NMA1985_0059_0397

Title: A message stick held in the National Museum of Australia

Description: Wood stick, flat rectangle, incised geometric designs, ends truncated

Message: According to NMA: "Original label on 1985.0059.0397 reads: "War".

Item type: message stick in a collection

Subtype: traditional

Dimension 1: 110mm Dimension 2: 25mm Dimension 3: 10mm

Materials: wood

Source types: museum collection

Institution/Holder file: The National Museum of Australia object identifier: 1985.0059.0397

Collector: Edmund Milne collection

Media copyright: The National Museum of Australia

URL institution: https://collectionsearch.nma.gov.au/icons/images/kaui2/index.html#/home?usr=CE

Notes: According to NMA: "Original label on 1985.0059.0397 reads: "War". Edmund Milne (1861-1917) was born in England and emigrated to Queensland with his parents 19 months later. He had had personal contact with Aboriginal people throughout his life, from when he was a small boy in Queensland and, from the late 1860s, in New South Wales. This contact may have led him to recording the names of Aboriginal people associated with particular objects in his collection, at a time when this was rarely done. Milne seems to have begun actively collecting Indigenous artefacts in the early 1880s and was still acquiring objects a few months before his death in 1917. His work with the NSW Railways (1876-1917) enabled him to meet a broad range of people who facilitated his collecting and associated activities like visiting Aboriginal sites. From at least the time he lived at Orange NSW (1906-1915), and later at Ryde (1915-1917), near to Sydney city, he displayed his collection at his home. In addition to a large collection of Aboriginal artefacts, Milne's collection included artefacts from the South Pacific and prehistoric implements from Egypt, France and England. In his will dated 12 December 1916, Milne bequeathed his “Anthropological collection” to the “first Federal Museum opened in the Federal Capital”. The collection remained at Ryde until early 1931 when it was acquired by the Australian Institute of Anatomy in Canberra. It remained there until the Institute's collections were transferred to the National Museum of Australia in 1985."

Media Files:

Data Entry: Nitzan Rotman