WA Museum Collections and Research

12/06/2026

Ever wondered what lies behind the lab doors of the WA Museum?

Particle WA recently spent time with our Senior Preparator Kirsten Tullis and taxidermist Teori Shannon, looking at the careful, creative and occasionally very unusual work that helps bring Museum displays to life.

Take a read behind-the-scenes:

What lies behind the lab doors of the Western Australian Museum?

11/06/2026

When Joanne Huggins wanted to play football in the 1980s, there was no established women’s competition in WA.

So she placed an advertisement in the paper asking if other women were interested in forming one, and received 60 phone calls! Before long, there were enough players to form four teams across Perth.

Objects from those early years, including bumper stickers used to generate support, a State jumper and cap featuring sponsorship from controversial sources, and an off-field shirt highlighting the progression of sponsorship in the mid-2000s are now part of the Museum collection.

Collected through the Women in Sport project – which aims to expand the Museum's collection of sporting stories – they help share the changes, challenges and stories of women building a football culture despite limited resources and recognition.

Today is also International Day of Play, which celebrates the role of play in building confidence and community. For many girls and women, those things were never guaranteed. They had to juggle work and home life, raise funds, pay their own way, challenge opposition and make room for themselves in the games they loved to play.

You can hear these stories in our upcoming talk, Playing with Passion: Breaking barriers in women’s sport on Thursday 25 June, as curators Kylie Elston and Monika Durrer share stories from the trailblazing women who helped create opportunities for the next generation of girls in sport.

Read the full story: https://visit.museum.wa.gov.au/learn/news-stories/collecting-rise-womens-sport

29/05/2026

That's a wrap! As the final leg of , the team spent four days sampling at the remote Cocos (Keeling) Islands. They surveyed four shipwrecks 🏴‍☠️, the oldest dating back to the 19th century, and collected a diverse array of marine invertebrates 🦀 🐚 on lagoonal and outer reef dives. Specimens will be winging their way to Perth where the team will identify and sequence the DNA of potential new species and species not known from the waters around the atoll.

This project has been made possible through support by Foundation for the WA Museum and Parks Australia

25/05/2026

The team has completed Phase One of their project, diving the spectacular drop offs 🪸of Christmas Island in search of new species and surveying the Eidsvold wreck. Working alongside colleagues from Australian Marine Parks and Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development Biosecurity, and ending with a 'tag team' community talk highlighting pests 🦪, pincers 🦀 & pirate ships 🏴‍☠️

The team is now on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to make more discoveries!

This project has been made possible through support from Foundation for the WA Museum and Parks Australia

22/05/2026

What role do museums play in a world that feels increasingly divided?

That was one of the topics discussed this morning on ABC Kimberley Mornings, as part of their week-long celebration of International Museum Day.

WA Museum Director Culture and Communities Melanie Piddocke joined Matty Francis to talk about this years theme and the role museums can play in our community.

The conversation explored how museums help navigate complex ideas, encourage curiosity and critical thinking, and help people engage with history and culture in ways that feel personal and approachable.

Catch the full conversation (from 33:55): https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/kimberley-mornings/mornings/106695116

21/05/2026

Meet Michael, who assists behind-the-scenes of the Museum alongside our conservation team.

Michael has volunteered with the WA Museum for around 5 years, combining his background working in the Micro-Biology Laboratory at Royal Perth Hospital with his degree in historical studies.

Under supervision in the Conservation Laboratory, he works mainly on iron artefacts recovered from shipwrecks, using the level of care necessary when handling delicate artefact materials.

In these photos, Michael can be seen removing dust from a model in the Museum collection, applying a rust converter/inhibitor to an anchor recovered from the brigantine Fairy Queen 1860 shipwreck and removing concretion from the remains of an early smoothing iron recovered from the barque Eglinton 1842 shipwreck.

You can see his handiwork at the WA shipwrecks museum, where some artefacts from the Eglinton shipwreck are on display.

Michael is passionate about preserving history, explaining: "My interests lie with historical things, and the treatments I apply enable me to help preserve objects of historical importance to our State Museum and the people of Western Australia."

Thank you, Michael, for the care, skill and time you bring to the Museum.

Happy National Volunteer Week!

20/05/2026

🐝 It’s World Bee Day, so let’s talk about one bee that's been keeping a few secrets in our gardens.

The red-eyed resin bee, Megachile aurifrons, is commonly found across Australia and is a regular guest in Perth gardens. Like other resin bees, it is solitary, which means each female builds and provisions her own nest rather than living in a larger colony.

However, a recent study by Terry Houston and Kerry Stuart has shown this little bee has a slightly unusual nesting habit.

While most solitary bees build one sealed cell for each egg, providing a small supply of pollen and nectar for their larvae, this bee creates communal brood cells where 4–8 larvae feed from the same supply.

It's an efficient little set up that may also explain why the species is so widespread: More offspring for less effort.

Even better, this discovery was made using bee observation hotels – which you can set up at home yourself! Turns out, your everyday garden space can help scientists better understand our native bees.

So if you have a bee hotel at home, you are not only giving pollinators a place to nest, you might also be helping reveal what they get up to behind closed doors...

📷 Image 1: A male red-eyed resin bee on flowers. Images 2–3 A female bee carrying leaf pulp to her nest hollowing and sealing the entrance. Courtesy of Kerry Stuart.

18/05/2026

This International Museum Day, WA Museum divers are heading into the remote waters of Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands on a short but exciting field expedition. Their mission: to explore these unique marine environments and uncover species new to science. The team will be working alongside Parks Australia to document biodiversity and help us better understand our oceans.

This expedition was made possible through support from Foundation for the WA Museum.

08/05/2026

Happy Birthday, Sir David Attenborough 🎉

To celebrate, here's a throw back to the time Sir David visited us in 2012 and was introduced to a new spider species named after him!

Prethopalpus attenboroughi was discovered by WA Museum Head of Terrestrial Zoology Dr Mark Harvey and Queensland Museum Research Fellow Dr Barbara Baehr.

When Attenborough stopped by for a visit, he not only had a chat with the people who named the spider after him, but was was also gifted a copy of the publication describing the spider and a mounted photograph.

Attenborough’s lifelong commitment to the natural world, environmental stewardship and sustainability is second to none and our planet has been lucky to have him. 🥂 🌎

06/05/2026

A previously unrecognised species of koala has been confirmed from fossils in the Western Australian Museum collection 🐨

“Deep grooves in the cheekbone housed a large facial muscle, suggesting the animal may have had unusually large, mobile lips, possibly for manipulating eucalyptus leaves, or maybe to flare its nostrils to enhance its sense of smell and detect food from greater distances."

Fossils of the species have now been identified from more than a dozen cave deposits across southern Western Australia, including sites in Yanchep, Margaret River and the Roe Plain near Madura. This widespread distribution shows that these koalas once occupied a far broader range than previously recognised.

A previously unrecognised species of koala has been confirmed from fossils in the Western Australian Museum collection. It is the first new koala species identified from Western Australia.