Australian Institute for Marine Surveying – AIMS

National Conference, Stamford Plaza, Brisbane

27 September 2024

Queensland Maritime Museum, in particular the Penguin Restoration Project, was invited to attend the AIMS National Conference in Brisbane and display the work that we are doing. This was a great opportunity to promote the Museum as it turned out that we were the only exhibitor and we had no competition attracting attention!

Our display had been carefully curated in the weeks before with a full-scale dress rehearsal in the QMM shipping room. On the conference eve an observer on Edward Street would have seen dark-clad shady characters Rusty, Woody, Andy and their leader ‘KK’ unloading strange shipwrights tools of trade, plans, models and even a divers helmet into the Stamford Plaza loading dock.

As day broke on the conference, delegates arrived to find a fine display set on a background of flowing marine blue cloth (thanks Sally May).

As well as describing the restoration project, our exhibit presented the history and artefacts of the Queensland pearling industry, traditional shipwrights tools, and of course a call for volunteers and other support.

Thanks go to Dr Eric Perez, CEO AIMS for his ongoing support of the Penguin Project, and the following QMM volunteers who helped out at the conference:

Kasper Kuiper, Russell Cobine, John Hockings, Jaine Hussiam, Peter Colville, Ben Hall and Andrew Massey, and to Russ Behan, Dorothy Carroll and Sally May for their help during preparation.

Those of us ‘manning’ the display reported a great deal of interest in the museum and the project and we would strongly recommend taking up similar invitations in the future. We were invited to sit in on the paper presentations many of which proved surprisingly interesting.

Of course we couldn't refuse the conference dinner invitation – not a ships biscuit to be seen.

Penguino Andrew

30 September 2024