Professionals Serendipity 
There’s no better way to learn about Tamborine Mountain’s history than to visit the Tamborine Mountain Heritage Center, run by the mountain’s Historical Society. Vice-President Muriel gives us a little of the Society’s own history in this interview.
by Kyle Hitchmough
How long have you been with the society?
I lived in Sydney for 36 years after I was married. When my husband retired we came back to the original farm I grew up on. My family was one of the pioneering families in the area since 1897. I’ve been in the society for 18 years, three of which I was the president. I’m the vice president now.
How did the Historical Society get started?
It was started by Dr. Vonda Youngman. She was the first GP on the mountain and one of the councilors. She was one of those old-fashioned doctors who would go door-to-door. She noticed there was a lot of retired men and she thought they needed something to do. So she started a heritage museum where people could bring things that would end up at the tip, that could be restored and given prominence. The first building we had here was the first church. When it was decommissioned a longtime resident bought it and had it moved up here. From there, it just grew.
This actual location is the heritage centre and museum. How does the site operate? Is it designed with the intent to show yourself around, or is there more?
We’re open weekends and public holidays and we have tours. We work with school groups too, we have a lot of children come through. It’s very cheap to come in. If you want to take a pamphlet and go through and look at things yourself you can, or you can have a tour guide and they’ll explain different things along the way. We also have archives. We’re trying to get the history of all the guest houses, and all the hotels that used to be up here. I had a couple come in last week and say “we’ve been married 50 years and had our honeymoon here but we can’t find the place, it doesn’t seem to be there anymore.” By talking to them we found out where it was so they could go and revisit it, even though it had changed.
The Historical Society is a volunteer organization, correct? How do people join?
Yes, everyone is a volunteer. They put not only their time and expertise in, but there’s a lot of satisfaction in doing it too. We get a lot of positive feedback. We have about four members who just love gardening and they keep the grounds looking lovely. We have a former welder. There was a Ferguson tractor donated to us that was in a paddock, grass growing through it, in a thousand bits. He retrieved it all, preserved it, put it all back together and it goes. We have people who get a lot of satisfaction out of creating, renovating, restoring, things like that. We all have little jobs that we like to do. Every three months we run a welcome to new residents. We make sure one of us goes—all the voluntary organisations give a little speech about what they’re about, and we do pick up people that way. A lot of the people who live up here have come up here in retirement so they want to do something and meet local people.
So what actually goes into the operation of this site?
If something is donated to us it first goes to our archivist, who records it and enters it into our computer and hard copy. Everything is tagged with a number. It might be in such good condition that we can put it out somewhere on display—if it needs fixing, it’ll be fixed. Sometimes someone will give us something that we’ve already got. We have a collective with the other heritage centers in the Scenic Rim. We do things like learning how to do more restoration work—Templin has an expert in dresses and materials who lectures at workshops all over the state. It’s really handy knowing someone like that we can go to if we get something really old and how to treat and restore it. If we something we’ve already got we can offer it to them.
Obviously, you’re a local. What’s your opinion on Tamborine Mountain as an area and a community?
It’s changed since I was a girl. I grew up here on a dairy farm – it was dairy farms, avocado farms, kiwi fruit farms, and small crop-growing. A lot of the farms are gone, they’ve been cut up, and it’s all residential. When I was young there was no high school. We had to go and board at Beenleigh. Later on they got a bus that went down to the Southport high school. Now there’s all these buses that bring kids up to the schools because our schools have a very good name. It’s changed in a generation from a farming settlement— now a lot of jobs are tied up with tourism. There are not many farms left.
What do you enjoy most about being a part of the heritage society?
I love seeing it grow. Not just with new people, but with new artifacts that have been donated to us. People come through and say “I’ve got one of those, now I know where I can pass it on to.” If it’s broken, we can renovate and restore it. There’s a great camaraderie with the volunteers, we all get on very well. It’s a great social atmosphere. I think we’re preserving our Tamborine Mountain heritage, and that’s what it’s all about.
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Or email the writer at kyle.hitchmough@hotmail.com, and follow me on Twitter @realcasualrvws.
