Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum


The Ballina Naval & Maritime Museum is a local maritime history museum located in the town of Ballina, New South Wales in Australia. The museum explicitly houses and records the local maritime history of Ballina and the former mariners that reside in the town. The museum is located on Regatta avenue, behind the Ballina Tourist information centre. The museum is noted for maintaining in its collection one of the three Las Balsas craft and it also manages the largest naval and merchant ship model collection in Australia.

Collection

The museum has extensive displays featuring:
In 1973, the Las Balsas rafts were towed into Ballina by fishing trawlers after their journey from Ecuador. One of the rafts is preserved in the Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum. They had planned to arrive in Mooloolaba in Queensland, but currents forced them off their course. Their journey was almost twice as long as the Kon-Tiki expeditions of 1947 and proved that people could have travelled across the Pacific in ancient times.

Gallery