John and Jacqui Mullen Collection

The John and Jacqui Mullen Collection offers visitors a fascinating insight into the European search for the imagined Great South Land and the early exploration of Australia and the Pacific. Featuring an extraordinary collection of rare manuscripts, books, maps, and navigational instruments, the exhibition reveals how explorers, cartographers, and naturalists documented and interpreted the region over centuries.

Highlights include some of the earliest known maps and descriptions of New Holland and its First Nations peoples, silver dinner plates once owned by Viscount Sydney, for whom the city was named, and richly illustrated accounts of early nineteenth-century French expeditions. Together, these significant historical objects showcase the evolving European understanding of Australia, the Pacific, and the southern hemisphere.

Generously donated by John Mullen AM and Jacqui Mullen through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, the collection is presented with the support of the Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation. This unique exhibition provides a rare opportunity to explore Australia's place in the history of exploration, discovery, and cartography.

_{Image: Six Sheet Map of the World updated with Sir Edmund Halley’s celestial observations (1720)}

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