I slept badly during the night – I kept having weird dreams about being in danger from something. Good thing I don’t believe in prophetic dreams, or I would have been worried.
When I woke up, Turtle Shell was freezing, so I just turned on the air con, then jumped back under the blankets and read a book while I was waiting for it to heat up. I tried to turn on my computer to watch something while I ate breakfast, but I just got a black screen. Restarting didn’t fix it, so I took it into Stanthorpe and left it in a computer shop to be repaired (that’s why these blog posts are coming to you a few days late).
My first stop was the Stanthorpe Historic Museum – $7 for two visits. Well, actually my first stop was the Tourist Information to learn what I could see around the place, but the museum was the first stop you guys will care about. They have a pretty big collection, spanning several buildings. A lot of the buildings themselves are historic; there’s an old schoolhouse, a station hut, a telegraph office, and even a jail. Which was basically just a single cell, but it had some old police equipment in it.
The telegraph office had lots of old phones, and even an old telegraph relay.
Lots of old phones. The oldest one I can claim to remember is the rotary dialler, and that was only because there was one at Gran and Pa’s house.
This was what it took to send telegraph messages – yes, that is covering an entire wall. No wonder they had a whole building to themselves.
I just liked the look of the old-fashioned stove.
This was one of the first cash registers. I couldn’t really get a good scale in, but it was about the size of an Esky.
Rules for teachers from the schoolhouse. This gave me a laugh.
A harvester from 1905
This was a device invented to keep rats from eating bacon as it cured in the smokehouse. Cotton reels were strung along a wire and bacon was hung from string looped around the reels, so the rats couldn’t walk down the wire and eat and bacon.
A wall of traps. The smallest are rabbit traps, the largest are for wild dogs.
An old blacksmith forge. Air was introduced by using a modified cream separator – that’s the little metal tin with a wheel and lever at the bottom left.
A more traditional way of introducing air. Look at the size of those bellows!
An old steam train that reminds me of Thomas the Tank Engine, even if it is the wrong colour.
An iron lung, basically the first respirator. The device at the left of the photo is what created and released the vacuum.
A homemade rocket launcher, complete with informative sign!
The museum has a whole section on ‘make-do’ – the things settlers cobbled together when materials were limited. I was most impressed by a makeshift tractor, built to run on kerosene. The fuel tank was a syrup tin, and the filters were made of horsehair. There was no welding equipment available, so everything is just riveted.
You can really see the lack of welding in the rear wheel – it’s all nuts and bolts.
See the syrup tin that served as the petrol tank?
All images above copyright of the Stanthorpe Historic Museum (they said all photos taken are subject to their copyright, so I’m covering my butt here).
After the Historic Museum I went to Stanthorpe Cheese. Which isn’t actually in Stanthorpe, it’s in Thulimbah. They market themselves as the ‘highest, coldest cheese farm in Australia’, and their cheese is made from their own Jersey cows. They have seven varieties available for you to taste, and I loved them all! Even the one with peppercorns in it – as long as you don’t bite into the actual peppercorn, it’s just pleasantly spicy. They also sell Jersey milkshakes, and I ordered a Liquid Malteaser, which was just as delicious as you’d expect.
I ended up buying the Rex cheese, and took that back to Turtle Shell to put in the fridge. I read some more of my book before dinner – Australia’s Serial Killers. Some people have said it’s weird to be travelling off on my own and reading about some truly awful things that happen to people who are usually alone, but I don’t find myself bothered by it. Maybe because I’m just not easily spooked, or maybe because Dad gave me a torch that’s heavy enough to be used as a murder weapon. Could be both.
The torch. Yes, it is longer than my forearm, and heavy enough that I’ll never keep it on a high shelf, because if it fell on my head it could totally kill me.
Jenny's Adventures 