Migrants arriving in Sydney

David Moore captured this photograph of passengers on the liner GALILEO GALILE during the peak of immigration from Europe to Australia. Moore was on assignment for 'National Geographic' and later said of this image: 'Apprehension, doubt, excitement and even a little fear were expressed in the faces of passengers coming to a new land. Then the woman in the centre of the picture recognised a familiar face. Her joy was obvious as she raised an outstretched hand, unwittingly creating the element that had been missing from the picture'.

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On 21 November 1977 a photographer working for the Australian Government, Michael Jensen, captured a moment in history as six Vietnamese refugee boats docked in Darwin Harbour in a single day. In 1990 the Australian National Maritime Museum acquired one of these boats, Tự Do to explore what was at that time one of the most significant recent themes in Australia’s maritime history – the arrival of seaborne refugees and asylum seekers. In 2012, following an almost decade-long restoration program, the museum finally returned Tu Do to the configuration documented in Jensen’s photographs, when the vessel carried 31 refugees, including South Vietnamese store owner Tan Thanh Lu and his young family, to freedom.

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This image is one of a series of photographs taken by Fairfax photographers that provides a unique window into how immigrants were viewed and immigration policy articulated in the popular press in Australia. They represent something of the personal face to Australia's massive post-war immigration push and show immigrants from many European nations, USA and China.

Date:1948

Dimensions:

Overall: 164 × 214 mm

Medium:photographic print on paper

Credit Line:Australian National Maritime Museum Collection

Classification: Photographs

Object Name:Photograph

Object No:ANMS1453[113]

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Two decades before Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, British diplomat Lord Elgin removed a collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens. To mark the bicentenary of the start of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, we relate the story of a tireless campaigner for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles from Britain to Greece.

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Migrants in a group on the MV TOSCANA at Trieste January 1954

Date:2 January 1954

Dimensions:

Overall: 105 x 151 mm

Medium:Silver gelatin print on paper

Credit Line:ANMM Collection Gift from Barbara Alysen

Classification: Photographs

Object Name:Photograph

Object No:ANMS0214[047]

Related Place:Trieste

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Gock Quay (1878–1916) was born in the small farming community of Chuk Sau Yuen in Xiangshan county (now Zhuxiuyuan, Zhongshan), in southern China’s Guangdong province. Today Zhongshan (meaning ‘Middle Mountain’) is best known as the birthplace of revolutionary leader Dr Sun Yat-sen, but from the mid-19th century it was also a major source of Chinese migrants and sojourners seeking their fortunes on the Australian goldfields.  

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