April 2021

As our national anthem proclaims, “our home is girt by sea” in fact Australia's area of maritime responsibility is some fourteen million square kilometres or twice the area of our land mass. Given our geographic position in the world surrounded

While there may be times in the life of a sailor that are perilous and demand hours of hard work in miserable conditions equally there are hours when not on watch that are made interminable by boredom. Ship’s masters were

When most of us think of pirates our thoughts go to the likes of Black Beard, Black Bart and Thomas Tew names which come to us from a time when piracy on the sea was at a peak. The blood

Some visitors to the museum this week were surprised to see paddle wheel vessels on display. Coming from area around the Murray River which forms the boarder between much of Victoria and NSW and were used to seeing paddle-wheelers but

It is surprising the number of visitors from Ballina Shire who visit our museum and comment that they have lived here for years had never visited before. Equally surprising are those who say that they didn’t know we had a

The old adage, “a photo is worth a thousand words” is certainly true.  Even if in today’s world of computerised editing and software that can manipulate images almost seamlessly makes telling truth from fiction a little more difficult and in

When the early morning silence off the coast of Ballina was shattered by an explosion on the morning of 26th April 1943 it created a riddle that would not be solved till August 2013. On that bright moon light morning the

The capricious Ballina bar crossing has long been the bane of ship’s captains and navigators. In his 1997 study “Shipwreck Heritage of the Richmond River”, Mike Richards lists some eighty- eight vessels which had come to grief on the bar

SS Protector:  - Fenwick Brothers Ballina Most famously Tom Fenwick a blunt, strong willed man. Who came to rule the river mouth at Ballina as an operator of tugboats. SS Pprotector was esigned by James Pashley – South Ballina especially for work

As a region we owe much to a well-heeled son of nobility with a penchant for sporting pursuits and in particular horse racing.   When Captain Henry Rous anchored his ship Rainbow off of the mouth of a yet unnamed river in