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South Sea Museum on the grounds of Sunnyside, home of Ellen White (1896-1900).

Photo courtesy of Barry Oliver.

South Sea Islands Museum, Australia

By Milton Hook

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Milton Hook, Ed.D. (Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, the United States). Hook retired in 1997 as a minister in the Greater Sydney Conference, Australia. An Australian by birth Hook has served the Church as a teacher at the elementary, academy and college levels, a missionary in Papua New Guinea, and as a local church pastor. In retirement he is a conjoint senior lecturer at Avondale College of Higher Education. He has authored Flames Over Battle Creek, Avondale: Experiment on the Dora, Desmond Ford: Reformist Theologian, Gospel Revivalist, the Seventh-day Adventist Heritage Series, and many magazine articles. He is married to Noeleen and has two sons and three grandchildren.

First Published: January 29, 2020

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The South Sea Islands Museum was established in 1966 adjacent to Ellen White’s home Sunnyside in Cooranbong, NSW, Australia. It contains a collection of artifacts that have been gathered from the cultures and societies of the South Pacific Division and donated for permanent display.

The Need

Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) missionaries in the South Pacific Islands occasionally happened upon items they recognized as having historical and cultural significance. In 1963 Don Watson wrote to church leaders of the Australasian Division about a pewter cup once used on Pitcairn Island by the Bounty mutineers prior to the arrival of Adventist missionaries. He also reported a copy of Hymns and Tunes with Lars Jensen’s name in the flyleaf, dated 1893, found on Lord Howe Island. Jensen was a crew member on the second voyage of the Pitcairn. Watson suggested a suitable repository should be found for such items.1 They needed to be kept safe from souvenir hunters and artifact collectors. They needed to be held by the SDA Church because they illustrated SDA mission history.

Plans Laid

Some at the Australasian Division (now the South Pacific Division) recognized the wisdom of preserving pieces from mission history. For that purpose, plans were made in 1964 to build a small museum alongside Ellen White’s former home Sunnyside, on Avondale Road, Cooranbong, NSW. They budgeted four thousand pounds for the enterprise.2 The resident caretaker of Sunnyside would care for the museum and include it in the regular Sunnyside tours open to the public.

Museum Opens

The museum was opened on the graduation Sunday of Avondale College, November 20, 1966, with many visitors in attendance. Display cabinets had been crafted by the College Wood Products, and some of the prized artifacts labeled and arranged to fill every available space. Returned missionaries Frederick Ward and Harold Wicks had donated their collections. Reuben Hare also donated artifacts given to him during his Pacific itineraries as a church administrator.3

The opening of the museum served to advertise the fact that the SDA Church welcomed any items of significant historical interest from the Pacific mission field. Members at Viru Harbour, Solomon Islands, donated a 53-foot war canoe, the Kalivarana, hewn from a single tree and inlaid with pearl shell, on the understanding that a gift of sewing machines would be made in return by mission headquarters.4 One man, Kilivisi, who was skilled in the ancient art of making canoes, led in its restoration. It was cleaned and recaulked with a puttylike substance made from local crushed nuts5 and then shipped on the Burns Philp freighter Tulagi to Sydney in 1968.6 The size of the canoe, which had originally been constructed for the royal visit of Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, necessitated the building of an annex at the rear of the museum in order to house it.

Growth of the Collection

The museum remained under the management of Sunnyside caretakers who were not trained as museum curators. The museum itself became cluttered as more and more donations were made. Some items began to deteriorate because of a lack of environmental control within the building. In 2003 the museum and its collection was united with the Avondale College Archives and placed under one management with a trained curator, Rose-lee Power. She initiated an accession listing to record the provenance of each item. She also reduced the number of items on display, and a rotation of exhibits became normal practice.7

In 2006 the facility received two federal government grants to undertake a conservation update. A significant study by independent artifact experts was also completed. The experts were impressed by the quality of the exhibits and concluded the collection was of national significance. The artefacts include shells, spears, bone daggers, fighting axes and shields, native masks and apparel, pagan idols and spirit emblems, snakeskin drums and panpipes, hand-woven baskets and tapa cloth mats. In addition there are numerous historical photographs and a number of native-language Bibles, hymnals, and periodicals translated by SDA missionaries and printed by the church presses.8

