Highlights of the Museum

The Museum has a rich collection of artefacts which range in date from pre-European settlement to the modern day. The museum also houses an extensive collection of documents, microfilms and photographs. Many of these objects  tell personal stories about people’s lives, places and artefacts. It is these stories that make the objects so interesting.

The range of objects in this exhibition, selected and curated by the collection team, reflects the wide range of interests of our volunteers who found it really difficult task to choose only one object each. The objects on display all tell a fascinating story and include:

• a ball gown that Mrs Grace McVey wore when she met Queen Elizabeth 11 in 1954;
• an elaborate Irish Land League lithograph that demonstrates the importance the local Irish community placed on political movements in Ireland;
• a then state-of-the-art camera used by a missionary and his wife in the wilds of Mongolia and Nepal in the early 1900s;
• an early sewing machine brought out from Ireland in 1890;
• an exercise book used by an 11 yo schoolboy in 1861 that really showcases the academic expectations of the time (as well as the beautiful handwriting) ; and
• a series of irons – a flat iron, a box iron and a fuel iron (using that could be likened to a ironing with a molotov cocktail).

The exhibition will be every day in January except for public holidays.