Firearms collection highlights

The Museum has an extraordinary arms and armour collection. Firearms are understandably a contentious issue, but the collection of firearms as historical, cultural, technological and even aesthetic objects is important, as are the stories which accompany them.

Although firearms accompanied Europeans who made it to the shores of Australia prior to 1788, the Brown Bess musket was among the first to actually be imported to the island. The Museum's Brown Bess musket example is not one that …