Eden's legendary killer whale to become ana-Tom-ically correct in huge move

But after Old Tom washed up in his old Kiah battleground in 1930, he's been preserved in the hearts of the Eden community ever since.

It was believed whaler George Davidson preserved Old Tom's skeleton, with philanthropy from JR Logan, and by November 1930, Mr Logan had proposed to erect and enclose it in a mausoleum in an elevated position overlooking Twofold Bay.

This would later become the Eden Killer Whale Museum.

Inviting in more than 42,000 visitors a year, the museum casts its gaze across the ocean where Old Tom made his legendary mark.

However, Old Tom is moving and the museum will be temporarily closed between April 15 and 21.

Two conservators and a preparator with well over 36 years of experience with Melbourne Museum, will carefully examine the stability of Old Tom's skeleton, prepare, dismantle, mould missing bones, and rebuild Old Tom with anatomic accuracy.

Preparator Dean Smith from Environmental Creations would become somewhat of a reverse chiropractor, putting curvature in Old Tom's vertebrae, giving the appearance of swimming down underneath the water of Twofold Bay.

"I've worked with the articulation of whales, and when a cetacean dies, I'll go on site and actually prepare the body of the specimen, fleshing it down, preparing the bones ready for display," Mr Smith said.

"We're not messing with how he was prepared back in the original day, we're conserving Old Tom, so he lasts many more years, but the whole idea is to have him in a more naturally anatomical pose.

"When every one of those bones is off the steel armature, I will rebend [the steel] in the right position whether through the thorax or tail, just to get a nice, gentle swimming curve, there won't be anything drastic.

"[I will] open the mouth a little more and remove some of the rigging points and replace the vertebral disks between every vertebrae which were carved out of timber back in the 1930s. We are going to replace that with more stable, black archival foam."

He said 95 per cent of Old Tom's skeleton had been painted previously in what appeared to be a whitening of his bones, which meant the team would have to remove some of the old paint and blend in with a matching overlay of paint.

"It's not totally unusual for a very old specimen, because what I would say was that when he was prepared down at the wharf, there was still oil coming out of the bones, and at some point they decided his bones looked a bit yellow and decided the get the paintbrush out," Mr Smith said.

"When we take the whole skeleton apart, starting from the Monday or Tuesday, Fran, who is the conservator is going to have to assess whether or not it would be worthwhile taking any of the paint off, but because the bone is quite porous, you could never remove all that paint anyway."

Old Tom's skull was estimated to weigh approximately 80 kilograms while the rest of the body was closer to 200 kilograms, based on other museum collections, and while some of the ribs looked to be a little brittle, not to the stage of snapping, the team would have to take that into consideration when making adjustments.

"I've worked with a lot of bones and skeletons before, but nothing, I guess, as important as Old Tom, especially in a cultural [way], his whole story actually. I'm a bit nervous about how it will be accepted by the locals," he said.

"He's got to be there [for people] to see. When we say we will respect Old Tom, it's all those features that are part of the respect as well, it's not just the overall skeleton of him.

"He's a local legend, with connection to First Nations people too."