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Curator Martha Sear discusses objects in the National Historical Collection that once belonged to Sir George Reid, a key figure in Australia’s Federation-era political history. Reid’s story features in the Australian Journeys gallery.

Oral historian Alistair Thomson explores the experience of migration to Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, through the eyes and life stories of four British women, during his time as a Director’s Fellow at the National Museum of Australia.

Curator Alison Mercieca tells the story of the Macassan trepang, or sea slug, industry. She considers the places connected by the Macassan voyagers from Indonesia and looks at the archaeological traces left on the Arnhem Land coast.

Curator Rebecca Nason discusses two Staffordshire figurines of nineteenth-century Irish nationalist, parliamentarian and convict William Smith O’Brien. His story is told in the Australian Journeys gallery.

Historian Darrell Lewis discusses his research on ‘the outback archive,’ unorthodox historical records from pre-European times to the present, concentrating on marked water tanks and trees along the Murranji Track in the Northern Territory.

Curator Karen Schamberger tells the story of Guna Kinne’s Latvian national dress, assembled over a period of 20 years in Latvia, Germany and Australia, and now part of the National Museum’s National Historical Collection.

The lives of a group of young sisters growing up on Baden farm at Grong Grong in country New South Wales around 1912 are revealed in a collection of journals, examined by curator Susannah Helman.

A Dollond achromatic telescope used by Captain John Gore helps to tell remarkable stories about Captain James Cook’s Pacific voyages and the development of optics and navigational techniques, according to curator Michelle Hetherington.

Adventurer and author Robyn Davidson joins desert archaeologist Mike Smith for a discussion about her travels in Australia, India, China and Tibet, and 30 years since the publication of her Making Tracks book.

An original bamboo musical instrument made by Minh Tam Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee to Australia, illustrates a meeting of European and Asian traditions and a life changed by war, explains curator Jennifer Wilson.