab coat-wearing boffin who prowls corridors of specimens, guarding them with singular and obsessive diligence. The second is a hyper-extrovert who petulantly and arrogantly pursues the realisation of their unimpeachable curatorial vision.
Categories Climate change/Landscapes/Museum practice/Science
8 June 2016

World Oceans Day, 8 June 2016

It is hard not to be impressed by giant clams. In the wild, their size and unique color patterns make them one of the most captivating of sea creatures. Even the shells from dead clams have a powerful impact, one that speaks to their prominent place in the popular imagination about our oceans and the place of humans in them. Sadly, the beauty and cultural power inherent in these animals has helped bring them...
Categories Climate change/Science/Uncategorised/Water
21 April 2016

“If a tree falls in a forest…”: International Mother Earth Day

Friday 22nd April is International Mother Earth Day and the theme for this year is ‘Trees for the Earth’. Earth Day has been around since the 1970s, but since 2009 the day has been reconnected — somewhat quaintly — with the idea that planet earth is feminine. Interesting, but let’s leave that for another blog post. For this year’s Earth Day I decided to conduct an experiment, running a very simple...
Categories Art/Climate change/Landscapes/Plants
13 January 2016

Cool it! The Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change, Hong Kong

The first thing I noticed about the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change was the noise. When I arrived, a class of school students had just been released from formal proceedings for some “unstructured time” in the exhibition space, which prompted laughter, squealing and generally excitable tones from otherwise impeccably behaved students. My host and one of the creators of the museum, Dr Matthew Pang, paused at the cacophony. “That is...
Categories Climate change/Museum practice/Science/Water
25 August 2015

Battles with Morpheus: Hubert Opperman and the 1931 Paris-Brest-Paris

In early September 1931, the cyclist Hubert Opperman developed a sore throat. This somewhat unremarkable fact might have otherwise passed unnoticed among the array of domestic and international issues that demanded the attention of Australian journalists. And yet, newspapers from the Melbourne Age to the Murrumbidgee Irrigator all commented earnestly the on the state of Opperman’s upper respiratory tract as he prepared for yet another gruelling endurance contest on the...
Categories Cycling/Travel
6 May 2015

Museums as Places for Imagining the Future of Cities

Dr Steven Fleming has been poking the hornets nest that is urban planning for over a decade, with his mission to put cycling on the agendas of architects, politicians, designers and academics. Together with his colleague Professor Angelina Russo, he has been holding a series of provocative workshops around the country to get people thinking about the potential for bicycles to change the shape of our cities and the way we live.  What’s...
Categories Climate change/Cycling/Landscapes/Museum practice
6 March 2015

Women in science – Dr Germaine Joplin

This International Women’s Day (March 8) we’re reflecting on the remarkable achievements of little-known yet talented Australian petrologist Dr Germaine Joplin (1903-1989). 50 years ago women were particularly prominent in the field of geology, yet they struggled to gain recognition and acceptance among their male counterparts. Today, the gender gap is still a concern for Australian science. Leading Australian scientists explored the reasons for this in 2011 in The Conversation. Despite outstanding...
Categories Art/Landscapes/Science
6 March 2015

Women on wheels – blazing the trail

When Australian track cyclist Anna Meares collected her 11th world championship medal a week ago in Paris it was another remarkable victory in a stellar career. On International Women’s Day, it is worth remembering that Meares’ remarkable achievements rest on the shoulders of giants. Her success and international prominence would be unlikely had it not been for the courageous and pioneering work of thousands of female cyclists who battled prejudice and discrimination...
Categories Cycling/Uncategorised
18 February 2015

Is Cycling Normal?

