We moseyed our way back home after our time up at Rainbow Beach. As we were in no hurry, we stopped off at the Gympie Gold Mining & Historical Museum and spent a couple of hours exploring all its old buildings and collections from yesteryear. As well as its Gold Display, based on the discovery of alluvial gold by James Nash in 1867 and the subsequent establishment of the township of Gympie, there are many old buildings on site that house fascinating displays that take you back to very different times...
An early slab hut with an earthen floor. (My son asked, "Did people actually live in here? 😀)
Horse drawn sulkies. (Imagine... no cars!)
The Cream Shed
(Different churns for making butter by hand are inside.)
An old wooden cottage with verandah. (This cottage was the home of Australia's 5th Prime Minister, Andrew Fischer.)
Old pots & pans & kettles for cooking.
(I think this might be an old kerosene stove??)
(A step up from a washboard but still very time consuming.)
A collection of old-fashioned telephones. (No mobile phones in those days!)
I find taking steps back in time, albeit sometimes to a past not all that distant (I remember my family had a rotary dial telephone when I was a girl in the 1970s), emphasises for me just how quickly some things, especially technology, seem to change now. It reminds me too, as in the case of the hand-operated washing machine, that life may indeed have been simpler but that doesn't necessarily mean it was easier!
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The township of Gympie "sprang up" after the discovery of gold in the region. As in other places, this discovery brought economic prosperity. Gympie is even credited as being the "town that saved Queensland" due to the boom that followed James Nash's discovery. Today though, mining (and in particular, coal mining) is a much more controversial industry as there's more at stake than simply "striking it rich" in in this age of climate change.
Old balance scales for weighing gold.
Panning for...rocks!
While we tried our hands at panning for gold, all we discovered were lots of little washed rocks unlike the two lucky prospectors who found Queensland's largest nugget (The Curtis Nugget) in the area over a century and a half ago. Our visit to the historical museum was still very worthwhile though; wandering through the old buildings and looking at all the artefacts and photographs gives you a sense of days gone by and an appreciation for some things, like modern washing machines 😊, that make life today easier in some respects.
Meg
