Queanbeyan’s 175th Birthday – What a Year!

History and Heritage News

We had a very busy year last year with Queanbeyan’s 175th Birthday Celebrations.  The celebrations started with a bang with an historical film screening:

Queanbeyan’s Moving Memories

We began the year with our involvement with Queanbeyan City Council’s film screening : Queanbeyan’s Moving Memories. Members assisted with the original concept and choice of historic film clips and the Feature Film Around The Boree Log (Australia 1925) from the NFSA collection. This silent film was adapted from the poems of John O’Brien (Patrick Joseph Hartigan) and tells of a priest’s life around the southern highlands in the 1870s. Council assisted by hanging the Museum’s 1920s Cinema Curtain in the Foyer of The Q Theatre. We also provided a slide show of historic photographs which screened before the screening and at interval, and a display about the history of cinema going in Queanbeyan. There were two sold out shows, showing that locals are keenly interested in their town’s history. The clips of billy cart races, robbing bees at Burra and the Raiders win in 1989 were popular. Check out part of the Raiders clip on the NFSA website: http://www.nfsa.gov.au/blog/2013/09/09/canberra-raiders-1989-grand-final-heroes/

There were many requests for a DVD of the chosen historical clips. This may be a project the Museum could undertake in the future.

IMG_3717_2Almost 90 years old!

For more information on the history of cinema in Queanbeyan go to our media page

Queanbeyan’s Living History Oral History Exhibition Launch

History and Heritage News

What a lovely community day we had for the launch of the oral History Exhibition at the Museum on 7th September 2013 as part of our History Week Celebrations! Nine exhibition boards were launched. Transcripts and audio copies of the interviews were presented to the interviewees by the project leader  John McGlynn.

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Dr Mary Hutchison launching the exhibition

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What a Fabulous Queanbeyan Heritage Festival 2013!

History and Heritage News, , , , ,

Hi all. We will be adding new information over the next few months. It is fitting that the first post should be about our fabulous Heritage Festival held in April this year. On April 12 we launched both the Festival and the Museum’s special exhibition for Queanbeyan’s 175th celebrations: The Way We Wore – 130 years of Wedding Dresses from our collection and borrowed from the local community. On 19th April we launched a new exhibition curated by CIT Museum Studies students: From Flyscreens to Electricity – Hessian to Ice. Two Time Traveller’s bus tours of Queanbeyan were conducted with delicious Devonshire Tea provided at the Museum. A Pub Crawl With Poetry Shot was organised by the Local Studies at Queanbeyan City Library. This began at the Museum with a talk about our local pubs by our Curator. We held an Open Day at the Museum to launch Queanbeyan’s LIving History – our Oral History project for Queanbeyan’s 175th Birthday Celebrations.