HIDDEN TREASURES at Miss Porter's House Museum

The Miss Porter’s House collection contains documents giving often quirky insights into the domestic life of a household of ordinary women living in a regional town across most of the twentieth century. It reflects their working, domestic, family and community lives. The Miss Porter’s House Documentary Heritage Collection 1910-1997 is inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register.

Visitors will be able to turn the pages of recently acquired replicas of priceless documents and perhaps relive the habits of their own forebears; see scrapbooks of 1930s radio programs, 1940s movie press clippings and the Porter family’s records of household expenses.

How much does a dog cost? Children will love discovering Cooee the dog. In an ordinary exercise book Ella and Hazel kept track of expenses related to their pet, from the original advertisement, through to food, vitamins and the vet’s bills. Each page is neatly tallied (the women were trained bookkeepers), and we can see that, until his death in March 1990, Cooee cost $1,078.63.

The household documents, wonderful greetings post cards, photographs, and books together with personal objects like a tiny stylish mother-of-pearl evening purse will all be on display during HIDDEN TREASURES at Miss Porter’s House.