The South Australian Museum .... Open Again!!
With a new Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery
with Keith Conlon

Its ornate East Wing has adorned North Terrace in Adelaide for nearly a century, and now the South Australian Museum, a grand old lady of the boulevard, has had a facelift and a heart transplant. Nearly $20million later, it has just opened again (4 March 2000) after nearly a year of renovations.

There's a totally new entrance, off the quadrangle lawn and through a contemporary glass-walled addition. A new CafÈ and Museum Shop look back to North Terrace, and the Egyptian temple column has moved inside. It was carved on the Nile about three thousand years ago. But that sounds young compared with one of the oldest living cultures in the world.

Through the new entrance, into what used to be the basement storage area, is the beginning of a journey into the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery. It shows off what is simply the best such artefacts collection anywhere.

Francesco Cubilbo is one of the curators, and she welcomed our Postcards viewers in the first of eight regional areas. As she put it, we were on Kaurna land, and so it was appropriate that the people of the Adelaide Plains should come first. European contact saw the loss of traditional lifestyle early, before the Museum's existence, and so it is a small collection on display.

A 1920's archaeological dig in the Moana sandhills, however, revealed rich sources of food. Beautifully presented are shells and bones of seabirds, dingoes and long-lost bandicoots and bettongs.

A compelling photograph of a senior Kaurna woman sits above the rare wallaby skin cloak she is wrapped in. The portrait, which is also the "public face" of the gallery, was taken in 1928 by Museum curators after Ivaritji had spent many years helping them to understand traditional Kaurna life.

Asked which was her favourite place in the beautifully presented sweeps of regions and themes of the new gallery, Francesco beamed and nominated Kakadu in the Top End near Darwin. "That's my country", she explained. The striking images and illuminating interviews with contemporary Kakadu people that play on a digital screen in that "section" will surely be popular with visitors too.

It is impossible to absorb all of the riches of the collection, spread over two levels of the Museum. It will lure us back to follow stories through its objects and images and interviews.

I started a theme on Postcards, for instance, with an aesthetically stunning wall of fibre baskets. They came from Arnham Land to the Lower Murray. One of them, from the Simpson Desert, was for carrying and trading Pitjuri.

Wanting to know more, I moved to a touch-screen module that could have kept me busy for days! Following a menu by just touching the digital screen as the word-trail I wanted came up, I threaded my way through literally thousands of images, videos, archival film and interviews in its database.

Pitjuri is a natural narcotic plant, and a map indicated it was traded hundreds of kilometres from Birdsville to the Flinders Ranges. There was a shot of its strappy leaves and tiny flowers. The highlight of the search, however, was a "meeting" with 80-year-old Linda Crombie who relished telling a story on screen about gathering Pitjuri as a young girl with her grandparents.

The infectious sounds of children's laughter greeted us as we headed for the "play" theme end of the new gallery. On another digital screen is a loop of about a half hour of precious archival film showing aboriginal kids and their traditional games and toys. An early colour sequence from about fifty years ago on the northern coast, shows boys in canoes learning to beach their craft amid much mirth. Their younger brothers play with "toy" versions, and now in the hands-on section, you can hold one yourself.

Fortunately, trainee guide Elsie Fischer was on hand for our Postcards review. Adult and school guided groups are allowed into the play box! She showed us improvised balls and fine coiled reed baskets, but the winner was definitely the "trucka-trucka". As Elsie explained, they are painted food tins with gravel in them for sound effects, and fencing wire lengths fashioned as handles for wheeling them around.

There is fun and fascination enough for several visits. And the power of the collection is always present. Along the wall of the play section, for instance, is a superb array of decorated aboriginal shields. As one wag in the Art Gallery next door put it, there may be more Rembrandts in the Museum than there are over there!

One of our most popular visitors' destinations, The South Australian Museum is back with a vengeance. Its new website, www.samuseum.sa.gov.au, presents an opportunity to sample its enormous digitised artefacts and media collection.

It's on North Terrace, of course, and it is open daily from 10.00am to 5.00pm. AND IT'S FREE!!!