NATIONAL TRUST OF AUSTRALIA Heritage in Trust
(ACT)
May 2013
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Photo: Margaret Hadfield and colleagues in front of her mural at Queanbeyan Museum
The Queanbeyan and District Historical Museum One of the best and most important museums in the local region is the Queanbeyan and District Historical Museum in Farrer Place, Queanbeyan. Over the last decade, the museum has undergone a remarkable renaissance and recently received high commendation from the NSW Museums and Galleries Standards Program. In the 1990s, however, the museum had fallen on hard times. Among the volunteers who kept the museum going, enthusiasm was waning and numbers dwindling. And while the museum held valuable and interesting material, its exhibits looked tired and in urgent need of refreshing, rearrangement and reinterpretation. Capping off the institution’s decline, rising damp in the historic museum building forced its closure in the late 1990s.
The museum’s renaissance began in 2002. In that year, local historian Gillian Kelly and husband Gordon embarked on a major program of renewal and rejuvenation at the museum. Queanbeyan City Council dealt with the rising damp and, with some professional museum advice and assistance, the transformation of the museum began. cont p2
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