Almost 60,000 people have visited the Treasures Gallery at the National Library of Australia in the last 12 months, testament to the drawing power of the objects inside, from Henry Lawson's fobwatch to William Bligh's notebook.
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The library regularly refreshes the precious pieces on display, drawing from its incredible storehouse of more than seven million items.
Curatorial manager of exhibitions, Matthew Jones, said the exhibits in the Treasures Gallery had recently been updated, with about a third of its almost 150 items changed over.
Among the new items are a photograph of author Miles Franklin dressed as a maid, a shot of an early Mardi Gras by William Yang, a Chinese-English phrasebook and a Welcome Home banner from the end of World War One.
They all hint at bigger cultural movements at play.
After publishing My Brilliant Career at the age of 19 in 1901, Miles Franklin went undercover to work as a domestic servant in 1903-4 to earn a living and inspire her writing. The portrait in the exhibition shows her dressed in a maid's uniform in 1904.
The first Chinese-English phrasebook dates from 1892 and was written by Sun Johnson, the editor of the first Chinese-language newspaper in Sydney, The Chinese Australian Herald.
It offered translations of a variety of useful phrases for everything from buying groceries to writing cheques. It also has amusing go-to phrases such as "the larrikins made me do it''.
The Welcome Home banner from 1918 reflects the euphoria that greeted the end of World War One and the abundance of homecoming services and parades but also hides the greater story that many men returned home broken, physically and mentally.
And the new items also include a photograph by that great chronicler of society, William Yang, capturing one of the early Mardi Gras, in 1981, the first to be held in summer.
The Treasures Gallery at the National Library is open 10am to 5pm daily.
