MMXV: Features of 2015

"Carnamah Historical Society and Museum's website and, in particular, it's Virtual Museum and Biographical Dictionary are one of Australia's biggest online success stories." - Museums & Galleries NSW


First World War

April marked the centenary of the Anzac landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. We marked the occasion with the launch of a new virtual exhibition on the First World War as well as a physical exhibition within our museum (the latter being in partnership with the WA Museum). A request to say a word or two at Carnamah's dawn service quickly escalated into us being handed the baton to give the official address, and for such an auspicious anniversary.

Links:  First World War virtual exhibition  |  Transcript of Anzac Day speech 

"I used your... virtual museum exhibition in my year 7-10 classes at Carnamah DHS today as a lead up to Anzac Day. The students were thoroughly engaged by the stories particularly as they featured local soldiers and names they could relate to. It provided a great springboard for some fantastic discussion. Thanks for such a fantastic and timely resource."

Major Jack Colpitts of Heppleholme Farm in Winchester, South Carnamah

Macpherson Homestead

It's been a year of highs and lows for the old and wonderful Macpherson Homestead.

We were delighted to welcome a special group of visitors during the year, which included Oriel Green (nee Bartlett), her sisters and a number of their relatives and friends. Oriel spent a portion of her childhood in Carnamah and Three Springs during the 1930s but what made the visit more momentous was that her family are believed to be Aboriginal descendants of the Macpherson family.

Another high was our first steps toward the homestead hosting primary school excursions. Our thanks to Ignite Your Audience for their work so far and to the Three Springs Primary School for being our enthusiastic test-subjects!

Sadly the conserved ruins of the bakehouse at the homestead began to rapidly and suddenly deteriorate in October. Huge cracks spread through the walls and a large section began to collapse. However, we're pleased to report that the collapsed section has been restored and the remainder has been solidified and conserved to ensure the ruin will continue to stand strong.

Western Australian Heritage Awards

For the second year in a row, we were a finalist in the community organisation category of the WA Heritage Awards and were stoked to be named this year's winner.

"Carnamah Historical Society & Museum uses cutting-edge technology to engage with and promote the heritage of, not only their own and neighbouring districts, but also the State. Impressively, the society has established a virtual volunteering platform that has engaged 7,000 people with online heritage projects, which, in turn has provided a valuable resource for historians and the State."

Australian Curriculum Resources

For a few years we had been working hard, in partnership with Ignite Your Audience, to create a suite of Australian Curriculum education resources. Our completed range of nine resources, which relate to primary years, were promoted at the History Teachers' conference in Mount Lawley and the third History TeachMeet in Peppermint Grove. The resources are a little different - as they can be used with school visits to our physical museum or from classrooms anywhere in Australia (with our virtual museum and other online content).

Link:  Carnamah Historical Society & Museum's Australian Curriculum resources

We've received a lot of favourable comments, including glowing feedback from the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra! We were especially delighted when our resources received a Highly Commended in the Interpretation, Audience and Learning Engagement category of the Museums and Galleries National Awards.

Museums and Galleries National Awards

The Museums and Galleries National Awards, or MAGNAs, are conducted annually by Museums Australia and are held during the national museums conference. This year's conference was in Sydney and we had a few reasons to go. Both our education resources and our virtual volunteering program were short-listed in different categories and we're pleased to say they each received a Highly Commended. Not a bad effort considering the competition was mostly state and national institutions!

 
In the Media and in Parliament!

Our achievements of recent years were featured in the Museums Australia magazine, on the blog of Museums & Galleries NSW and in the Heritage Council of WA's Heritage Matters magazine. We were also honoured in the lower house of the Western Australian Parliament on 21 May 2015 when Shane Love, the MLA for Moore, spoke about our endeavours and successes.

Thank you

Our thanks to you for being part of our 2015 - whether it was online to our blog, Virtual Museum or Biographical Dictionary, or as a physical visitor to see our history and heritage on the ground in Carnamah.

We'd also like to thank those who supported us during the year. Special thanks are due to all of our virtual volunteers, to project partners atWork Australia and the North Midlands Project, and to financial supporters the Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA) and the Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program.

If you're ever in Carnamah, we invite you to stop by:

• Carnamah Museum
• Macpherson Homestead 

WA Parliament and two Highly Commended in the MAGNAs

On Thursday 21 May 2015 we were honoured in the lower house of the Western Australian Parliament. Shane Love, the MLA for Moore, spoke about our endeavours and successes for 90 seconds, which can be watched below or on YouTube.



The following day, on 22 May 2015, the annual Museums and Galleries National Awards (MAGNAs) took place in Sydney. We are delighted to reveal that we received two Highly Commended awards for our Australian Curriculum resources and Virtual Volunteering program.

Shiona Herbert and Andrew Bowman-Bright in Sydney with our two awards

Our thanks to Shane Love for his encouraging words and to Museums Australia for the two prestigious awards. We'd also like to thank the supporters of our now award-winning projects: the Department of Culture and the Arts, the Western Australian History Foundation and the Government of Western Australia's Social Innovation Grants Program.