Unique items from the Solomon Islands that have caught the attention of artefact experts include effigies of the gods Paruvu and Banara, a rare whale-tooth pendant, and a native land title constructed of clam shell and fiber, so carefully guarded by its original owner that it was always hidden in the local cemetery in the belief that spirits would watch over it.9 There is also a finely woven fighting shield.10

For many years the first SDA mission plane, a Cessna 180, the Andrew Stewart, sat high on a pole near the museum as a large exhibit, but it was not protected from the elements and corrosion became a problem. It was moved indoors in 2008, with plans to restore it fully for inclusion in a larger museum to be erected.11

The many thousands of donated artifacts and heritage items have warranted the construction of a secure storage facility from which different displays are sourced from time to time. This facility also provides space for light-sensitive items to rest and recover in darkness over extended periods.12 The collection is unique within the worldwide SDA Church and highly regarded by the broader community of anthropologists.13

Sources

Australasian Division Executive Committee minutes, excerpts 1963-1969, South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW. Folder: “Australasian Division Executive Committee Minutes, excerpts 1963-1969.”

Campbell, A[lexander] J. “Official Opening of South Sea Islands Museum.” Australasian Record and Advent World Survey, February 27, 1967.

“Giant War Canoe Arrives.” Sydney Morning Herald, August 24, 1968.

Howarth, Crispin, and Deborah Waite. Varilaku: Pacific Arts from the Solomon Islands. Canberra, ACT: National Gallery of Australia, 2011.

[Power, Rose-lee]. “Review of Archives and Research Centre, 2018.” South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW. Folder: “Review of Archives and Research Centre, 2018.”

Russell, Roslyn, and Kylie Winkworth. Significance 2:0. Rundle Mall, SA: Collections Council of Australia, Limited, 2009.

“Solomon Islands Canoe.” South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW. Folder: “Solomon Islands Canoe.”

Notes

  1. Australasian Division Executive Committee minutes, June 17, 1963, South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW (Folder: “Australasian Division Executive Committee minutes, excerpts 1963–1969”).↩

  2. Australasian Division Executive Committee minutes, May 27, 1964. South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW (Folder: “Australasian Division Executive Committee minutes, excerpts 1963–1969”).↩

  3. A[lexander] J. Campbell, “Official Opening of South Sea Islands Museum,” Australasian Record and Advent World Survey, February 27, 1967, 4, 5.↩

  4. Australasian Division Executive Committee minutes, July 28, 1969, South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW (Folder: “Australasian Division Executive Committee minutes, excerpts 1963–1969”).↩

  5. “Solomon Islands Canoe.” South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW (Folder: “Solomon Islands Canoe”).↩

  6. “Giant War Canoe Arrives.” Sydney Morning Herald, August 24, 1968, 7.↩

  7. [Rose-lee Power], “Review of Archives and Research Centre, 2018,” South Pacific Division Heritage Centre, Avondale College of Higher Education, Box 929, Cooranbong, NSW (Folder: “Review of Archives and Research Centre, 2018”), 8–12,↩

  8. Ibid.↩

  9. Crispin Howarth and Deborah Waite, Varilaku: Pacific Arts from the Solomon Islands (Canberra, ACT: National Gallery of Australia, 2011), 52, 53, 74, 86, 87, 116, 117.↩

  10. Roslyn Russell and Kylie Winkworth, Significance 2:0 (Rundle Mall, SA: Collections Council of Australia, Limited, 2009), 21.↩

  11. [Power], “Review of Archives and Research Centre, 2018.”↩

  12. Ibid.↩

  13. A website has been established at https://ssimuseum.adventistconnect.org/.↩

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Hook, Milton. "South Sea Islands Museum, Australia." Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. January 29, 2020. Accessed January 16, 2025. https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=C85E.

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Hook, Milton. "South Sea Islands Museum, Australia." Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. January 29, 2020. Date of access January 16, 2025, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=C85E.

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Hook, Milton (2020, January 29). South Sea Islands Museum, Australia. Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Retrieved January 16, 2025, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=C85E.

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