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The oldest and arguably most famous museum in Australia, which was founded in the early 1800s as the Colonial Museum to valorize the British Empire and advance the project of national territorial expansion by trying to show indigenous culture’s continuity with natural history (including animal specimens). In Black Diggers, a taxidermist working for the museum saves Nigel as a specimen after other settlers kill his parents, then appears to adopt him; in another scene, he shows the young Nigel around the museum, telling him about humankind’s evolution out of apes, but then disappears as the exhibits attack the boy.
Australian Museum, Sydney Quotes in Black Diggers
The Black Diggers quotes below are all either spoken by Australian Museum, Sydney or refer to Australian Museum, Sydney. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act One
Quotes
NIGEL: Father, what happened to my aborigine parents?
TAXIDERMIST: You know that, little man. They died.
NIGEL: How did they die?
TAXIDERMIST: I’ll tell you one day. Look, a chimpanzee. They are our closest relatives.
NIGEL: Why not now?
TAXIDERMIST: Because you’re not ready yet.
NIGEL: Ready for what?
TAXIDERMIST: The world—the bigger, grown-up world—is a complicated, difficult place. You should enjoy every moment of your childhood. Plenty of time for truth later.
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Act Two
Quotes
Tarzan. At the Empire. Tarzan, man of the apes. The ape man. Tarzan. Ape. Man. Lowland Gorilla. From Zanzibar. Ape. Man.
He stops, has a surreptitious swig from a bottle. Stands still, watching people rush past him.
Sorry Dad.
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Get the entire Black Diggers LitChart as a printable PDF.
Australian Museum, Sydney Term Timeline in Black Diggers
The timeline below shows where the term Australian Museum, Sydney appears in Black Diggers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act One
The scene shifts to 1895, when the Taxidermist takes a boy, Nigel, through Sydney’s Australian Museum , showing him the exhibits of stuffed animals (really the play’s actors). When Nigel asks...
(full context)
