20 in 2020: local museum celebrates milestone this Australia Day
Published 24 January 2020
The Pine Rivers Heritage Museum has come a long way since it’s opening on Australia Day 2000.
On Sunday 26 January, the museum will celebrate 20 years of its own history documenting the region’s rich stories including those of the settlers dating back to the 19th century.
North Pine Historical Society President Judy Dohle, a descendent of the pioneering Ebert family that arrived in Lawnton from Germany in 1864, was one of the museum’s first volunteers.
“We wanted to preserve and collect our own history,” Ms Dohle said.
“Going into it, the Mayor and the Councillors of former Pine Rivers Shire Council decided too many historical objects were being lost or sold.
“We decided a museum would be fantastic as a home for all the items that were in the North Pine Country Park.”
She remembered the excitement of opening the museum’s first ‘professional display’: Women of the West.
“It was a display from Queensland Museum showing how settler women lived in Australia when they first arrived,” she said.
“It took our visitors back to a time when people lived in tents, boiled billies for water and churned their own butter.”
Located in the heart of Old Petrie Town, the museum has grown to become a vibrant educational hub for children from across Moreton Bay Region and Brisbane.
Spokesperson for museums Councillor Denise Sims said the museum’s 20-year anniversary was a momentous occasion for the venue and all its staff and volunteers over the decades.
“The Pine Rivers area has an abundance of fascinating stories. Explorer John Oxley first walked through what is now Murrumba Downs in the 1820s, but for Indigenous people this fertile area has been home for thousands of years,” Cr Sims said.
“It is so important that history is remembered and preserved for generations to come and I thank those staff and volunteers who have toiled tirelessly to make the museum what it is today.
“We should all be very proud of their work and there’s no better day to celebrate its history than this Australia Day.”