THE NONDESCRIPT exterior of the Nambour Museum is deceptive. Once inside the front door you walk through an historical time warp. This former home for the principal of Nambour State School reveals rooms of historical insight into late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia now unknown to many of us.
There’s a parlour room, kitchen, laundry, embroidery room, as well as rooms displaying war memories, Scouting, the Moreton Sugar Mill, Nambour Hospital and telecommunications.
This amazing window into local times past has been assembled by a volunteer group led by its president, Clive Plater and secretary Barbara Want.
What is most fascinating are the implements and furnishings of a society now foreign to the digital world of our modern experience. So, there are embroidered samplers that were de rigeur in the 19th century, beautifully delicate wedding dresses of the 1920s, hat boxes and trinkets that define the interests of Nambour householders of times past.
In the kitchen is fine bone china laid out on the dresser, a butter churn and a bowl of scones in the centre of the kitchen table. The laundry displays washing hung on a line with wooden pegs and a collection of steam irons of all shapes and sizes. A copper sits against the wall.
Reminders of the Moreton Sugar Mill, built in the late 1800s can be seen in the recreated Board Room with its original boardroom table and timber-lined walls. Outside in the museum grounds adjacent to the now demolished mill, is the restored engineer’s hut.
The sugar train ‘Eudlo’ has been restored by museum enthusiasts, along with a tipper and fly wheels and several pieces of sugar mill machinery engines, looking like items of techno sculpture.
An entire collection of tools from Potter’s Bootmaking Shop is on display in the downstairs area of the main building, along with a collection of lawnmowers and an old red ‘tardis’ telephone box.
Bizarre stainless steel items for medical and surgical procedures are featured in the Hospital room. They contrast dramatically with the contemporary hospital facilities of Nambour’s modern hospital and are a reminder of how the treatment of patients has changed over the past 100 years.
For those with a gadget preference, the Telecommunications room is a delight. The progression from the telegram boy’s bicycle, magneto telephones and manual switchboards, through to telex machines and the first mobile phones can be seen here, all packed into a small space.
If you love to poke around in the past, the Nambour Museum is a remarkable collection that reflects our recent history. It is a place that reminds us so poignantly and so graphically just how far we have come and just how quickly.
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