WHERE PAST MEETS PRESENT

Temora’s Bundawarrah Centre is a museum with over 16 extensive collections curated by passionate locals. It’s also a vibrant meeting place and an evolving space that honours the town’s past whilst also serving its community. 

The Bundawarrah Centre spills over with so many captivating historical items that it needs to be seen to be believed, a fact that isn’t lost on the centre’s dynamic manager, Bill Speirs. 

Bill has worked as a volunteer at The Bundawarrah Centre since 1981, taking over as manager when the centre’s collections became too overwhelmingly large to be managed on a voluntary basis. A retired farmer, Bill has taken up his role with gusto – brimming with ideas and tirelessly working to make the centre a place that both visitors and locals love. 

“A lot of people think it’s going to be a provincial museum and they’re expecting a little cottage with a few dusty things,” he says. “They are almost always blown away by what we have here and by what they learn from the volunteers.” 

“Each collection is managed by volunteers who have a deep interest in that collection. The volunteers don’t come to work, they come to play. The joy they get out of it is what they share with visitors.” 

The Bundawarrah Centre currently houses the Temora Rural Museum (including Donald Bradman’s house and several collections), a substantial rock and mineral collection, a fire brigade exhibition, wagon shed, shearing shed, the Temora Local and Family History Research Centre and the NSW Ambulance Museum – a significant national collection of emergency vehicles and equipment. 

“The Ambulance Museum is probably our most important display,” Bill says. “One out of four people list the ambulances as their reason for visiting. It’s the only one of its kind in Australia that is open seven days a week.”

 “I think the fact that our little town has two major state museums (including the Temora Aviation Museum) is very exciting.” 

The Bundawarrah Centre is also home to one of Bill’s passion projects, Willo’s Wiradjuri Keeping Place, a collection of local Indigenous artefacts, art and information that has been designed with painstaking care. 

“It’s always concerned me that there is no enduring Indigenous community here but we do have an enduring Indigenous history,” Bill says. “We’ve worked with elders from the two clans who consider this area as Country and endeavour to respectfully begin to tell their stories The Keeping Place has been strategically situated so that everyone who comes through the centre has to pass through it.” 

“It’s been such a rewarding project and is really my legacy to the community.”