Double short-listing in the Museums & Galleries National Awards!

2015 is shaping up to be quite the year for this little historical society! The short-list for the 2015 Museums and Galleries National Awards was announced today and we found ourselves among the list not once, but twice!

We're a contender in the Innovation category for Virtual Volunteering and are also in the running in the Interpretation, Learning and Audience Engagement category for our Australian Curriculum Education Resources. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on 22 May 2015 at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

We were honoured at last year's awards as the Level 1 Permanent Exhibition or Gallery Fitout winner for our Virtual Museum: to be known and distinguished as Carnamah.

Our virtual museum inspired the State Library of WA Foundation to create a virtual exhibition on Western Australia's Freycinet Collection... and we're pleased to reveal that it too is a finalist in this year's awards - in the category that we won last year!

Suite of Australian Curriculum Education Resources

In partnership with Ignite Your Audience we have developed a suite of nine freely downloadable Australian Curriculum education resources. However, they're museum resources with a difference! They can be used with school visits to our physical museum but can also be utilised from classrooms anywhere in Australia with our award-winning virtual museum.

If you're a primary school teacher then we have something for you! Resources from Foundation to Year 6 include an overview for teachers, worksheets, activities, extension ideas and their connections to the Australian Curriculum.

www.carnamah.com.au/education

www.carnamah.com.au/education

We'd like to thank the Western Australian History Foundation and the Government of Western Australia Department of Culture and the Arts for their invaluable support of this project. Special thanks are due to Maree Whiteley for her encouragement, Shiona Herbert for her inspirational skill and Salleigh Walters for her worthy contributions.

We'd also like to thank Museums Australia WA, the History Teachers' Association of WA and TeachMeetWA (lots of WA in there!) for allowing us to share and promote our project and its outcomes at conferences, workshops and presentations. If you're a teacher and attending the 2015 HTAWA Conference in Mount Lawley on 28 March, we are taking part in the Show & Tell session at 1:45pm!

2013: The Year in Review

In 2013 we were kept on the go running our museum and looking after the historic Macpherson Homestead. Like its predecessor, it's been another very busy year!

Virtual Museum

Early 2013 saw the launch of the expanded Virtual Museum on our website. Exhibits on the Midland Railway, Roads to Government, Business Houses, 10 Macpherson Street, the Carnamah Post Office and Toys made their way online while our existing exhibits on the Macpherson Family and Milk, Cream and Butter were revamped and expanded.

Townsite Centenary

The townsite of Carnamah quietly turned 100 on ANZAC Day in 2013. Its celebration was saved for September when locals, both past and present, came together for the North Midlands Show and centenary celebrations. Our secretary Jill Tilly worked hard over many months to provide a truly incredible exhibition of photographs and advertisements from the past century.


The milestone was also marked with the placement of historic photographs in eight shop-front windows, new interpretative plaques along Macpherson Street and a community-created mosaic table for Henry Parkin Gardens, pictured below.

Education Resources

We crossed new ground in 2013 with a break into the realm of education. The first of our Australian Curriculum education resources were developed to be usable from classrooms with our Virtual Museum or with physical visits to our museum.

The first three resources, created with Ignite Your Audience, can be freely viewed or saved from the Education Resources page of our website.

Virtual Volunteering

In April 2013 we embarked on our project to research, develop, trial, refine and share our concept of virtual volunteering. The project, which is ongoing, has resulted in a new Virtual Volunteering website. This is hosting some of our online volunteering projects and will very shortly host the transcription of the WA Biographical Index cards for the State Library of Western Australia.

We'd like to extend a very special thank you to the people who've given us a helping hand as online volunteers. If that's not you, it could be! It's as simple as heading over to www.virtualvolunteering.com.au, transcribing some text and hitting save!


In the Press!

Early in 2013 the National Museum of Australia released the book Landmarks: A History of Australia in 33 Places. It is based on their Landmarks exhibition in Canberra, and like the exhibition includes a section on Carnamah and its First World War soldier settlement.

One of our images graced the cover of Inside History magazine for its July-August 2013 edition. The illustration comes from the cover of a 1920s promotional notepad for N. W. Reynolds' general store in Carnamah. It can be seen in its original format in our Business Houses virtual exhibit and at our museum.

We were delighted to provide CBH Group with two photographs for the cover of their 2014 calendar. Both images were taken in Carnamah. The newer of the two was the arrival of the first CBH-owned train to stop in Carnamah in 2012. More on the images and this subject matter can be found in our blog post The Story of Bulk Wheat Handling and our virtual exhibit on the Midland Railway.




Sharing is caring...

In 2013 we continued providing assistance to our fellow heritage organisations with our president George Fowler serving as chair of the Mid West chapter of Museums Australia WA. Further afield we shared our knowledge and ideas with presentations at conferences, seminars and meetings down in Perth and as far north as Karratha in the Pilbara of WA.

