The cabinets and drawers throughout the Birrarung Building are full of items from the Koorie Heritage Trust’s artworks and objects collection. We hold a collection of over 95,000 items relating to South-Eastern Australian Aboriginal communities including oral histories, photographic archives, a reference library, and over 3900 historic and contemporary artworks and objects. These collections support, promote and celebrate the continuing journey of the Aboriginal people of South-Eastern Australia.

We invite visitors to explore the drawers, cabinets and walls throughout the building to discover our artworks and objects collection. The display is continuously rotated with new items on display every three to six months. While the majority of our collections are kept in our storeroom, this visible storage display enables visitors to see more of our collections than ever before.

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Our artworks and objects collection contains over 3,900 items including historic artefacts and contemporary artworks ranging from boomerangs, shields, spear throwers, clubs, canoes, baskets, eel traps and possum-skin cloaks to carved emu eggs, ceramics, t-shirts, jewellery and sculpture. The oldest items are in our stone tools collection, which includes flints, grinding stones and axes.

Included in our artworks and objects collection is our Picture Collection, which contain more than 900 items including 19^th century paintings by William Barak (Language Groups) and Tommy McRae (Language Groups), contemporary paintings, drawings, collages and digitised images. We also hold a number of historical engravings from 19th century newspapers depicting Koorie life and cultural practices from a European point of view.

An important role of our Artworks and Objects Collection is to show how Koorie culture continues to evolve. Traditional crafts, designs and stories are still being used across a wide range of contemporary media demonstrating how materials and crafts have adapted and changed over time. Our collection also reflects the diversity of objects and designs from South-Eastern Australia and how they are unique and distinct from other areas of Australia.

Hear Nerissa Broben, previous Senior Collections Curator, talk about how the artist Tommy McRae provides a valuable Koorie perspective from the late 1800s through his drawings in our collection. See more of the Koorie Heritage Trust’s Artworks and Objects Collection.

Oral History is the oldest form of sharing knowledge and culture. Aboriginal people of Australia have been sharing their stories orally for 60,000 years or more. Sadly, if these stories are not shared they will be lost, as the prehistory to this country is not written.

Our Oral History Program and Collection helps us to keep the oral histories of South-Eastern Australia alive and ensures that cultural knowledge is preserved for future generations. The program began in 1987 with the intention of preserving culture and knowledge for the Koorie community. Many of these audio and visual recordings share significant stories and links to family members.

Our Oral History Collection encompasses an audio and visual collection of over 2000 recordings, predominantly interviews with Koorie people from all over Victoria.

Please explore a small part of our collection of oral histories by following the link below.

Explore collection

KHT Online is an archive of our digital programming developed during the COVID-19 epidemic. To do our bit in limiting the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak during that period, we had suspended all our onsite public programs including workshops, public walking tours and training programs, and had to temporarily close. However, as a community organisation, we wished to remain engaged and connected with our many friends and supporters. KHT Online enabled us to share our unique programs and services while ensuring the health and safety of our community remained our top priority. It remains an important part of our history and now forms part of our Collection.

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Our Photography Collection contains over 48,000+ images including original and duplicate copies of historic and contemporary photographs, transparencies, negatives, born digital images and reference copies of images held by other organisations. Included in this collection are images of Koorie people, cultural heritage sites and significant cultural events.

The majority of the Photographic Collection has been donated to us.

Our Photography Collection includes the Lisa Bellear Photographic Archive.

Minjungbul woman Lisa Bellear (2/05/1961 – 6/07/2006) from Goernpil, Stradbroke Island in Queensland was a photographer, poet, academic, radio presenter and Indigenous rights activist, who was widely respected within the Indigenous community. Primarily based in Melbourne, Lisa documented over a quarter of a century of Indigenous community life, creating a collection of thousands of photographs.

Lisa sadly passed away in 2006. One of Lisa’s key wishes was for copies of photographs in her collection be returned to the Indigenous community. For this purpose, Lisa specifically named the Koorie Heritage Trust as recipient of her collection.

We have approximately 4,000 items in our Reference Library Collection. The Collection includes our own publications, historic books, contemporary published works, unpublished documents, theses, serials, posters, maps and some published audiovisual items. Our Collection is unique in that we specialise in resources from south-eastern Australia.

For further information including how to access the library, please download a copy of our Library Access Information Sheet and email us.

An interactive map experience produced by SharingStories in partnership with Koorie Communities and youth from local primary schools. The map is a collection of creation story animations and videos of culturally significant sites originally from the SharingStories multi-touch book collection.

Explore map

Trails of Feeling is an interactive walking trail developed in collaboration between the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions and the Koorie Heritage Trust. It draws inspiration from The Another View Walking Trail that was established in 1995.

This trail attempted to challenge the colonial histories connected to Melbourne CBD’s built environment, and re-presence Aboriginal people and culture, through the installation of artworks that responded to specific sites in the city. Trails of Feeling builds upon the original historical approach of The Another View Walking Trail to propose a new emotional framework for reflecting on Australian history.

Over the course of the trail, the remaining three sites of The Another View Walking Trail are re-animated to emphasise local Aboriginal histories, stories and beliefs which have been obscured, but never diminished by the changing environment. Through the sites’ multi-temporal histories, we invite you to explore meaning and memory in Melbourne’s CBD and deepen your emotional understanding of both past and present. It is not until we understand and acknowledge the past that we can being to heal and live in the present.

Significant consultation and research was undertaken with key stakeholders over the course of the development of this project. Another View Walking Trail was originally approved by the Wurundjeri Tribe Land and Compensation, Cultural Heritage Council and the Melbourne Foundation Day Committee and commissioned by the City of Melbourne.

Explore Trail

Meerreeng-an — Here is my country

The story of Aboriginal Victoria told through art

Meerreeng-an is a Koorie Heritage Trust publication. Featuring over 340 artworks and objects from our Collection, the publication portrays the richness and diversity of Victorian Aboriginal culture from the early 19th century to the present day.

In Meerreeng-an, artists describe their own artworks, and the stories and quotes from Elders and other community members provide cultural and historical context to our collection, telling of the importance of Country, of life before European arrival, of invasion and dramatic change, of dislocation and missions, and of the survival and strength of the living culture.

Using words and phrases from Victorian Aboriginal languages, Meerreeng-an demonstrates the continuation of Koorie culture.

Meerreeng-An is available for sale in limited numbers from our shop KOORIE, level 1, Yarra Building, Federation Square, Melbourne.

Aboriginal life in Gippsland

A seniors perspective

This film presents the perspective of 16 Aboriginal Elders and Seniors living across the Gippsland area talking about their history, community attitudes to racism, the health system, young people in the area and more. Each of the individual unedited interviews can be found in the Koorie Heritage Trust Oral History Collection.

The film was produced by the Koorie Heritage Trust, in partnership with NADAC (Network Aboriginal Disability and Aged Care Agencies), supported by the Department of Human Services for the Victorian Seniors Festival 2016. Filmed by Kaawirn Kuunawarn Hissing Swan Arts, production team: Robbie Bundle, Lisa Forbes, Tim Church & Peter Worland.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the film contains the names, words and images of people who have passed away.