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25.01.2022 Dom's Bar at Nightcliff in Darwin - 6pm tonight - Mike Owen will present a pictorial summary of the first PastMasters' expedition and bring along some of the finds to provide some insight into their activities to kick off what we hope will become a series of informal talks about the history of the the Top End over a cool drink or two.

23.01.2022 The Mud Island Leper Station in 1890 - SLSA B9761 - there's more on the story of Darwin's leprosaria & the ground breaking work of Dr. John Hargrave - a truly great Territorian. https://www.pastmasters.net/channel-is-centenary---quaranti

22.01.2022 Looting of Broome WW2 wreckage a disgrace!

22.01.2022 Goyder's Camp 'The Depot' in the saddle between Fort Hill and the Palmerston Plateau in 1869 by William Hoare - SLSA B-1048 the base of the flagpole is an interesting artefact.

20.01.2022 The late Golpa elder Djingulul immortalized Jimmy the Chimp in a cave painting in the Wessels in the early 1960s. It’s one of the many rock art treasures to be found at Jensen Bay. The famed actor Jimmy the Chimp was trained by the star magician John Calvert of Indiana. Jimmy performed in the 1953 Hollywood film Dark Venture and also in Calvert's magic shows across the globe. Jimmy was on-board Calvert’s luxury yacht the ‘Sea Fox’ when it ran aground at the Elcho Island mission. Calvert and Jimmy passed the time by performing an unforgettable magic show to the delight of the Yolngu. On his next trip to the Wessels, Djingulul decided to honor Jimmy with a cave portrait. Jimmy finished his days in the late 70s at the Perth Zoo. For more information, see the PastMasters website at www.PastMasters.net

18.01.2022 Young Australian detectorists are seeking to uncover lost histories!

18.01.2022 Worth checking out!

17.01.2022 Back in August, the Northern Territory lost one of its true heroes, Dr. John Hargrave AO OBE. He was 89 years old. He spent the better part of his life - 27 years - serving the most disabled and disadvantaged (and mostly Aboriginal) people with life-saving surgery at the East Arm Leprosarium in Darwin Harbour. From 1884, Chinese lepers were confined on nearby Mud Island awaiting their repatriation to China. By the 1920s, the disease was widespread and so was the stigma and fe...ar of contagion, and all Territory lepers were confined at Channel Island, shown here. This lonely quarantine station stayed open until 1955 when it was moved inland to East Arm in 1955. John Hargrave was the medical superintendent when it closed in 1982. PastMasters founders Ian McIntosh and Mike Owen were both employed by NT Health in the early 80s and saw firsthand the extraordinary work of this dedicated individual, this champion of Aboriginal health. A truly great man! See more

16.01.2022 Following the last Ice Age and the rising sea levels, what became of the indigenous peoples who occupied the vast plains and lake country in what is now the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria? There are fascinating oral history accounts by Yolngu about places like Cape Wilberforce documenting the fabled meeting of saltwater and freshwater peoples. A recent paper by Frances Morphy and her colleagues in Archaeology in Oceania looks into similar interesting oral history fro...m nearby Blue Mud Bay. They speculate that certain topographic features, including an earthen henge, mounds of shells, and possible middens, were named by pre-Yolngu peoples speaking a different language to today’s Yolngu traditional owners. The names, which feature the suffix ‘tjpi’ have persisted, but the language group has not, probably being absorbed into other language groups or vanquished in clan warfare. One might imagine that these sites must have had considerable sacred significance to have continued after the people’s demise. The authors date one of the sites to 3,000 years ago, and associate this time with the arrival of the ‘tjpi’ language group, but this conclusion must be considered with a grain of salt in the light of the Mounds Controversy that we have highlighted in these pages. These named sites are largely descriptive, including a place of shells, a reference to the flora or fauna found there, or highlight the ancestral (Dreaming) action that had taken place. Geomorphologists say that these shell mounds, like those at Grindall Bay (see image below) were formed by wave-action and are not the food remains of people. In fact, the one shown is just a shell chenier (beach ridge deposit), not a humanly-formed midden mound. So the ‘tjpi’ people, whoever they were, may have long predated the emergence of these mounds, or came much later, given that even the largest mounds form naturally in little more than 100 years. We are left none the wiser in our search for the Arnhem Land past by the problematic correlation of 'tjpi' peoples and the emergence of these dubious midden sites. See more

16.01.2022 Extraordinary Ordinary Seaman Edward 'Teddy' Sheean VC - a first for the RAN - the first of many long overdue.

