In the swag of interesting Australian 1860-l940 photographs recently offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books, Melbourne , the above one of Sydney's Australian Museum grabbed my attention for several reasons .
By Peter Simon
When I was a teenager - nearly 70 years ago !- i frequently visited the museum to gaze in wonderment at the showcase displays and suspended objects . Later, when working as a reporter, I wrote about the museum and was personally shown part of its tektite collection . Globular in shape, glasslike, tektites are believed to have formed during meteorite impact on the Moon which splashed down on Earth .
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I even had one of those so called space or lunar buttons , bought at a garage sale in South Australia. Must go looking for it .
In the caption for the circa l868 photograph , priced at $2800, it stated one of the staff standing outside was the Curator , Johann Ludwig Gerard "Louis" Krefft. .
His surname rang a bell because on a recent trip to the Tyto Wetlands precinct , in Ingham, North Queensland , Krefft Short-neck Turtles were seen feeding , an item run about them in this blog..
Krefft was one of Australia's most influential zoologists and palaeontologists, one of the few early Australian scientists to speak out in support of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection .
A talented artist and draughtsman , he spent time in America and lobbed in Victoria in 1852 , travelling about the goldfields. In 1857, he was a member of an expedition that explored the Murray and Darling Rivers which collected 17,400 specimens , becoming part of the National Museum of Victoria , founded in 1854 .
He also made many drawings of Aborigines and natural science specimens, wrote books on snakes and mammals . Upon the death of his father, he returned to Germany in 1858 and returned to Sydney in 1860 where he was appointed Assistant Curator of the Australian Museum .
A hard worker , he was curator of the Australian Museum for 13 years during which time he introduced photographic displays , wrote a large number of newspaper articles to popularise natural science.
The Australian Museum website says he published more than 200 scientific articles and books and discovered extraordinary species , such as the Queensland Lungfish.
Made Curator in l864, he excavated the Wellington Caves and found many fossils, including a giant kangaroo and a Diprotodon.
His tenure as a dynamic scientist got to a stage where he clashed with some of the museum's trustees, described as gentlemen collectors themselves . He alleged gold specimens had been removed from a showcase .
Dismissed from his post in l874, he refused to leave the museum , barricaded himself inside. He was finally removed by two professional boxers , still seated in his chair . There was legal action over the removal and he received payment as a result . Krefft died in 1881, aged 51.
The museum site says Krefft was immortalised in the names of many Australian species such as the Hairy-nosed Wombat Lasiorhinus krefftii and the Southern Dwarf Crowned Snake, Cacophis krefftii.
The British Museum of Natural History named the carnivorous Short -neck Turtle , from Queensland's Burnet River, after Krefft in 1871. Several countries bestowed honours upon him for his work .
