Glimpses of Australian natural history

Filmed during the AMNH Lerner Australia-New Zealand Expedition, 1939. Michael Lerner hired professional cinematographer James Barnes Shackelford to join him on an expedition to Australia arranged for the purpose of collecting zoological specimens for a proposed Australia-New Zealand hall at the museum. The film opens in Sidney Harbor with the arrival of the oceanliner carrying the expedition staff, which also included AMNH scientists William King Gregory, Henry Cushier Raven, and M. G. Miles Conrad, taxidermist Ludwig Ferraglio, and photographer Frank Ramsey. The staff lose no time in collecting coral from the Great Barrier Reef. Filmed on shore are soldier, fiddler, and hermit crabs. In Queensland, aborigines rapidly climb up and down tall trees and pose for photographs. Some of the many birds and mammals depicted in this film are cockatoos, swans, bushtail possums, kangaroos, wallabies, and koalas, the latter seen in their eucalyptus forest habitat. The film ends with the staff aboard the liner headed for home.