New museum aims to be a regional drawcard

AUSTRALIA’S regional centres are pulsating with arts activities and new projects and none less so than Wagga Wagga, as I found on a recent visit to the redeveloped Museum of the Riverina at the Botanic Gardens, with “CityNews” craft writer, Meredith Hinchliffe.

Formally launched in early February by Wagga Wagga mayor Dallas Tout and NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, the Arts, Regional Youth and Tourism, Ben Franklin, the new $8.6m facility was opened to the public on March 7 and was expected, Mayor Tout says, to bring almost 20,000 visitors to the site a year.

Designed and built by Berowra firm Cumnock Constructions, the museum, at the front of the old main building comprises a new exhibition gallery, learning studio, collection storage facility, public spaces, and staff offices.

And not a moment too soon, museum manager Luke Grealy tells us, as their storage facilities had already reached 165 per cent capacity.

Hardly able to wipe the smile from his face, Grealy adds that apart from comfort, “the new developments are all about lifting the museum to a higher standard so it could become a regional drawcard, we just need more money to link the museum, the zoo and the botanical gardens.”

On hand for our visit is lead curator Sam Leah, who was quick to assure us that Wiradjuri elders had overseen everything, offered histories and had been behind the repatriation to Wagga Wagga of seven rare wooden tools that had been kept at the Australian Museum for decades but were returned after the Mawang Gaway Wiradyuri Gallery reference group realised their origins.

“They’re my favourites because of their significance,” Grealy added, “They were originally found at the Ganmain Station and collected by the Devlin family.”

The entrance gallery features a spectacular Wiradjuri display that pays homage to the Wagga Wagga region’s first peoples, with finely-traced maps of the original country on the walls, bark canoes and nets suspended from the ceiling and a display of Perspex columns nearby.

This sophistication of the display, Grealy says, was down to the Melbourne designer Megan Atkins. An expert on designing for regional museums, she has created an elegant setting and what Grealy judges to be one of the “best mounts in Australia.”

But in revitalising the museum, he emphasises, there has been no undue waste, with the former cabinets, themselves second-hand, re-gifted to the Adelong Alive Museum where they fitted perfectly.

After the impressive entrance, next we walk into the galleries, which aim to capture the essence of Wagga Wagga society and culture.

Leah, a historian who has also done heritage studies, came to the museum seven years ago after having worked as a summer scholar at the Australian War Memorial.

“We’ve really focused on a place-based approach to interpretation and storytelling,” she says.

First up are lifesavers at Wagga Beach. In my ignorance I didn’t even know there was a Wagga beach, but Leah puts me straight quickly.

Besides, I find, the Wagga Wagga Council website praises the beach as “a popular, natural, attraction in Wagga Wagga,” recommending it as a good point from which to “launch your kayak or canoe from here and see part of our city from the water.”

Naturally the mighty Murrumbidgee River looms large, although in one exhibit, Dame Mary Gilmore mentions its reputation as “a river of no account.”

Post-World War II Wagga Wagga in a time of change is shown through a beautifully recreated kitchen of the era. Modern, but not that modern, since most doctors in town were Catholic and thus conservative on issues like The Pill.

But times change and so must museums, so the museum has an up-to-date interactive section for kids —“the fun part,” she says.

Both Leah and Grealy note that new communications and consumer technology actually kicked off in the ’60s and ’70s, with a shift in attention to teenagers, so one section provides a snapshot of Wagga Uni students protesting against the Fraser government’s cuts to health and education in 1979.

Sport is well-represented, with a recording of the 2004 Olympic 4 x 400-metre relay final, in which Wagga Wagga athletics hero Patrick Dwyer helped secure a silver medal for Australia.

Leah, who has a special interest in military history, has a section from World War I where the stories of First Nations soldiers and local identities such as Wagga Wagga nurse Florence Holloway are told.

Then there is also an image of  Kapooka army base.

Downstairs, the centrepiece is a mobile galley used by cooks for feeding chaff-cutters three meals a day, conserved by Kim Morris of Queanbeyan business Art & Archival.

Near it is a possum rug from Devlin family and a print work by First Nations artist Treahna Hamm based on her recollections of growing up in the area.

“A big thing for us is telling pioneers’ stories, but here the old stories are told, but with new insights” Leah says.