Author: Kylie Carman-Brown

Remember Goldilocks? She was the girl who liked her porridge not too hot, not too cold but just right. When it comes to water, humans are just like her. Too much water is just as bad as too little, and it has to be just right. Water is so essential to human endeavour that it is hard to keep this brief. On the helpful side of the equation, water is...

Water enables so many tasks in the world that sometimes, we can forget how essential it is. At the domestic level we use water to drink, cook with, clean ourselves and our clothes and to keep our gardens growing.  Industrially, water is a vital input to many industries but perhaps the most well recognised is the agricultural industry.  This post takes a look at two objects, relating to the home...

This blog post introduces a series of essays that explore the meanings of water in Australian history and contemporary life. I’m Kylie Carman-Brown, and when I joined the National Museum last year, I volunteered in the People and the Environment curatorial team. I wrote a series of thematic essays that applied ideas I’d developed in my PhD project to better understand water-related objects in the National Historical Collection. My PhD thesis explored the internationally significant...

I’m a volunteer in the People and Environment curatorial team, and I’ve just started working on an online feature about water history. Recently, on a bakingly hot day, I had my first visit to the Museum’s stores. It was a little bit Dr Who, frankly. Some of what I saw could easily have come off a set from the Tom Baker years. The Doctor, in whatever regeneration he’s in, has the capacity...