As part of the festival, Scienceworks hosted Tools of the Trade, an art installation by Victorian artist Jason Waterhouse. Jason’s practice involves transforming vintage and modern hand and power tools into surrealist sculptural pieces, evoking a sense of visual play and thoughtful site-specific responses.

Jason Waterhouse's Amoebic OzitoImage: Pia Johnson Tools of the TradeImage: Pia Jognson

Installed within our limited-access collection store at Scienceworks (the first time an exhibition has taken place in this space), Jason’s sculptures resonated with the heritage objects housed in the store and the industrial heritage of the Scienceworks site. The work counterpoints industrial hand tools and the hand of the artist to create a poignant reflection of changing concepts of labour.

Tools of the Trade exhibitionImage: Rodney Start Tools of the Trade exhibitionImage: Rodney Start

"This first partnership with the Art & Industry Festival demonstrates that our stores can be dynamic spaces open to interpretation and creative uses while fulfilling their essential role of safeguarding Museums Victoria collections. Working with Jason created a great opportunity for us to explore ways in which collection objects in the store could be experienced in context alongside his contemporary art practice." said Trish Stokes, Manager History and Technology Collection.

Jason’s artwork with some of Museums Victoria’s heritage industrial and manufacturing hand tools. Image: Rodney Start Installation of Jason’s work in progress. Image: Vera Gin

An artist talk and special tours were held daily, taking visitors behind the scenes to see Jason’s work as well as our own ‘extreme tools’ including saw and needle displays designed for The Great Exhibition at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, the super-tall haystack ladder, agricultural sales models used by touring salespeople to farming areas, and industrial safety signs from local manufacturers and building sites.

Nick Crotty, Collection Store manager, who worked with Jason to install the art pieces amongst the museum objects said "Jason was a wonderful artist to work with. He got a real buzz out of displaying his artwork amongst the historical objects of the collection and loved the industrial feel of the store. His artworks worked really well displayed next to our hand tool collection."

Engineering curator Matilda Vaughan and Collection Manager Nick Crotty installing objects.Image: Rodney Start Artist Jason Waterhouse installing objects.Image: Rodney Start

Also part of the festival, the Spotswood Pumping Station was illuminated each evening by artist Phil Lethlean within the Western Lights program. This 120 year old heritage-listed feat of Melbourne’s engineering past brought to life of an evening, highlighting the Late French Empire architecture of this significant industrial building which housed Melbourne’s first centralised sewerage system.

Spotswood Pumping Station IlluminatedImage: Art & Industry Festival Westgate Bridge IlluminatedImage: Art & Industry Festival

The Pumping Station kept luminous company with other well-loved industrial buildings and spaces in Hobsons Bay – the West Gate Bridge, Mobil tank, Modscape and Adrian Mauriks’ Fire Within artwork along Kororoit Creek Road. A photo competition encouraged people to step out after dark and capture some of these beacons, with the winning images featured on postcards promoting our local industrial heroes.

We are excited to work in partnership with Hobson’s Bay City Council in the art, science and industrial heritage sphere as well as with our collections, exhibitions and conservation, volunteer and customer services teams who made this great program happen. A huge thank you to all involved.

Postcript Museums Victoria houses more than 17 million objects that represent Australia’s cultural and environmental history, which allow us to understand the past, reflect on the present and look into the future. As well as the daily tours delivered at Scienceworks, the collection is also accessed by historians, academics and researchers from around the world. Head to Museums Victoria Collections to explore what’s in our vast collection.

A record-breaking little fishby Patrick Honan16 September 2016Comments (3) Common Jollytail (Galaxias maculatus)Image: Patrick HonanSource: Museum Victoria

Although Common Jollytails won’t break any records for fishing enthusiasts, they undoubtedly break the record for the most geographically widespread freshwater fish species in the world. Jollytails, also known as Galaxias, are unsung heroes of the fish world; featuring prominently in Melbourne Museum’s Forest Gallery, they are an ancient group, living in both fresh and salt water and yielding thousands of tonnes of food for humans each year.

