Museum of Sydney: Permanent display

Free permanent exhibitions at Museum of Sydney.

Open 7 days: 10am–5pm

Edge of Trees
Yura Nura: People & Country
First Fleet Ships

Edge of Trees
This site-specific piece commissioned for the forecourt of the Museum of Sydney at its opening in 1995 was created by artists Fiona Foley and Janet Laurence

Edge of the Trees is a site-specific piece commissioned for the forecourt of the Museum of Sydney at its opening in 1995. The installation was created by artists Fiona Foley and Janet Laurence.

Their award-winning public art installation evokes the cultural and physical history of the site, before and after 1788: a pivotal turning point in our history, when contact and invasion / colonisation took place.

The name of the sculpture comes from an essay by historian Rhys Jones, 'Ordering the Landscape' in I & T Donaldson's Seeing the First Australians, Sydney 1985:

…the 'discoverers' struggling through the surf were met on the beaches by other people looking at them from the edge of the trees. Thus the same landscape perceived by the newcomers as alien, hostile, or having no coherent form, was to the indigenous people their home, a familiar place, the inspiration of dreams.

A 'forest' of 29 massive pillars – sandstone, wood and steel – cluster near the museum entrance. Wooden pillars from trees once grown in the area have been recycled from lost industrial buildings of Sydney. The names of 29 Aboriginal clans from around Sydney correspond to the 29 vertical poles. Walking between the pillars you hear a soundscape of Koori voices reciting the names of places in the Sydney region that have today been swallowed up by the metropolis.

Organic materials such as human hair, shell, bone, feathers, ash and honey, are embedded in windows within the elements, evoking prior ways of life. Natural and cultural histories are evoked by the names of botanical species carved or burnt into wooden columns in both Latin and Aboriginal languages, along with the signatures of First Fleeters. Place names are engraved on the sandstone pillars in English and Aboriginal languages.

Yura Nura: People & Country
Yura Nura: People & Country presents contemporary Aboriginal reflections on the history of Sydney and colonisation

The relationship between the British and Aboriginal peoples largely began around Warrane (Sydney Cove) on the site where the first Government House was built and the Museum of Sydney now stands (near present-day Circular Quay). From its construction in 1788 to its demolition in 1845, the first Government House was the centre of colonial power in Australia. Imposing British law on Aboriginal people, orders were issued and multiple governing documents were signed within its walls that had, and continue to have, direct impact on Indigenous people across Australia.

This display provides a glimpse into the complex relationship between this significant site and Aboriginal people, culture and land, then and now. Arrernte/Kalkadoon filmmaker Rachel Perkins’ award-winning documentary First Australians explores key events in the early years of the colony and includes personal reflections on the impacts still felt by Aboriginal people today. Three artworks by Gordon Syron, a Worimi/Biripi man from the mid-north coast of NSW, offer a contemporary artistic interpretation of the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove in 1788 and its continuing legacy.

First Fleet Ships
This display explores the journey, arrival and first contacts of this fleet’s largely unwilling human cargo

In 1788, after more than eight months at sea, the First Fleet landed, transporting some 1500 people to set up a new penal colony for Britain at the far end of the earth.
This display explores the journey, arrival and first contacts of this fleet’s largely unwilling human cargo.

The First Fleet models on display at the Museum of Sydney were built by modelmakers Lynne and Laurie Hadley following nine years of painstaking research into original plans, drawings and British archival documents. Each ship is built on a 1:48 scale, from western red cedar or Syrian cedar.

❊ Official Tickets ❊

Book Online Here

❊ When ❊

Happens: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

❊ Where ❊

 Museum of Sydney View Venue
 Cnr Phillip St and Bridge St Sydney New South Wales 2000 Map

❊ Web Links ❊

→ Museum of Sydney: Permanent display

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