Andrew S. Bowman went into battle for us at the so-called great debate 'digitisation is the death of history' at Curtin University. Along with David Fricker of the National Archives of Australia, we argued against the motion. Our narrow loss was hotly contested by many of the attendees which is a sure sign that it was indeed a great debate!

Recaps of two of our presentations can be read online:

• So what does digitisation mean for history?
• eHeritage: Attitude, Ethos, Culture + Creativity

We'd like to thank the following for their greatly appreciated support during 2013:

• Government of Western Australia's Social Innovation Grants Program for supporting our Virtual Volunteering project (in progress)
• Shire of Carnamah for their ongoing in-kind support
• Government of Western Australia's Department of Culture and the Arts for supporting the expansion of our Virtual Museum
• The Western Australian History Foundation for supporting our initial Education Resources
• Australian Government's Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities for supporting our project to gather and share local heritage stories (in progress)
• DIY History at the University of Iowa Libraries and Webgrow Website Maintenance for their technical help and assistance
• Ignite Your Audience for their educational wonder :)

Last, but certainly not least, we'd like to thank YOU for stopping by. We appreciate your patronage, whether it be on the ground in Carnamah or virtually via our website, blog, Facebook, Twitter or other social media.

Here's to local history and a productive 2014!

Launch of Australian Curriculum resource for Milk Cream & Butter

We launched the first of our Australian Curriculum education resources at the 2013 conference of the History Teachers' Association of Western Australia. Amid champagne flutes of chilled milk and gifts of butter we unveiled the education resource that accompanies the Milk Cream & Butter virtual exhibition on our website.

The first resource, and another eight which are on the way, provide information, activities and worksheets for teachers that can be used from the classroom with content on our website. This makes them useful for schools located anywhere in Australia! They are mostly suitable for lower primary years and directly connect to the new Australian Curriculum. The resource can be previewed or downloaded in full from:

www.carnamah.com.au/education

Please register your name and e-mail address if you'd like to be updated when we add new resource packs. If you use our Milk Cream & Butter resource we'd appreciate your anonymous feedback via our very short feedback form. We'd also love to share any work created by your students here on our blog - simply e-mail copies and some info to andrew@carnamah.com.au.

As an aside, we surveyed some of the attendees on their favourite flavoured milk. Chocolate, coffee and banana were the stand-outs with appearances of caramel, strawberry, skim, vanilla and good old plan milk. Our thanks to all of those who attended our session and to Maree Whiteley who spurred this project on with a comment on our Facebook wall back in April 2012.

Our Milk, Cream & Butter resource was made by Ignite Your Audience for and in partnership with the Carnamah Historical Society. It was possible thanks to support from the Western Australian History Foundation.

Local History meets Education thanks to WA History Foundation

We're delighted to announce we've received a grant from the Western Australian History Foundation for the development of education packages. The resources are being developed so they can be used solely with our online content or at our physical museum - making them of use to schools, teachers and students both locally and across Australia.

We're equally delighted to be working with Ignite Your Audience who are currently developing the educational resources, which will be linked to the new Australian History Curriculum.

Director of Ignite Your Audience, Shiona Herbert, has been in the education industry for the past 15 years. “Something wonderful about the new National History Curriculum is the focus on local history which has been really beefed up. The Carnamah Museum collection in conjunction with their online sources provides a huge spectrum of ideas and activities for students to connect with. The way information is presented on the Carnamah website is very attractive and stimulating to people of all ages. Kids in particular will enjoy navigating through the exhibits and online primary and secondary sources because they can do so with relative ease. Their teachers will be grateful for this too.”

A broad overview of the Australian History Curriculum is as follows: Early childhood students focus on how families of the past lived their lives, while Year 3 students look at the significance of people and places in a community. Year 4 students study early exploration and early interactions of Europeans and Aboriginal people. Year 5 students explore the role of early settlers in establishing the land and Year 6 students look at the impact of migration to Australia.  High school students examine the experiences Australians had during World War I and II. Carnamah and its surrounding regions has something that connects to all of these curriculum themes.



Ignite Your Audience is a company that likes to ‘think outside the box’, so to highlight items in both the Virtual Exhibits and the Museum displays, Shiona has made many engaging suggestions for how to strengthen ties with the local school. “I’d love to see a home economics challenge at the District High School where Master Chef teams make a Carnamah Biscuit recipe in the shape of cows! This places a unique spotlight the Pioneer lifestyle where many families had their own cow for milk, cream and butter, and it celebrates Bonny the Cow, who was quite an identity of the town back in the 1920’s.”

“I visited Carnamah recently and I loved the sense of humour present in the community, therefore I’d like to create a ‘caption competition’ where we upload a regional photo and ask people to submit a cheeky caption to accompany it. I’d love for kids to do this too; their imagination can run wild for creating dialogue.”

Our thanks and gratitude to the Western Australian History Foundation for their grant which is making this project a reality.

Update: www.carnamah.com.au/education