Australians aren’t always the most tech-forward people, but the six employees of the Australian museum in 1850 certainly were.

Just a decade after the invention of photography in Europe, the curator of the Australian museum started photographing and cataloging their growing collection.

Museum Archivist Vanessa Finney joined Tess for a chat on why these photos are so important to our scientific heritage and why they are really cool to go look at.

You can see these incredibly significant historical photos and the real-life specimens they photographed next to each other for the first time at the “Capturing Nature” Exhibition, which opens on the 16th of Feb. Get tickets here.