Spanners and Tongs

This is a late post to celebrate that, on Tues 18th May, World Museums Day, George mounted the installation of spanners and Blacksmith's Tongs above the forge in the shed.

It looks rather spectacular, especially as he cleaned and treated them first.

The piece below isn't up on the wall, but is your correspondent's favourite item from this cataloguing run. It seems to be a hammer, made from one piece of steel in a local forge somewhere.

Visit to Walhalla

Yesterday was the annual meeting of the GAAHS (ie the Gippsland Association of Historical Societies Affiliated with the RHSV - almost an acronym within an acronym!)

It was good to catch up with the societies from all over Gippsland, and to have a wander around the town in the afternoon.

Above is one of our favourite discoveries - the Walhalla Heritage and Development League are now running their Saturday night Ghost Tours with ........




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Yep - Solar-Powered Hurricane Lamps! A local invention of Brian Brewer (pictured above).

Items uploaded to CAN

We have just been advised that we have been successful in loading a small number of items from our catalogue to CAN (Collections Australia Network).

It is only a sample of the most significant items from our collection - but you can go to the CAN catalogue and search by "Stratford", and most of them come up. Plus items from elsewhere about Stratford.

Sarah Rhodes, the CAN outreach officer, also took the time to discuss our online strategy (which we share with Maffra and Old Gippstown), and her report on that can be found on the CAN Outreach blog.

Okay, members reading this - what other items should we list? What items do you consider important? Heck, why restrict it to members - what does anyone think we should upload?

The Other Sort of Tea Cosy

There is another sort of Tea Cosy - there is a post about them over at the Old Gippstown Object of the Week blog. We haven't been offered any of that sort so far.

More Cosies

Today was the Shakespeare Festival Village Fair. It was so busy there was no time to take photographs, except of the Tea Cosies, as we locked up. They were stunning. It was a busy day. For the first time, ever, we ran out of scones for the Avonshire Teas.

Everyone has different favourites in the Tea Cosies - here are three.

Moo Cow Cosy from Ross Smith

We did a lot of historical work as well - although looking at changing social customs, like the use of Tea Cosies is quite valid history. We launched our street walk, which we hope to have available soon. And picked up lots of information from people.

And a lot of people were fascinated to find what their ancestors bought in 1886 and 1890 at Kelly the Grocer (who also had a fair drapery section). We even found one grandmother buying her clothes for her wedding.