Lots of stuff in rural Museum

Mt Laura Homestead : The museum with the most interesting visiting hours.

My first encounter with the homestead was over a week ago.  I noticed that there were no cars, but the gate was open – figured it was fair game!  Then,  I saw the sign:

Open Monday – Friday 10 – 2  (I got there at 2:30)

No problems – I’ll come back again –

The next time I got there was Sunday at 2:30 – I gave them 30 minutes to get their stuff together and I saw this lil’ beauty strapped to a window:

OKAY – museum’s closed.  No biggie… I’ll try again – but on TUESDAY (not Monday) just to give them an extra day to sort themselves out – I mean, hey.. this is Australia!  Monday is ‘chuck a sickie’ day!

So, Tuesday – they’re open.  Awesome!

The Mount Laura Homestead was purchased in 1933 as station country – meaning they would raise sheep for the processing of selling wool and meat.  Later in 1960, it was turned into a poultry farm and now the homestead is in historic preservation.

At the front desk is a very sweet and grizzly looking man with the friendliest smile took my $4 entry – BARGAIN!

The homestead has a lot of wild and wonderful stuff… They’ve taken different rooms in the house and changed them to reflect what things would have looked like in the past.  Well, sort of – nothing like an actual house.. but a lot of stuff and artifacts.

The school room is one of my favourites –  There’s a lot of wild stuff here.  Like, the teacher in the far right corner is posing the latest fashion like a department store mannequin.

And the school room desk – wasn’t too far off what I grew up with – no, not really… we had chalk boards – but not our very own slate.

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And like every exhibit needs – a snake in a bottle – these snakes were collected on site when they were building the Mount Laura homestead… but this is where things started to get a little weird…..

Just walking around some of the other homestead room, I found what nightmares are made of –  Here’s collection of a bunch of teeth imprints – and I’m not exactly sure of the time these fit into… They also had a super scary what I think is an alien anal probing device OR… the humble dentists drill just ‘hangin’ out’ in the middle of the room with a ‘don’t touch’ sign.  With pleasure!

And what’s this?  It’s like an old chair with bicycle wheels and built in boots – perhaps this is one of the very first wheel chairs ever invented?

There’s just lots and lots of random stuff – not bad stuff, just lots of it.. everywhere… and from different eras.

Here’s a massive collection of Irons – all different shapes and sizes, colours, flavours…

The newer sheds seem to be a bit more organised.

Heaps of MAN-toys!  Lots of engines, stuff that uses gasoline and movable parts!

And a Whyalla rally car!  So much…. stuff!  Everywhere.

A few more interesting finds that have unknown era’s are the following:

A homemade Trojan Horse!  I can only imagine this rocking up in the Middle of Whyalla filled to the brim with miners, with their hardhats and neon reflective shirts and then at nightfall they all jump out and take over the pub!

And this reminds me of my grandfather – when I was a kid, he’d made a few things like this – but with Water power and would be all over the place.  Wonder if this is from the same era as my grandfather?