A month ago, the television game show Family Feud, set fire to the Twitterverse with this question: ‘What is something annoying cyclists do?’ The highest scoring categories, which the contests had to predict, including such gems as ‘Riding in the driving lane’, ‘wearing lycra’, and, my personal favourite, ‘everything’. You might argue with me about the extent that Family Feud is an barometer of social values in this country, but I fear...
Categories Cycling/Uncategorised
12 December 2014

“An outbreak of civility”: Freewheeling exhibition opens in Brisbane

Last week, while we were installing the NMA’s Freewheeling cycling exhibition at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, a massive hailstorm struck the city. Hitting just before 5pm, the city stopped moving. The roads became car parks, the train stations flooded and the buses were caught in traffic gridlock. The only people who made it home on time that day were those on two wheels, or two legs. Although they did...
Categories Cycling/Museum practice/Uncategorised
25 November 2014

Freewheelin’ through Australia’s cycling history

Cadel Evans, Anna Meares, Simon Gerrans, Nathan Hass, Caroline Buchanan, Kathy Watt, Sue Powell and Michael Milton are just a few of the cycling stars you will encounter in a new National Museum of Australia travelling  exhibition due to open at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane this weekend. Freewheeling: Cycling in Australia explores the story of Australian cycling, from our elite champions through to the role bikes have played in all...
Categories Cycling/Museum practice
30 October 2014

Buggies, Bicycles and FJ Holdens

Every Australian family wanted one of these. With room for the whole clan on two bench seats, the sleek and robust double Abbott buggy was the FJ Holden of the late 19th century. I like to imagine the Victorian equivalent of the barbecue where ladies chatted about the Abbott’s silky smooth ride and the convenience of its rain hood. Men might have debated their buggy’s top speed with a decent...
Categories Climate change/Cycling/Horses/Uncategorised
16 July 2014

The Strange Case of Professor Tipper: cyclist extraordinaire

In what must surely rate as one of the most bizarre career choices in Australian history, Alfred Henry Tipper, a 6 ft 2 inches tall Victorian man, decided to start making his own range of tiny bicycles and tour the globe. The National Museum recently acquired a postcard depicting the intriguing Mr Tipper, in 1919, showing off one of his-10 inch bicycles and his ability to ride while carrying two children. We...
Categories Cycling
13 June 2014

Cycling revolution? Velo-City Global 2014: a personal view

There’s a scene in the 1999 blockbuster The Matrix that kept jumping into my mind during the annual international cycling conference Velo-City Global held in Adelaide in May. In a flash restaurant, one of Neo’s (Keanu Reeves’) collaborators is making a deal with the enemy, the machines. He bites into a piece of steak admitting that while he knows it is merely a virtual construction that makes it seem juicy...
Categories Climate change/Cycling/Museum practice
24 April 2014

The darkside: endurance cycling in Australia

It’s 11pm on a Saturday night and I’ve arrived at Eaglehawk Service Station (about 10 kilometers to the north of Canberra) a little worse for wear. Desperately hungry, I devoured a giant sausage roll and a number of the other “healthy” options on offer. No, this wasn’t the end of a day-long pub crawl or buck’s night. I had, in fact, just spent the day cycling over 300 kilometers with...
Categories Cycling/Landscapes/Uncategorised
20 March 2014

Riding High: Adventures with ‘Black Bess’

High-wheelers, known later as penny-farthings, arrived in Melbourne in 1875, and soon confirmed the speed, excitement and potential of the bicycle. High-wheelers featured rubber ‘cushion’ tyres, so were more comfortable than the old ‘boneshakers’, but they were difficult and dangerous to manage. Riders sat more than two and a half metres off the ground, making it hard to mount and a long way to fall. On a high-wheeler, however, a...
Categories Cycling
7 February 2014

Riding with ‘Hernia’: Biking Rottnest Island

I first met Darrell Hick on Rottnest Island in 2007 while I was doing some research with the island’s heritage officer, Patsy Vizents, for the National Museum of Australia’s Landmarks gallery. Darrell had just undertaken some conservation work on an historic firearm that had been on display in the Oliver Hill WWII gun battery. I was enjoying a pie from the ever-popular bakery. He asked me what kind of objects...
Categories Cycling/Landscapes/Museum practice/Uncategorised