Receiving a commendation in this year’s Western Australian Heritage Awards is a tribute to the staff and volunteers who have worked to ensure its success, says the Curator and Researcher of the Sisters of St John of God Heritage Centre Broome, Sister Pat Rhatigan.
The Heritage Centre was last month commended in the ‘Community Based Organisation’ category of the 2016 Heritage Awards.
“In 2012, the Heritage Centre took out the top honours in its category, which was great encouragement for us to press on with further developments, and to pursue and emulate best industry practice,” Sr Rhatigan said.
“We started off as a temporary display in 2007 and have developed into what is now regarded as one of the most comprehensive social history collections of the Kimberley,” she said.
“In the last four years, the Heritage Centre’s Collection has increased by 25 per cent and now includes more than 50,000 historical and cultural photographs and documents. We have incorporated new interpretive technologies, including computer touch screens and two large screens to assist the public to search through the Collection.
“We also now have a permanent, dedicated, professional photographic studio for the digitisation of three-dimensional and over-size elements of the Collection,” she said.
Sr Pat said exhibition lighting has been upgraded to museum standard, and significant work had been completed to upgrade the Old Convent, which houses the permanent Relationships Exhibition. The Old Convent building itself is heritage-listed. It was designed and constructed in the 1920s by a Japanese carpenter using traditional Japanese carpentry methods.
Sr Pat said the staff and volunteer workforce had been outstanding in helping to develop the Centre.
“Our Heritage Centre volunteers come from all over Australia and have increased by 32 per cent since 2012. We have more specialist volunteers, many retired or working part time, who have stepped forward, offering their skills. Hours donated by specialist volunteers increased by 103 per cent from 2014 alone,” she said.
Sr Pat said 50 per cent of the Heritage Centre’s local volunteers were Aboriginal.
“We also get strong support from the Aboriginal community in assisting with the identification of photographs in the Collection.”
The Heritage Centre has most recently focused on the Bungarun Archive, created during the 50 years of the operation of the Derby Leprosarium, where 99 per cent of patients were Aboriginal.
“The Leprosarium drew patients from communities Kimberley-wide. Former patients and relatives of former patients have been assisting with poignant recollections that build our knowledge of the Leprosarium’s history,” Sr Rhatigan said.
“We’ve had some incredible stories emerge, such as the time when the Sisters were ordered by the military during WW2 to ‘… dig slit trenches, bury the medicines’… and to flee into the bush as Japanese air raids were expected. However, refusing to leave their patients at the Bungarun Leprosarium, they took all their patients and as much equipment as possible to a bush camp. They only had two trucks available so it was quite a trek into the Kimberley bush to find a safer place.”
The Heritage Centre is managed locally in Broome, with financial support from the Sisters of St John of God in Subiaco for management, maintenance and staffing.
The Relationships Exhibition at the Heritage Centre is now open to the public six days a week for nine months of the year. The Heritage Centre is on the corner of Barker and Weld Streets in Broome.