The HMS Sirius Collection is Moved!

It has been a big few weeks at the museum. On Thursday 8th November the amazing team of Phillip Smith, Franklin Randall, Caine Henderson, Winton Stephens, Brent Jones, Pumpkin and Brett Berganin took the Sirius anchor, carronades and other artefacts from the Pier Store to their new home in the former Protestant Chapel. This was no easy task for the anchor in particular. Not only did they have to take the 1.7 ton anchor out through the gantry doors in the Pier Store (that are shorter than the average door and thinner than the width of the head of the anchor) they also then had to manoeuvre it in through the compound side door, attach it to a wooden stock and leave it free standing in the middle of the room! Hopefully some of the pictures will reveal the level of skill and ingenuity required to successfully carry this out.

Our sincere thanks to Franklin Randall for doing it all again! and providing his expert knowledge to the whole process. Caine Henderson brought his ‘Dial a Digger’ machinery and team who worked together for the entire day meeting every challenge without a hitch. What amazing Norfolk men!

We have been so lucky to secure the services of Phillip Smith from the Museum of Tropical Queensland who has so much experience with this type of work. Prior to the move of the major artefacts, Phillip worked with Brent Jones putting up the 5 metre long replica fibre-glass hull. Fitting the difficult bow sprit and figurehead were no problem for these two! Phillip and Brent will continue working on this museum and the Pier Store through next week as all the interpretation panels are hung and new displays installed in the Pier Store. As always we had our amazing volunteer Sue Brian doing anything and everything and more that was asked of her.

 This exciting re-housing of the HMS Sirius collection is of course only possible due to funding from a grant through the Commonwealth Your Community Heritage Program and the Norfolk Island Government. We have a long way still to go before the new museum will open its doors – but the major and most difficult task of moving those precious artefacts has been successfully achieved.

The photo's really capture the action, skill and incredible accomplishment of the 'move team'.