Surf Museum takes Great Sporting Land to the shore

A local museum has contributed to a recently completed online sporting exhibit search engine giant Google.

To celebrate Australia’s rich sporting heritage, Google launched Great Sporting Land, an online exhibition that features more than 11,000 archived images and videos, and more than 100 original stories from over 30 partners.

As one of these partners, the Australian National Surfing Museum (ANSM) has dedicated huge amounts of time to photographing and transcribing stories on the most iconic items in their vast collection. With the process having taken over two years.

ANSM projects and tours officer Gary Dunne said it was great for surfing to be recognised as a key part of Australian culture.

“As someone who is fortunate enough to have spent pretty much my entire working life in surfing, there is no doubt in my mind that surfing is a part of Australian sporting culture.

“To partner with Google and make the history and story of surfing in Australia available to people all over the planet is too good an opportunity to pass up. It’s a great recognition of both the museum and surfing’s place in Australia’s sporting culture.”

Surf Coast councillor David Bell said he was also excited about the museum being digitally shared with the masses.

“We love our Australian National Surfing Museum and it is great to see its treasures being shared on this platform with a global audience,” he said.

As part of the project, Google also sent a crew to go through the museum and photograph it front to back to create a 360-degree viewing experience for people online.

The Great Sporting Land took place as part of Google’s Arts and Culture platform. They had recently decided that sport should be considered a part of culture, and chose Australia as the first country to look at in this respect.

Some of the other groups that partnered with Google on the project include Cricket Australia, the National Portrait Gallery, Rugby Australia, and the Migration Museum.

The Great Sporting land exhibit can be visited at g.co/GreatSportingLand.