Exhibition to pay tribute to explorers

Australian adventurer Tim Cope was 21 when a brief interaction with a horseman in the Mongolian desert changed his outlook on life forever.

"I remember vividly this guy galloping over through the sand," Mr Cope said.

"He gave me some dried meat to eat and galloped off."

The gesture left Mr Cope in awe.

He could not at the time fully comprehend the communal, survivalist nature of nomadic peoples.

The experience left him with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about people and cultures not of his own - a thirst that would lead to more than a decade of further adventures.

"I wanted to learn more about these people," he said.

"The meaning of discovery in the modern era is not just about testing yourself and planting a flag on new continents like in the past.

"It's about discovering the cultures and wisdoms that different societies have that we live in ignorance of."

Setting off some years later, he became the first person in the modern day to follow Genghis Khan's 10,000 kilometre journey from Mongolia to Hungary.

Advised by a guide that he needed a travelling companion for warmth and fighting off wolves, he was given a tiny, scrawny puppy named Tigon, whose name means `fast wind' in Kazakh.

"I didn't think he'd survive more than a couple of weeks but he became my best friend. We were inseparable," he said.

A valuable link to his experiences, Mr Cope raised around $10,000 to have Tigon taken home to Australia.

Mr Cope's journey is among 50 of Australia's greatest colonial and modern explorations to be featured at a new exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney - the first 20 of which were announced on Wednesday.

Sailor Jessica Watson, who circumnavigated the world unassisted as a 16-year-old, says it's a "huge honour" to be featured.

She hopes the exhibition will encourage others to do their own adventuring.

"It doesn't have to be dramatic like sailing around the world. I want kids to take a packed lunch and sail across a lake," Ms Watson told AAP.

The exhibition pays tribute to colonial explorers such as James Cook and Burke and Wills, while the story of Bennelong, the first indigenous person to visit Europe and return, will also be told.

Greg Mortimer, the first Australian to reach the summit of Mount Everest, was "humbled and embarrassed" to among such company, describing himself as an just average bloke from Sydney.

"I've been to places I could not have dreamed of," he said.

The exhibition opens on November 28.