More about life in the Collections at the South Australian Museum

Every drawer held a perfect still life of fossilised bones, trilobites, molluscs, from a millimetre or less in size to the metres of a fabulous Icthyosaur, temporarily housed on the floor and awaiting restoration.

Many of these relics, the Icthyosaur one of them, were found on remote properties and stored in machinery sheds until they found a new life at the Museum. One trilobite, the largest found in Australia, was thought for many years to be an old half-buried truck tyre.

An added fascination was the boxes the fossils were stored in. These ranged from 1920s Redhead matchboxes to tiny cardboard creations with clear windows in the lid, designed for museum display.

In the Museum Vaults

Actually they're called the Collections, not the Vaults. That name doesn't convey the sense of discovering hidden treasure. Down stairs, through locked doors, below ground, with strict security, it had all the elements of a treasure hunt, even though the hiding place was a utilitarian metal cupboard.

Various Museum Departments manage different areas of the Collections. I had access (under supervision) to Palaeontology Invertebrates. Close by were Vertebrates and in the furthest aisle, with gorgeous crystals gleaming out of occasionally opened doors and glimpsed in passing, was Mineralagy.

Next door, in the laboratory, a team, visiting from a New Zealand Museum, worked all day sitting at a powerful microscope, examining and sorting what looked like a bowl of fine gravel, but was actually fish bones, millions of years old.

It was tempting to spend my days picking up small boxes and examining the contents, wondering at the impossibility of holding in my hand the relic of a creature that lived 130 million years ago. Sometimes it was 500 million years ago but, you will remember, I kept being redirected back, in a firm and scientific manner, to the inland sea of the Cretaceous period.

My first artist residency at the South Australian Museum

The wonderful people at the South Australian Museum last month welcomed me to a unique experience with their Cretaceous marine reptiles.

For some years now I've been working with the idea of Australia's inland sea deserts. The South Australian Museum has one of the two best collections in Australia of fossils, some of them opalised, from these areas. (The other is in Queensland.)

My guides at the Museum kept me strictly on the Cretaceous path whenever I was tempted to deviate into say, Pre-Cambrian treasures. Ignoring my pleas: Are you sure there were none of these ferns in my inland sea?, my palaeontologist and carer would steer me towards a fabulous Icthyosaur with opalised bones.

Next post: In the Museum Vaults