The “First Fleet Piano” is part of a multi-million dollar collection of newly restored instruments gifted to WAAPA.

Arguably the most important piano in Australia – the first ever to have arrived on Australian soil as part of the First Fleet of 1788 – will find a new home at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. The “First Fleet Piano” is one of 130 historically significant pianos collected by Stuart Symonds that will soon become the Stewart Symonds Collection at Edith Cowan University’s WAAPA.

WAAPA’s procurement of the instrument has been facilitated by Australian pianist and conductor Geoffrey Lancaster, who worked closely with Symonds while writing his book The First Fleet Piano: a musician’s view, which documents the history of the instrument. The HMS Sirius was the flagship of the First Fleet, which left from Portsmouth, England in 1787, taking the best part of a year before arriving in Botany Bay. Aboard it was a simple English square piano, which was brought into the country on the Sirius by Ship’s Surgeon, George Worgan.

“This is an extraordinary gift to WAAPA and one that we are very excited about,” Lancaster says, “The acquisition of the First Fleet piano, let alone...