FILM director George Miller of Mad Max fame is used to viewing the world through a camera. But as one of the Australian Museum's newly chosen 200 treasures – along with Australia's first female prime minister Julia Gillard, a 2800-year-old Egyptian mummy and a Tasmanian tiger pup – his image will shine brightly inside and outside the museum.
Mr Miller is one of 100 people living and dead – including Billy Hughes, Eddie Mabo, Cathy Freeman, Bob Hawke and Sir Donald Bradman – who the museum selected because they had shaped the nation through contributions to history, science and nature or culture.
Attending the launch in the newly restored Westpac Long Gallery, Mr Miller said the honour was surprising, especially as his mother attended the National School – which now forms part of the Museum – as a girl about 90 years ago.
"Today is a big Mum day because it goes back a long way," said Dr Miller, who also made The Dismissal and Babe.
When the Long Gallery first opened at the Australian Museum in May 1857, nearly a quarter of Sydney's 45,000 residents – equivalent to a million people today – visited within a week to see stuffed cabinets stuffed with jaw-dropping curiosities and lit by gas lamps.
On Saturday the refurbished gallery reopens, showcasing 200 of the museum's 18 million treasures: 100 objects showcased in cabinets with related items that tell a story, and the stories of 100 people considered to be the nation's brave and the bold. Images of the 200 people and things will be projected nightly in a Vivid-style light show from sunset from October 13 to 22.
Museum director Kim McKay hopes the quirky collection will pique visitors' thirst for knowledge enough that they will come back again and again, and give the world's fifth oldest natural science museum and Australia's first museum the stature she believes it deserves.
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