{"id":7558,"date":"2016-10-09T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-10-09T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=7558"},"modified":"2020-12-30T15:44:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T15:44:54","slug":"looking-into-my-own-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=7558","title":{"rendered":"Looking into my own past"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hollowed
Hollowed out tree trucks make great water troughs – and they are free. I’ll bet there are many still in use today.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I travel I love going to museums \u2013 but recently I found myself going to a museum near my old home town in Queensland. It was like looking back into my own past.<\/p>\n

The thing about remote and rural communities is that they don\u2019t change quickly.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s Australia, or the UK or anywhere else in the world, rural communities tend to be pretty self-sufficient. They have to be. Even in the 21st<\/sup> century, someone in a remote community can\u2019t just drive up the road to buy a new\u2026 whatever.<\/p>\n

And of course, farming communities survive at the whim of the weather and the economy \u2013 so as often as not, even if a new \u2018whatever\u2019 is available, it\u2019s too expensive. <\/p>\n

So farmers tend to make do. They repair and modify and eke out the life of their machinery and tools and household items. Farmers have the wherewithal to repair a damaged item \u2013 they often don\u2019t have the money to replace it.<\/p>\n

\"This
This big blue machine came from a farm near my old home. A friend’s father modified it to keep it working. My older brother even remembers driving it once – about forty years ago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And of course, Australia is a young country, so its pioneer past is not all that distant. These two things combined made my visit to the Highfields Pioneer Village<\/a> quite special.<\/p>\n

The organisation has collected together buildings, farm machinery and household items \u2013 all taken from the area where I grew up. Most of the items were a bit before my time \u2026 but seemed familiar none-the-less.<\/p>\n

\"Out
Our old primary school had desks very much like this. We didn’t use slates, but I remember the ink wells.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When a school desk or a building is in use for decades, it collects a lot of memories. That\u2019s what I found at the park. Memories.<\/p>\n

\"Bags
Bags hanging on the schoolroom wall. I had a well-used version of the blue one. but I think it was a different colour.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"My
My mother had a\u00a0pedal-powered sewing machine – a later model than this. It was a special treat for me to be allowed to use it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some of the memories were mine. Some just seemed to hover around the exhibits waiting for a visitor to be willing to share them.<\/p>\n

Maybe this is a kind of race memory.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not old enough to have used most of the exhibits \u2013 but they felt familiar because I grew up with the next generation of exactly the same thing \u2013 old and well used tools, modified and repaired household good that were not yet ready to be thrown away.<\/p>\n

I love museums because they are preserving our past. I loved this museum \u2013 because it\u2019s preserving MY past.<\/p>\n

In these days of modern consumerism and the throw away nature of so much that we own, I have to wonder how many of the next generation\u2019s memories will last long enough to become part of a museum.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cottages
Cottages like this are worthy of a museum – but a lot of people still live in them too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  When I travel I love going to museums \u2013 but recently I found myself going to a museum near my old home town in Queensland. It was like looking back into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-history","category-museums-and-art-galleries","category-my-travels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1XU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7558"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8996,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558\/revisions\/8996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}