History week: Legends of Lithgow

Pepper's Ghost used to great effect in telling the story of the Lithgow State Mine fire disaster.

Capturing the Lithgow Community, is one of the exhibitions on show during History Week which unpacks some of the little known history of Lithgow. On a recent Museums Advisors trip to the area, M&G NSW had a quick peek at some of the museums and collections in the region.

We started at the Lithgow State Mine Heritage Park and Railway, where the virtual story-telling entranced and moved us. The images and sound presentation tells a story of a fire in the mine. President, Ray Christison, confirms that most visitors shed a tear or two on hearing about the death of so many pit ponies.

Our next stop was the The Glen Museum in Portland. Developed and fostered by the late Charlie Pinch and his partner the late Valerie Risby, the collection focuses on the history of Portland and is wonderfully eclectic–one of our favourite displays being the huge range of buttons.

We stopped at the charming village of Rydal for lunch and as we strolled around it became clear that the town itself is a museum–complete with charming buildings and well-tended gardens. Rydal was named after a village in England where the poet William Wordsworth lived. His poem “The Daffodils” inspired the planting of thousands of daffodil bulbs which are the focus of the annual Daffodil Festival and are bound to be in full bloom during History Week.

The Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum was a big surprise. While we were expecting to see lots of firearms we weren’t aware the factory manufactured a range of non-military products including sewing machines, shearing handsets, medical implements, tools, and golf clubs. This is interesting viewing for anyone–and especially so for those intrigued by old style weaponry.

This you would expect at the Small Arms Factory Museum.

This? Not so much.

From there we went to Esbank House and Museum. Built in 1842 by a local stonemason for the first industrialist in town, a Mr Thomas Brown MLA, the house is one of the oldest residences in Lithgow Valley.

Eskbank House on a delightful Spring day.

Eskbank operates as a historic home and museum and houses the one of the largest collections of Lithgow Pottery in Australia. The museum’s collection includes an example of the Black Rose of Lithgow. These smelted roses were first made in 1876 and became popular ornaments for coffins during the 1800s.

So why not take a History Week inspired trip to the valley and be surprised at some of the sites in lovely Lithgow?

Tamara Lavrencic

History Week: Sydney's murdered muse

Peacocks Florence Broadhurst wallpaper design. Courtesy of Sydney Living Museums.

To celebrate History Week 2013, the History Council of NSW selected five historical muses who attended the famous Artists’ Balls, an event held across Sydney for over five decades. 

The first of the muses showcased is Florence Broadhurst, an artist famed as much for her flamboyant life and brutal murder as her creative designs.

Both the Powerhouse Museum and the Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection (part of Sydney Living Museums) hold collections of her work, including photographs and examples of some of the 550 wallpaper designs produced between 1961 and 1977. The 'Peacocks' reproduced seen here became the signature design of Florence Broadhurst’s studio in the 1970s and is one of the most recognisable and popular of her designs. It’s been suggested that it represents the flamboyant style of the woman herself.
This eccentric and talented woman has inspired a number of books including, A life by Design: The Art and Lives of Florence Broadhurst by Siobhan O’Brien (2004) and Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret & Extraordinary Lives, by Helen O’Neill (2007).
This excerpt from the inside of the front cover of A Life by Design, gives a taste of the extraordinary life of Florence Broadhurst:

“Late on the afternoon of 15 October 1977, seventy-eight-year-old Florence Broadhurst was brutally murdered. Her killer has never been found.

But who really died that day?

Was it Bobby Broadhurst, the chanteuse of Shanghai? Or Madame Pellier, London’s Bond Street-salon owner and friend to Churchill and royalty? Perhaps Mrs Kann, married to English gentry. Or was it the world-renown wallpaper designer and socialite?

By the time Florence Broadhurst sailed into Sydney Harbour with her second husband and young son in 1949 she had long ago put aside her humble beginnings in rural Australia, instead presenting herself as an English woman escaping post-war Britain for the sunshine of the ‘promised land’. And she found it.

