Transcript: International Museum Day - New Museum Project

Hi, my name is Kenny Trevillion, I’m the curator of mammals at the WA Museum.

Today I’m here to talk to you about the blue whale.

Blue Whale is one of our oldest and largest specimens in the collection.

The whale was actually 24metres long and it was a sub-adult, and you can see here, basically the bone hasn’t been used because the animal is still growing.

So the specimen was basically left on the beach for three years, was prepared by our taxidermist with two Japanese fishermen and eventually was carried back to Perth, first by horse carriage to Busselton, to get onto the train and then back to Perth.

This specimen was prepared on site in Francis Street and then eventually it was put on display in a shed there.

Then it was actually put on display in the new Francis Street building in the 70s and it stayed there for quite some time until the building was officially found to have asbestos and it had to be demolished.

So sadly the whale came back to the Collection and Research Centre here in Welshpool.

A team from conservation is going to be working on it, to clean it up, to prepare it so we can put it on display in the New Museum.

So hopefully in 2020 when you come and visit you’ll see the whole skeleton back into one piece.

Thank you very much.