Abstract
In the 1860s Charles Summers, a sculptor living in Melbourne, won a competition to produce a public monument to the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition. Such was Summers’ enthusiasm for the project that he decided to cast the double life-size figures in his Collins Street studio in the centre ofthe Melbourne Central Business District (CBD).The memorial has been moved five times since its original unveiling in 1865. Its last home, sited above a chemically-treated water feature, had caused extensive damage to the surface of the casting.In May 1993, the conservation treatment of this bronze memorial began. This paper traces the memorial’s history, that of the sculptor Charles Summers, and the inception of the sculpture. It also discusses the conservation treatment and how the unique marriage of conservation science and foundry technology made such a treatment so successful.
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