Reconcilliation and collaboration the fabric of facts

Bringing Antonia from Townsville to Cairns has proven to be a wise decision, finding funding and finding family among the like minded folk of the saltwater people of the Far North is now bearing fruit.
Skills are being shared,art explored and east coast pearling history is being saved.
The lugger boat builders of Cairns like Alf Hansen, Harold Collis and Brisbane builders like Watts and Wright restarted the Torres pearl fishery in the 1950’s and are at last being recognised.
The Cairns Maritime Museum community organisation has long held the view that the Torres Straits Pearling story was at risk of being a forgotten chapter in the rapidly unfolding story of our Far North’s much longer history.
Recovering the Floria 1914 from a watery grave in 2001 was a project which was undertaken by volunteers and CMM members which resulted in a Naidoc Award.
Our hopes were that we had started the ball rolling towards its repair and restoration . Key to this was a Museum exhibition at the PIER explaining the richness of our maritime past.
The PIER exhibition was closed in 2004 when the PIER building was sold and so the project also sadly closed.
History repeats and Antonia sank, was recovered, relocated and presented and appreciated.
It is good to see this ball keeps on rolling,