Mitchell sprawls untidily across Canberra’s grassy northern plain. You would never go there incidentally; there’s always a reason. Most of us who have lived in Canberra for any time have stood out there amid whipping winds or under a baking sun at the Australian capital’s biggest cemetery. Thousands of precisely trimmed rose and rosemary bushes, plaques and headstones are set in an ocean of lawn, surrounding a constantly exhaling redbrick crematorium. Colonial explorer and surveyor Thomas Mitchell had quite some bother with the Aboriginal people during his tours into the heart of New South Wales in the mid-1830s. He was rather too eager to shoot on sight than appease the tribesmen, killing seven and drawing mild admonishment from the colonial authorities. Still, Mitchell won a knighthood. Later, a cockatoo – the Major Mitchell – was named after him. And a highway, a river, a town in Queensland, and this ramshackle place in Canberra. Mitchell is also the unlikely repository for some of Australia’s cultural treasure. The National Museum of Australia stands a few kilometres away on the northern bank of Lake Burley Griffin, on what is still a sacred meeting site. The museum has some 200,000 items in its collection, but… Read full this story
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