Nambour Museum celebrates history — and looks to the future

Nambour historian, Cherry Powell “We’re a ‘more-is-more’ museum.”

The Nambour Museum may look modest from the street, but step inside and it quickly lives up to its unofficial slogan: “We’re bigger on the inside.”

At last week’s Nambour Chamber of Commerce Coffee Catch Up, museum volunteer and local historian Cherry Powell shared her passion for the museum and its mission to preserve the region’s stories.

“In 1992, a group of people got together and said, we need to preserve our local history,” Ms Powell told the crowd. “In 1996, the lovely Peter Wellington got us this building here. Finding a commercial space that was big enough with a rent we could afford was a real hassle, in fact near impossible. But he managed to get this at a rent we could afford.”

Next year will mark 30 years in the current building, a milestone Ms Powell said the museum planned to celebrate.

But with 20 rooms packed with displays, the museum is bursting at the seams.

“We’re a ‘more-is-more’ museum,” she said. “Council would like us to adopt a more modern approach: the five-items-in-the-middle-of-a-large-room type museum – but our thoughts are, ‘if people are going to take the time to come through the door, we need to have something for them to see’.”

The result is a treasure trove that will surprise even locals. “We have people who have been born and grown up in Nambour who don’t know there is a museum,” she said. “They say, ‘Is that what that big building is?’”

Visitors are often stunned by the scale of what’s inside. “The most common thing people say when they come for the first time is, ‘Oh my God, it’s bigger on the inside.’”

The museum’s displays include historic tractors, a post office display, the engineer’s hut – the only surviving building from the original Moreton Mill site – military memorabilia, and a scale model of the mill. Seasonal events include a popular Christmas lights display, which Ms Powell described as “our gift to Nambour to bring some festivity”.

The museum faces the challenge of attracting new volunteers. “We just signed up a 12-year-old who also helps at the miniature trains,” she said. “He’ll be helping me hang all the Christmas lights this year.”

Group tours with a complimentary Devonshire Tea are also now offered for parties of 15 or more, proving popular with retired and over-50s groups.

Ms Powell invited locals to drop in and explore.

“Every week, I notice something I haven’t seen before,” she said. “It’s a delight to share the history of our town — because this is where Nambour’s story really began.”