A water container made from bull kelp was collected by French expeditioners in the 1700s, but the incredibly rare artefact became mislabelled and lost in various museums for more than 100 years.
For more than 100 years, a Tasmanian Aboriginal water container made from bull kelp during the 18th century was lost.
A chance discovery by Gaye Sculthorpe when she was researching her Tasmanian Aboriginal family history in the United Kingdom led to the object being found in a Paris museum collection.for NAIDOC Week, Dr Sculthorpe recalls the moment she saw the object for the first time."I was just completely overcome when I saw it."Dr Sculthorpe has a long-standing interest in Indigenous issues and is the head of the Oceania section at the British Museum.
When she was looking through anthropology papers by Henry Ling Roth, who had authored two editions of the book The Aborigines of Tasmania, she came across a little white card.The note contained a little sketch of a kelp water container the curator had seen at a museum in Paris "recently", saying "I thought you'd like to know".
A similar kelp water container collected from Oyster Cove in Tasmania in 1850, the only other one in existence. The water container had been improperly labelled but matched the drawings from 1793 and the sketch done in the 1890s.
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