Taking your pets on a cruise? - Cats and Dogs: All at Sea Exhibition (13th February, 2024)

The exhibition "Cats and Dogs All at Sea" at the West and Plains Cultural Centre showcases the common practice of having pets on boats in the early 20th century. The exhibition features photographs taken by Samuel Hood, which show crew members with their on-ship pets. Pets, particularly cats, served a functional role in keeping the ship's rat and mouse free, but they were also beloved companions for long journeys. The exhibition includes stories of the crews and their pets, and entry is free until April. It's a great exhibition for families, with interactive activities for children. You're on Zoo's Breakfast! Little did I realise, pets and boats can go quite well together apparently, and it's been common for crew members of ships to just take animals on board. The ongoing exhibition at the West and Plains Cultural Centre, Cats and Dogs All at Sea, is set up to document and demonstrate exactly that. To tell me all about what it's like, what's got going on, we've been paid a visit by Jessica Moore, the Cultural Development Coordinator for Dubbo Regional Council. Good morning. Good morning, Kagan. I really want to ask, who was taking pets to sea? How long would they spend there? Why did they need to have a pet on a boat? I have so many questions, but what's going on here? So this is a really great exhibition, Cats and Dogs All at Sea, from the National Maritime Museum, and it charts actually how common having pets on boats was in the early 20th century. So it's a series of photographs taken by Samuel Hood, who recorded crewed ships when they came into Sydney, and he would take beautiful portraits of them to send back to loved ones, and in almost all of those portraits, there would be someone sitting with a kitten, or a puppy, or a couple of puppies, or in one case, a monkey. And they were very proud of these on-ship pets that they all had. What was the main reason why people would take these pets on board? Did they have them prior, or would they think, well, I'm going on this long cruise, I'll just go and grab a pet? A little bit of both. A little bit of they brought pets with them, but cats in particular had a really important function for keeping the ship's rat and mouse free. Ah, yes, right. Keeping stores and stocks healthy. But they would also trade pets, pick up pets, import. Trade pets is a sort of sales thing, you know, I'll give you some grain if you give me that monkey, as you do. So they had a bit of a functional role, but they were also just, like we have pets today, beloved companions, that if you're travelling to the other side of the world, potentially on a month-long journey, you want to take a bit of home with you. You want to take a bit of a friendship with you. And from the portraits, you can see these animals were absolutely beloved. They really were like we treat our pets today. They have such personalities, and you can see the very sort of gruff seamen holding their little kittens. It looks very sweet. So was it just people that were on passenger voyages, or was it also, say, naval members that were just taking pets onto their warships? Less common with the Navy, although there is a great tradition of pets going to sea in battle and even winning medals and winning honours. Right, okay. A Victoria Cross that went to a pigeon. That's a whole other conversation. That's a whole other story. But most of the photographs are of trade ships and passenger ships as they arrived. So it's a very diverse exhibition because you've got trade ships coming in from Asia, from South America, and it's a thing that's experienced from all crews across the world. So it's really interesting to see how commonplace that was, and we kind of think it's an odd thing for a pet to be out at sea. Yeah. But it was surprisingly common, and really everybody was doing it. So these days we're not even allowed to take a pet on a cruise ship, but back then it was all open water. Everybody could join. Is there any more specific detail on who the people are in the photos? Yeah, absolutely. We've got lots of details about the different crews and what happened to them and even what happened to some of the pets. Who got to stay, who unfortunately had to be left in Australia when the boat went back. So it's a very intimate, personal exhibition with some really poignant stories. And a lot of the time these boats came with very well-documented diaries and journals that speak of how entertaining and gets people through the boredom of a month-long journey by having some pets on board. So it's a really lovely little reminder of sort of a very stoic past. It was actually very human after all. What's the entry fee for the event? Now you've convinced me. Now I need to see this. Well, like so much at the Cultural Centre, it's absolutely free. Oh, lovely. There we go. So I really recommend bringing little ones up because we have these great interactives where kids can name the pets and think about what pet they would like to take on a sea voyage. But yeah, it's up until April. The exhibition is completely free, and it's such a sweet, lovely, fun exhibition to bring the whole family to. Absolutely wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you for coming on. My pleasure. The exhibition Cats and Dogs All at Sea is on display now at the Western Plains Cultural Centre until the 28th of April. The entry is free, as you just heard, and it's a fascinating look into the lives of animals floating around the ocean. For more information, you can ring the centre on 026801 4444, or 4444, whatever you like your numbers delivered. It's zoo breaky.