Named after the galaxy of white stars on their flanks, there are nearly 50 species of Galaxias around the world, of which more than half can be found in Australia. Several species are known from only one or two locations, and up to 10 are critically endangered.

Dessins des Poissons de Melbourne (Australia) d’apres des individus frais. Pour le Jardin des Plantes de Paris (Drawings of Fishes of Melbourne (Australia) from fresh individuals. For the Botanic Gardens of Paris). Scientific artwork by Francois Laporte, Le Compte de Castelnau, presented on 23 February 1880 to what is now Museum Victoria. The top specimen is the Spotted Jollytail (Galaxias truttaceus (then G.ocellatus)) and the bottom one Common Jollytail (Galaxias maculatus (then G.versicolor)). Count Castelnau was the first to scientifically describe the Spotted Jollytail, and Frederick McCoy (first Director of the Museum) described the Common Jollytail.Source: Museum Victoria

The most abundant is the Common Jollytail (Galaxias maculatus) with the largest natural distribution of any freshwater fish, found across most of southern Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and parts of South America.

Galaxiid species found in Victoria: Common Jollytail (Galaxias maculatus)Image: Rudie H. KuiterSource: Aquatic Photographics

Galaxiid species found in Victoria: Spotted Jollytail (G.truttaceus)Image: Rudie H. KuiterSource: Aquatic Photographics

Galaxiid species found in Victoria: Mountain Jollytail (G.olidus)Image: Rudie H. KuiterSource: Aquatic Photographics

In Australia this species is also known as Native Trout, and as Puyen in South America and Inanga in New Zealand. The distribution of Common Jollytails is assumed by some researchers to reflect their origin in Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent which included all the southern continents (also a feature of the Forest Gallery). However, Gondwana broke up 65 million years ago and the oldest known Galaxiid fossil is only 23 million years old. In contrast, genetic studies suggest there is ongoing mixing between populations of Common Jollytails on different continents, and that the original population in Australia migrated all the way to South America and to many points in between.

Common Jollytails are highly opportunistic, able to live in unpredictable water bodies, and tolerate salinity almost double that of sea water. They can also survive a range of water temperatures, enabling them to live in streams from southeast Queensland to the southwest corner of WA. The smallest adults mature at 5.7cm in length and the largest grow to almost 20cm.

A school of Common Jollytails in the Forest Gallery creek, Melbourne Museum.Image: Patrick HonanSource: Museum Victoria

In autumn adults swim downstream to river mouths to spawn, waiting for a spring tide to lay millions of eggs amongst moist vegetation on the river banks. As the tide recedes, the eggs are left exposed for two weeks or more until the next spring tide, when they hatch and are washed out to sea. Here they spend up to six months through winter before swimming back upstream for the next year or so until they reach maturity. In Victoria and elsewhere, landlocked populations survive by migrating from streams into large lakes instead of the sea.

In Australia the whitebait fishing industry focussing on galaxiids closed in the 1970s, but it remains healthy overseas. ‘Whitebaiters’ catch the transparent juveniles as they swarm upstream from the coast, and in Chile alone the catch is up to 20 tonnes per season, while in New Zealand it may be more than 100 tonnes annually (one tonne of whitebait equals about three million individuals). However, studies show whitebaiters in New Zealand harvest a very small proportion of the potential catch each year.

Live Exhibits staff collecting Galaxiids under permit at night. The fish are held in quarantine for six weeks to detect any diseases or parasites before being released into the Forest Gallery at Melbourne Museum.Image: Patrick HonanSource: Museum Victoria

Galaxiids feed on aquatic insects, molluscs and crustaceans, which unfortunately puts them in direct competition with introduced trout, which also prey on the galaxiids themselves. A joint Museum Victoria/Parks Victoria survey of the Victorian Alps in 2013 found that galaxiids had disappeared from many streams where they were previously abundant just a couple of decades ago, and research suggests introduced trout can clear a stream of its galaxiid population in as little as six months.

The prime way trout are introduced into streams is translocation by fishing enthusiasts. Redfin, habitat degradation and changes to stream flow also threaten many of the galaxiid species – the Pedder Galaxias (Galaxias pedderensis) in Tasmania is thought to be Australia’s most threatened fish species.