Discover SLM
Find a weekly summary of what's new across our channels, look up activities to do at home with the family, including in the kitchen and the garden, explore our properties and our collections, and settle in for some good long reads.
This week's focus:
This week coinciding with our current call out for the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize 2020 we turn our focus to the historic house of Meroogal in Nowra located on the NSW South Coast. Meroogal reopens to the public this Saturday 4 July. Pre-book your tickets online now.
Story
Photo © John Storey for Sydney Living Museums.
Make yourself at home
Designed by Kenneth McKenzie for his sister Jessie, Meroogal was home to four generations of resilient and resourceful women, whose house was their livelihood as well as their home.
Collection
Photo Scott Hill © Sydney Living Museums.
The story of Meroogal's clock
In the hallway at Meroogal is a grandfather clock with the most wonderful and eventful history. It first arrived from Scotland with the McKenzie family and was with them when they moved to a small village called Terara, on the banks of the Shoalhaven River.
For the family
Craft & Activities
Make your own mini museum! Choose from six Sydney Living Museums properties including Meroogal. Simply download the plans, colour, cut, fold and glue
Recipe
Lemon biscuits
Family members recall Auntie Tottie Thorburn cooking these biscuits, cut into fingers, on large baking trays in the fuel stove at Meroogal.
Watch & listen
Online puzzles
Online jigsaw puzzles
Take a moment to relax and recharge with one of our online puzzles featuring our beautiful collections and museums.
Gardens
Photo Tony Boland © Sydney Living Museums.
Dream trees
The Meroogal women planted the original jacaranda in 1910. According to the family’s oral history, the magnificent tree was grown from a seed taken from one of the first jacarandas in the colony – a gift from the Dick family of Windsor.
Convicts
Francis Greenway
When Francis Greenway was appointed Civil Architect by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in March 1816, he became the first government architect of New South Wales.
Competition
Artist in Residence
To celebrate our first artist in residence at The Mint, Dr Lisa Cooper, be sure to enter our #InspiredByNature competition for your chance to win a custom-made floral artwork by Dr Lisa Cooper. Entries close 6 July.
Online exhibitions
Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums
Meroogal Women’s Art Prize 2020
Entries are now open for the 2020 Meroogal Women’s Art Prize, with a prize pool of over $10,000.
Photo © State Archives & Records
A Thousand Words exhibition
‘A picture tells a thousand words.’ This adage is the inspiration for an innovative exhibition in which the public becomes the curator with 20 new images released each month.
More stories
A 1920s garden revisited
June Wallace remembers the garden lovingly tended by her aunties at Meroogal as 'natural', brimming with Iarkspurs, pentstemons, columbines, gerberas, ixias, primulas, violets, cornflowers, asters, polyanthus and jonquils. Its formal, geometric layout was softened by a colourful profusion of flowering shrubs and shady trees. SLM gardener Cheryl Scowen tells about recreating this age old source of family pride.
A home of their own
A young woman of the Victorian era, Tot Thorburn had suitors and male friends but chose not to marry. She enjoyed a long and happy life with her sisters at Meroogal.
A manuscript cookbook from Meroogal
Among the many cookery books in the Meroogal collection are several notebooks containing handwritten recipes. This one was compiled by Helen Macregor, who lived at Meroogal in the early 1900s. Some of the recipes have been edited with tips, comments and adjustments added over time.
Remembering June Wallace
Staff and friends of Sydney Living Museums reflect on their relationship with June Wallace, the last owner of Meroogal.
Reverend Donald McKay Barnet
The Reverend Donald McKay Barnet (1869–1940) was born in Sydney, the youngest son of Colonial Architect James Barnet. His initial connection with the Thorburn family of Meroogal in Nowra came in the late 1880s through his friendship with Tom Thorburn, the youngest son of Jessie Thorburn, matriarch of Meroogal.
The dream tree: Jacaranda, Sydney icon
Every November, jacarandas rain a shower of purple on Sydney’s streets. This gorgeous flowering tree has such a firm hold on the city and its imagination that few of us could imagine it any other way. But the Brazilian native was once considered as rare as it was beautiful.
The sock knitter: Belle Thorburn
For soldiers in the trenches of wartime Europe, a pair of hand-knitted socks was more than just a comfort from home.
Tottie Thorburn's diary
This diary was written by the youngest member of the family for whom Meroogal was built, Kennina Fanny Thorburn (1865–1956), known to her family as Tottie.
Underground ruin now supplies water
The underground tank, or cistern, at Meroogal was originally the main supplier of household and garden water, holding around 40,000 litres in its mostly submerged brick belly. Fearing its collapse in 2006, SLM commissioned local Nowra architect and engineer Nick Powell to not only reconstruct and restore the tank but make it functional again.
Victor Brabazon Cox
Victor Brabazon Cox was 42 years old in August 1916 when he enlisted as a gunner in the AIF. He was Clerk of Petty Sessions at Nowra, in the Shoalhaven district of NSW. In Nowra he became friendly with the Thorburn family living at Meroogal and also with the related Macgregor and Barnet families in Cambewarra and Wollongong.
Washed away: the story of Meroogal's clock
In the hallway at Meroogal is a grandfather clock with the most wonderful and eventful history. It first arrived from Scotland with the McKenzie family and was with them when they moved to a small village called Terara, on the banks of the Shoalhaven River. There the McKenzie family and their clock might have stayed if not for a catastrophe that struck in 1860.
Latest news
Employment
20/SE040 Producer, Volunteers & InternsTuesday 30 June 2020
Our favourite images from A Thousand WordsThursday 18 June 2020
Media release
A fresh vision for Sydney Living MuseumsTuesday 16 June 2020
During lockdown, Sydney Living Museums (SLM) and NSW State Archives had a unique opportunity to reflect, reassess and reimagine the purpose of our partnership and our engagement with audiences, existing and potential.
News
We're reopening more museums and historic housesMonday 15 June 2020