16.01.2022 Following the Islamization of the Gowa and Tallo sultanates of South Sulawesi in the early 1600s, they joined forces and were collectively known as the Makassar Kingdom. This was one of the earliest and most sophisticated states in the Indonesian archipelago. The joint Gowa and Tallo and the Dutch-Makassar emblems are shown here. Together, Gowa-Tallo became a very considerable maritime power, as shown in the map below, which also indicates that northern Australia was a part o...f their empire. Among the prominent Tallo rulers was Karaeng Matoaya (1593-1623) and his son Karaeng Pattingalloang (1641-1654), who brought the Makassar Kingdom to its peak of power. However, this expansion led to conflicts with the Dutch East India Company and a major war broke out. The Dutch were supported by the Bugis leader Arung Palakka, a prince from Bone, and Makassar was defeated in 1667 and by 1669 it had lost its far-flung empire. Tallo king Harunarrasyid took a fleet to Sumbawa and died there in 1673. Various Tallo princes, however, led restless lives as overseas sea migrants, often turning to piracy and raiding. In one oral history account from both Makassar and the Yolngu territories, Cape Wilberforce and Port Bradshaw in northeast Arnhemland were bases for these Tallo princes as they tried to regroup and reclaim their lost lands. A hundred years after the fall of Makassar, Bugis and others from South Sulawesi would come to Arnhemland to fish for trepang in what would become Australia’s first international export industry. See more

15.01.2022 Courtesy of our colleague, PM numismatist Peter Lane of Adelaide. This mysterious whale tooth scrimshaw is of unknown provenance. Can you help solve the puzzle. Peter says: Age unknown, possibly 1850s. An early Advance Australia coat of arms on one side, and is inscribed on the other, Whales Tooth from C G Sydney. Size: 15.5 x 6.5 cm. The owner is seeking information. They are wondering if it can be dated from the Coat of Arms. This type with the Advance Australia motto ...was being drawn in the 1850s. Also, a member may be able to identify C G Sydney Scrimshaw experts have commented that most Australian whalers were illiterate so did not inscribe their work with words. This was in contrast to the north American whalers who were better educated. The high quality of the script and engraving of the tooth are therefore very unusual for Australian work. A number of possibilities exist. One is that the item could be a 20th century tourist item, which would explain the very neat script and crispness of the execution. However, one expert says that the piece was engraved at or refers to Clifton Gardens, Sydney around the 1850s, named after the Whaler Captain E.H. Cliffe who lived there till 1846. The term Advance Australia first appeared in the Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser 22 October 1840. See more

11.01.2022 Amazing barramundi woven art from Gunbalanya

11.01.2022 This is where it all started for the PastMasters. In 1944, Aussie serviceman Morry Isenberg found five c900 year old coins from the Sultanate of Kilwa or Quiloa in Milton’s Paradise Lost (in what is now Tanzania) on the Territory’s Wessel islands. Five expeditions later, we have countless clues and just as many hypotheses about how those rare coins came to be in Australia. Were the Macassans involved? They would seem to be the most likely candidates as they began regular voya...ges to Arnhem Land beginning in the 1750s. But there’s a catch. All rival coinage to Portuguese and Dutch currency was forbidden in the overseas colonies of the European powers, including Macassar. Such coinage was confiscated, melted down and reused. How did these coins with their Arabic script honouring various East African sultans slip through the cracks? There is so much more to discover. Check out our website www.PastMasters.net for details of the ongoing search. See more

10.01.2022 One of our lesser known Outback pioneers, cameleer and explorer Bejah Dervish, who arrived in Fremantle from Pakistan (formerly Baluchistan) around 1890.

10.01.2022 The Sistine Chapel of the Amazon! A startling new rock art discovery in Colombia that may date back to when the first peoples arrived in South America. https://www.theguardian.com//sistine-chapel-of-the-ancient

07.01.2022 Territory historian Alan Powell’s better known books include ‘Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory,’ ‘John Stokes and the Men of the Beagle,’ and ‘The Shadow's Edge: Australia's Northern War,’ among others. His contribution was outstanding.

04.01.2022 This Junior Minelab Moment happened at Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island during a PastMaster Class on metal detecting for the local billy lids - Djamakuli in Yolngu matha. This was during the 2014 Past Muster when we found the Chinese coin and controversially put it back in the sand. Before the kids arrived, we salted the ground with a handful of coins [ approx $2's worth], but we needn't have bothered - we lost count of the money they found - at least $50

03.01.2022 Who remembers the Nackeroos? Also known as Curtin’s Cowboys, the North Australia Observation Unit (NAOU) was created in 1942 after Broome was strafed by the Japanese. The unit’s commander was the famous anthropologist Bill Stanner, author of ‘After the Dreaming’, who knew the north very well. The unit was 550 strong and headquartered in Katherine where they had the task of patrolling the north to look for signs of enemy activity. The Nackeroos, who made good use of local Aboriginal knowledge, are shown here in 1943 crossing the river in Katherine.

02.01.2022 Dion Mayne and Paul Richardson have just published ‘Boomerang Gold’, the intriguing story of a 16th century Dutch mission led by Captain Calder Velden of the Kharon that is said to have landed in Australia. Why they turned their backs on the discovery is the subject matter. We look forward to exploring their thesis.