Christian Palestinian tattoo artist Walid Ayash draws a tattoo on the arm of a Coptic Egyptian pilgrim on April 28, 2016, at his studio in Bethlehem.
Thomas Coex /AFP via Getty Images
How did George Stubbs, one of England’s foremost painters of horses and dogs, get Australian animals so wrong?
UFOs usually have non-extraterrestrial origins, but many have urged the government to be more transparent about UFO data.
Westend61/Westend61 via Getty Images
Whistleblower allegations that the government possesses UFOs may not be backed up by public physical evidence, but some argue that listening for extraterrestrial life is the first phase of contact.
Daniel Boyd’s solo exhibition Treasure Island, now at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is a deeply political and personal interrogation of Australia’s colonial history.
Hollywood movies have historically represented the tropics as lush green coasts but lurking underneath is disease and danger.
(Warner Bros.)
Hollywood movies have long leaned into colonial representations of the tropics: imagined as romantic palm-fringed coasts full of abundance, but also scary places full of pestilence and primitiveness.
Indigenous story-telling of Cook’s landing has transformed the way we understand his legacy in Australia. And the way he came ashore set some of the terms for future colonial-Indigenous relations.
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation; Phoebe Roth, The Conversation, and Sophia Morris, The Conversation
250 years since Captain Cook landed in Australia, it’s time to acknowledge the violence of first encounters
The Conversation, CC BY63 MB(download)
The way Australia has commemorated Cook's arrival has changed over time – from military displays in 1870 to waning interest in Cook in the 1950s, followed by the fever pitch celebrations of 1970.
Vincent Namatjira, Western Arrernte people, Northern Territory, born 1983, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Close Contact, 2018, Indulkana, South Australia, synthetic polymer paint on plywood; Gift of the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation for the Ramsay Art Prize 2019.
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, photo: Grant Hancock
Explore Cook’s journey through the Pacific, the orders that brought him in search of the ‘Great Southern Land’ and the impact of his arrival in our new interactive.
Portrait of Mai, also known as Omai or Omai of the Friendly Isles.
Wikimedia Commons
Both islanders played a central role in Cook’s three voyages across the Pacific, but their contributions have largely been overshadowed in what is generally thought of as era of European exploration.
A picture titled ‘Captain Cook taking possession of the Australian continent on behalf of the British crown, AD 1770’. Drawn and engraved by Samuel Calvert from an historical painting by Gilfillan in the possession of the Royal Society of Victoria.
Trove/National Library of Australia
On one of the world’s most remote islands, a species of duck has learned to scavenge on dead seals.
A large bowl or pan thought to have been made in Sydney by the potter Thomas Ball between 1801 and 1823.
Courtesy of Casey & Lowe, photo by Russell Workman
Though the Indigenous inhabitants were using white clay long before them, Sydney-made pottery helped colonists maintain different aspects of ‘civilised’ behaviour.
Aboriginal elder Major Sumner sits outside Liverpool’s World Museum with a box containing the skull of an Australian indigenous person, taken from Australia between 1902 and 1904.
Phil Noble/Reuters
The question of repatriating objects is clearly more complex than returning human remains. It needs more debate, and more creative interventions to move beyond the current impasse.
Australians have gazed in wonder at the Milky Way since long before Captain Cook’s time.
Christian Reusch/Wikimedia Commons
What did Isaac Newton, Captain Cook and Eddie Mabo all have in common? Each, in their own way, looked to the heavens to make sense of the world, and the importance of their place in it.
History lesson: Sydney’s Daily Telegraph goes to war on political correctness.
Not for the first time Britain and Australia are at loggerheads over cultural heritage. At issue this time are two images of genuine historical significance to both countries: Kongouro from New Holland…