The Creation Story of the beginnings of the Wollondilly river valleys is told in a new display at the Wollondilly Heritage Centre. This Story Gurangatch and Mirragan was written by R H Mathews, surveyor and amateur anthropologist, in 1900 on one of his many visits to the area.
At the official opening of our Wollondilly Creation Story Exhibition on 2 July 2022 Taylor Clarke offered a welcome to country and Daniel Chalker engaged the group with a smoking ceremony.
In consultation with Kazan Brown and Taylor Clarke we planned the exhibition to tell the Creation Story of Burragorang Valley. Initially we had investigated a funding source to design and curate the exhibition. When that didn’t come to fruition we went back to the drawing board and again sat down with Kazan and Taylor to see what they envisaged and listened to their suggestions to see what we could all come up with.
With Doreen’s skills to curate the exhibition and working collaboratively we have portrayed the Wollondilly Creation Story through the map and storyboards and complemented it with the display case which showcases the objects from our collection. Kazan also designed and sketched the Gurangatch interpretation around the top of the exhibition and supplied photographs.
We produced the Wollondilly Creation Story booklet as a brief of the exhibition and as a story reference and we have it available for purchase. This is supported with the videos available on the touchscreen, courtesy of Sandra Pires and ‘Yesterdays Stories’. The exhibition was funded solely through our Heritage Centre funds generated by our dedicated and hard working volunteers within the museum.
Though cold and wet the group enjoyed a relaxed afternoon tea and a variety of bush tucker foods.
Thanks to Taylor and Daniel, Kazan, Doreen and Ben, Kevin , Debbie, Margaret and Adelina.
Read the story here, or purchase the booklet from the Wollondilly Museum.
Creation Story Exhibition – display
Some of the items in the display