Herberton Historic Village, Qld

Day 2

Today we visited the Herberton Historic Village, which neither of us had ever heard of, in Herberton, just down the road from Atherton.

We have been to a thousand old world villages, museums, theme parks and the like, the best of which might have been Sovereign Hill in Ballarat. Mostly there is an old building in a dirt compound with piles of even older ‘stuff’ lying about, literally rotting away. We perhaps assumed that this would be more of the same; how wrong can we have been? Plenty wrong as it turns out.

First of all the village is set in the lush and meticulously manicured grounds of the founders house and farm. Then there are the buildings; they are all old buildings, saved from around the district, brought here, beautifully restored and presented. Then there is the ‘stuff’. The collection originally started when a fellow, Harry Skennar, started collecting junk when he was six. By the 1950’s he decided to start saving old things in earnest and to display them in a park. The park and collection are now owned by Connie & Craig Kimberly who have turned it into the best museum / theme park / Australiana village in Australia, and as an open air museum, it would rival anything in the world.

All tastes are catered for in the collection, far too many categories to list. Think of something old you might like to collect – it’s here.

The thing is that all items are spotlessly clean and stored in such a way that they stay looking ‘cared for’ while either being stored to archival standards or are left touchable while not being ruined too much. I was particularly impressed with the rusty iron: cars, trucks, tractors, ploughs, horse things, chains etc etc. What they have done is kept everything exactly as found, possibly high pressure cleaned it then sprayed everything with some sort of clear coating. Magic! The items look almost better than the original found state but are protected against the elements.

I started taking snaps of old stuff that was prominent in my childhood and got sort of carried away.

There are a few snaps in the Herberton snaps listing on the right.

Me taking a snap of some old cameras. Nice handbag! Herberton Historic Village. Herberton, Qld