Mapping our history using Historypin

Historypin calls itself a 'digital time machine' and the site's aim is to bring together, map, timeline and share historic photographs. It's a great way to visualise history, plus give historic photos a wider context with other photos from the same times and places.

The State Library NSW and Powerhouse Museum are already adding photos from their massive social history photographic collections.

And now here's our Historypin channel.

We can also add stories about our photos in Historypin and/or link them back to other web resources on the Australian Museum website. It's a perfect fit for the Archive's holdings and mission to showcase and make accessible our large and very diverse historic photo collections.

Field trip photography

Apart from the obvious Museum-based photos, we think the Historypin site will be a great place to showcase some of our wonderful outreach and field trip photos -- of regional NSW, Australia and the Pacific. These photos will be the focus of our Historypin efforts. For example, we have a treasure-trove of photographs of Lord Howe Island from our first field trip in 1869 to the present. And some wonderful photos of the progress of the Museum train through country NSW.

Japanese Antractic adventurers at Parsley Bay

Our first project has been to add photos of the Japanses Shirase expeditioners' camp to maps of Parsley Bay in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The photos, taken by the Japanese team's doctor, show many of the local families and houses at the time of the early development of Vaucluse and Parsley Bay. It's a very place-specific story and perfect for the local history focus of the Historypin site.