Ten Things #20
GH reports from Murtoa.
1/ It’s not an easy time to be an Australian country town. Your population is likely dwindling. You local paper has probably shut. You’re regarded as either a bolthole of racism, a refuge for paedophiles, or the setting for a cruddy rural noir or a true crime podcast in which every adult is a racist paeodphile. Not even Trent Dalton, winner of the Logie for unctuousness, cares about you. But anyway, rather than loiter with the literati at Bendigo Writers Festival, we roved the Wimmera for a few days, stopping at Dimboola, Avoca and Inglewood, but mostly lingering in Murtoa, 32km north-east of Horsham, which punches well above a population of fewer than 1000.
2/ When Sue Dollin from the Murtoa Historical Society kindly opens the doors of the local museum, located in the magnificent 138-year-old cylindrical railway water tower, we’re not quite sure what we’re expecting but it’s certainly not the riot of colour and recreated habitat that is the James Hill Taxidermy Collection.
James Hill was a staunch Methodist who raised five daughters in fifty years’ farming potatoes at Kewell. But he was also a self-taught naturalist who accumulated no fewer than 600 specimens of birds, birds eggs and reptiles, Australia’s biggest private collection. You can imagine him toiling by lamplight over his delicate wire frames and detailed handwritten labels.
3/ Although the emu still appears a bit pissed, Hill did these creatures honour. We’re connoisseurs of bad taxidermy in this household - C bought me this last Christmas. But this is really superb - moving even. There is care and delight in the arrangements - the twisty branches, the dramatic poses, the insects in the beaks, the fanning of the feathers, the priceless glass cloches. ‘Taxidermy,’ Tom Griffiths reminds us in Hunters and Collectors, ‘was a major scientific art of the period, one that came to dominate museum displays for the next century. Taxidermists’ shops windows were an early form of competition with the public museum.’ James Hill did better still: for decades he carried a mobile exhibition on the back of his buggy for the delight of local schoolchildren. And his life had the span of history. Son of one of the Wimmera’s first selectors, he died the day after seeing Dad and Dave in On Our Selection at the local picture theatre.
4/ Also a museum staple is the diorama, and there is a beauty across the road in the old railway station. Local John Gerdtz constructed it from his memory of Murtoa in the 1960s, and had to build a new home as its ambitions and population grew. You see, John filled it not only with period features but period characters, such as Kevin Jones doing a mono on his bike, while John even appears as himself, in his first car, a grey EH Holden with green roof. There is more creativity here than was on show at the whole Logies.
5/ The museum pays tribute to local notables such as John Cade and less notables like cabinet maker Carl Hempel, who after his wife died impatiently carved his own headstone and coffin, which in the meantime he filled with apples and walnuts. He subsequently donated the coffin for the funeral of a relative and gathered the timber for another only to perish between times, aged ninety three. Here he is with his dog Pluto and an unnamed cockatoo, fates unrecorded.
6/ The last remaining building of the old Lutheran college, meanwhile, brims with local artefacts, including the 1900 police straitjacket plus Victoria’s last manual telephone exchange, decommissioned forty years ago, and commemorated in rhyme.
7/ Sport fights on.
The old Murtoa FC has merged with Minyip, although our visit coincided with a Burras bye, while Murtoa CC has merged with Lubeck to form the Mudlarks. In the mid-60s, Murtoa had a team in the Dunmunkle Cricket Association, which had two grades. But only vestiges remain: note the old scoresheet, superseded by the CSW variety still in use today.
8/ Rainfall has deprived Lake Lochiel of some of its pinkness, but not its reflections, perfect on a still day.
9/ Stroll the streets for some delirious foliage and imaginative variations of corrugated iron.
10/ You’re too late for the Murtoa Fancy Dress Carnival....
.... but not for Murtoa’s Big Weekend, six weeks hence . Of course, I’ve told you nothing of Murtoa’s great glory, the mighty Stick Shed but for that I’ll need a few weeks. Will report back.
Did James have any stuffed fish in his collection?
For years I wanted a large trout mounted on my wall but because a) I’ve never caught one over 10 lbs and b) I now observe catch and release, I’ll guess never get one.
The Box Brownie has gifted us some wonderful history, hasn’t it? ( also, I dare say in Murtoa they “chuck” a mono).
A lovely account, Gideon.