The Collections

In the early days of the Department, the collections were set up primarily for teaching purposes, and material was obtained by purchase or donation from all over the world to form the basis of a representative selection of rocks, minerals and fossils.

The early registers list several different sets of specimens, each with its own numbering system, but later a UWA collection proper was established. The first 500 entries in its register are for rocks from Western Australia, collected by staff in the Department in its early days (some at least prior to 1921) but not registered until later. A visit to England by Professor Clarke in 1933 resulted in the earliest dated catalogue entries, for March of that year, documenting a large and varied collection of rocks and minerals from southern England. The catalogues, all sixty of them, reflect the interests and development of the Department over the years, with handwritten entries by many of the geological luminaries of the State such as Edward Simpson, an alumnus of the University who became Government Mineralogist and Analyst in charge of the Health, Agriculture and Mines Departments' laboratories in 1922.

The collections now number over 142 000 registered specimens.

The Type Collections, mostly of palaeontological material, and thin sections are kept with the registers in a locked fireproof room next to the Curator's office. The bulk of the other material is kept in racks, in numerical order, in an off-site store. More recent specimens, from around the last twenty years or so, are on site in a store adjoining the Museum, and largely comprise research material from Honours and postgraduate projects. Part of the School's requirement for granting a degree is that relevant and available material is registered and housed in the Museum for the use of future researchers.

A searchable computer database has been in use since 1985: older material is on a card index and on subordinate databases for categories such as palaeontological material and boreholes. There is also a large curated collection of very interesting historical glass "lantern slides" and transparencies.

Full instructions on what you need to do if you are submitting specimens for registration are downloadable below as a pdf: use Adobe Reader to open the file.