Dismissing the designs of the day as drab and lacking in colour, Florence set about creating original, bold, bright wallpapers, unlike anything that had been seen before. With clientele ranging from Lady McMahon to Qantas, and far-eastern hoteliers to Estee Lauder Cosmetics, Florence was soon a popular face on the Sydney social scene – and a very wealthy woman.

Today Broadhurst designs are once again gracing the walls and furnishings of hip bars and fashionable homes and boutiques from Sydney to New York, as well as the runways of Isogawa, Karen Walker and Zimmerman. Yet the mystery still remains.

Who was this at times generous, at others ferociously autocratic, and always elusive woman? And why did she die such a violent death?”

The David Jones Art Gallery on Elizabeth Street Sydney was the venue for Florence’s first solo exhibition called ‘Paintings of Australia’ and as part of their 175 anniversary celebrations, the windows of that venerable institution will feature floral art works inspired by Florence’s work for their Spring flower show. Find further information on this show, ‘The Enchanted Florence’.

Broadhurst’s designs are still popular today and examples of their use by interior designers in buildings around the world can be seen at Signature Prints website .

Tamara Lavrencic

Grumpy Cat is taking over

Many of you might have thought we were kidding when we promised last fortnight to unleash Grumpy Cat on your profile pages.

Well we weren't. And if you don't believe us you should visit the website right now.

http://mgnsw-prod.ixcsandbox.com/

Username: preview
Password: museums

We've delayed letting the website loose on the world by one week. That's one week for you to provide us images and descriptions of all the amazing things you do.

Like . . .

Albury Library/Museum who kindly provided us the video and story about their July 27 celebration of the first flight in the monoplane built by Robbins and Porter.

Their description makes me want to visit the whole town. I'm considering a bit of an excursion after we've launched the website and Albury sounds like the place to go.

Carcoar Hospital Museum who have provided some very evocative images of their 19th and 20th century medical collection. This photo of nurses at the museum in 1900 has a bit of a ghostly, ethereal feel about it (or is that my imagination running away with me). 

Gilgandra Rural Museum have added a nice exterior. Their website is pretty smart too and we've provided a couple of hyperlinks to it on their page. 

So do you want to look like this?

Or this?

You have ONE week. Email or ring Katie or Andrew:

comms@mgnsw.org.au

p: 02 9358 1760

First Flight celebrated in Albury

On 27 July 2013, Albury LibraryMuseum hung a replica of a vintage monoplane built by Robbins and Porter on the spot where the two young motor mechanics built the original in their Kiewa Street garage in 1912-13. It was 100 years to the day that the pioneering men successfully flew their invention.

The Albury and District Historical Society, with the support of the Albury Manual Activity, constructed the life-size replica of the monoplane and hung it from the ceiling of the LibraryMuseum.

Robbins and Porter

Azor Robbins and Alexander Porter learned their trade as motor mechanics at Dalgety’s Garage in Bourke Street, Melbourne. But they were not only mechanics, but inventors. In their spare time, they worked on the design and construction of a monoplane. By March 1913 the construction of the plane had been completed and the engine mounted in the fuselage.

The duo eagerly planned open-air trials; however, it was not until Sunday, 27 July 1913, in front of six witnesses, that the plane took to the air and flew for 700 yards at a height of 15–20 feet above the ground. A report of the trials was printed in the Border Morning Mail of 29 July 1913.

In their Australian built monoplane Messers Robbins and Porter, of Albury, made five successful flights on Bungowannah Park on Sunday (27 July). Although the monoplane was under complete control while in the air it could not be flown to any great height owing to the restricted area of the paddock. 

While other planes would surpass the one built by our industrious amateur aviators, today Robbins and Porter are credited with designing and building Australia’s first monoplane fitted with a flat-four aero engine – and the only one that has ever flown.

The permanently “flying” monoplane is now part of the First Flight exhibition running at the LibraryMuseum until 27 July 2014.

Find out more: www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au

Registered? Then make your profile

We have only one and a half weeks until lots of people are going to visit the website and explore your profile pages.

