design across time - Powerhouse Museum

+ 03 powerline spring 05
FROM FARM MACHINERY TO GREEK TREASURES,
THE MUSEUM EXTENDS ITS COMMUNITY LINKS.
all in a
day’s work
4
Powerhouse Museum regional
services adviser Graham
Clegg recently spent a day in
Wollombi helping the local
Endeavour Museum recover a
stripper and winnower that had
served much of the area from
1890–1940.
Until the mid 1840s the
Australian grain crop was
laboriously harvested with
sickles and threshed manually.
In the hot, dry conditions much
grain was lost due to shedding
or shattering the ripened
heads. In South Australia where
these losses were most severe,
a £40 prize was offered for a
practical design for a
mechanical harvester that
could overcome the problem.
Local farmer John Wrathall Bull
came up with a design that
attracted the attention of flour
miller John Ridley. Ridley
developed the invention into a
workable machine — the
stripper — which quickly
became an essential piece of
equipment for bringing in the
grain harvest.
Wollombi’s stripper and its
accompanying winnower, used
The Museum’s Moveable Heritage
Program helps build regional collections.
to clean the harvested grain,
were bought by the Milson
family of ‘Byora’, Laguna, in the
1890s. The machines were still
housed in their original shed
on the property, where the
subsiding earth floor had
caused damage to one of the
wooden wheels. The work to
date has involved stabilising
the objects in the shed and
helping to get them ready to
move to a purpose-built
extension to the Endeavour
Museum, where they will be
housed.
This work is part of the
Powerhouse Museum’s
Movable Heritage Program, an
initiative funded with the
assistance of the Ministry for
the Arts, which aims to
strengthen regional collections
and develop community
capacity and local identity.
Other projects currently
underway include work on an
exhibition with the Wollondilly
Heritage Centre on the
Estonian Poultry Farmers of
Thirlmere, and the
conservation of an early
wooden windmill with the Hay
Gaol Museum.
a rich
history
j
GRAHAM CLEGG HELPS STABILISE
ONE OF THE WHEELS OF
WOLLOMBI’S STRIPPER. PHOTO BY
MARINCO KOJDANOVSKI.
HIS GRACE BISHOP SERAPHIM
(RIGHT) AND DIMITRI KEPREOTES
OF THE GREEK ORTHODOX
CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA AT THE
OPENING OF THE GREEK
TREASURES EXHIBITION. PHOTO
BY MARINCO KOJDANOVSKI.
A highlight for Museum visitors
over the winter months has
been the Greek treasures:
from the Benaki Museum in
Athens exhibition. The
exhibition, which features
artworks and artefacts from
8000 years of Greek history,
opened in early May with
special guests including then
NSW Premier and Arts Minister,
the Hon Mr Bob Carr, Greece’s
Deputy Minister for Culture, Dr
Petros Tatoulis, Dr Stavros
Vlizos from the Benaki
Museum, and many members
of the local Greek community.
Dr Vlizos, who spoke on behalf
of the director of the Benaki
powerpicks +
Museum, Dr Angelos
Delivorrias, compared Greek
treasures to the Our place:
Indigenous Australia now
exhibition, staged in Athens
during the 2004 Olympics. ‘In
both cases,’ he said, ‘the
resilience of two different
cultural traditions is projected
... consoling examples of the
struggle to secure survival
being waged constantly
around the globe.’
The exhibition, which has
attracted record crowds,
closes in Sydney on 4
September, before opening at
Melbourne’s Immigration
Museum in October.