The conservation requirements of ethnographic collections vary owing to the great diversity of cultural material in different countries, and to the range of environments the collections are subjected to, from that of their manufacture and use to the museum storeroom and exhibition. This paper discusses the problems of ethnographic objects from Australia and Papua New Guinea, dealing first with the acclimatization of moisture-sensitive materials. Here the advantages of computerized environmental monitoring are discussed. Case studies are then given for the mounting of objects for both fixed site and travelling exhibitions, the movement of large fragile objects, and finally the problems of conserving large non-durable objects.