Unless you want them to see this:

Then we'd seriously recommend you start uploading all the evocative, enticing and beautiful images you have of your place, collections and people.

Uploading images and text to your profile page is easy. We've made a 5 minute video about it. If you have some images on hand, then it probably won't take more than 15 minutes in total.

And we are here to help.

Meanwhile . . . 

How good can you look?

This good. Jenny Summerville from Manning Valley Rock Hounds Lapidary Club Gem and Mineral Museum (phew, that's a mouthful) persevered with the content management system to upload ten images of staff at work. 

Luckily, their work is really interesting! If we showed photos of me working it would be ten pictures of a guy at a computer.

Below you can see curator, Janette Sutton collecting Triassic leaf fossils.

And did I say enticing and beautiful? Have you been to Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery? It's in the best location in the world - a gallery right next to sparkling waters and a rolling, grassy park. 

In these two screenshots you can see Lake Mac's slideshow shift from the bird's eye view to absolute detail:

The second image shows how integral school programs were to LMCAG's 2010-2011 project in partnership with the Aboriginal Reference Group, creating a significant possum skin cloak with the local Aboriginal community.

And last but by no means least, we head to the Tweed River Art Gallery showcasing the planned Margaret Olley Art Centre, now in construction.

You have until the end of August. By then we will have a website crammed with your stories, activities and experiences.

Do it today.

Look out, aeroplane about!

The newly acquired F-111 in the restored WWII Bellman Hangar with wings and tail fitted. 

Image courtesy of Dr Richard Gates, Evans Head Living Museum.

On 5 August, the F-111 fighter bomber above traveled along the Pacific Highway from Ipswich, Queensland, on two super-wide trucks. It headed to the Evans Head Memorial Aerodrome–an exciting acquisition for them and one that arrived under police escort in the dead of night!

The F-111 will be reassembled by specialists at its new home at the heritage-listed aerodrome and opened to the public on Sunday 25th August. 

The fighter jets, known as ‘swing-wing’ bombers can fly up to two and a half times the speed of sound and were retired from the RAAF in December last year. Australia saw 37 years of service from the planes and for many they’re a modern-day icon. Always popular at air shows for their spectacular speed and sound display, this is your chance to get up-close and personal with one.

If you are traveling up north, why not stop in and have a look at what was once Australia’s fastest and most ferocious fighter?

We're building a website: Tell us a story!

With well over 100 museums, galleries and Aboriginal cultural centres now registered on the website, M&G NSW is looking forward to telling your story in multiple ways.

Events and Exhibitions

Maybe you saw our long growing list of exhibitions and events when curiosity got the better of you and you clicked around the website. If you didn't, I'd suggest you log back on. It's impressive and it's hardly even begun. 

If you didn't see your museum or gallery events in the list then get in touch with us. We want an image, a date, a description and a link to your email or website. Then you can be part of our showcase of dynamic programming.

Articles

This week you would have noticed the story about the F-111 rushing through the night to the Evans Head Memorial Aerodrome. The new website is going to be chock full of stories like this presented in magazine style articles, with photos and videos.

Which means . . .

We want to hear from you. Did you open your doors as part of a community event? Tell us how it went. Got a new exhibition? Get in contact with us and we'll interview the artist, curator or visitors. We want to hear stories about your collections, people and communities. 

So get in touch. 

Meanwhile, who's on the website?

Golden Memories Millthorpe Museum already have a sophisticated web presence but took time to upload some very nice photos starting with this exterior.

Check out the MCA Australia. Nine glorious photos including images from their National Centre for Learning. Their images aren't only about art: they're about people creating, engaging and having a great time. 

Then again, when art is sharp, hot and gorgeous you can't get better than the slideshow MOP put together. I wish i'd seen this exhibition by Samuel Galileo Quinteros and Carl Cheleski.

MOP watched the five minute "how to" video and got straight into it. 

So what are you waiting for? 

Simply email us, register, watch the video and download or Website Guide. In ten minutes you'll have a brand spanking new profile page.