WITH HELP from several other repositories including the Powerhouse Museum the Shoalhaven Historical Society is mounting a new exhibition at the Nowra Museum featuring the coastal steamer, Merimbula.
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When the steamer foundered near Currarong in 1928, it virtually ended the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company’s passenger services to the South Coast.
Few people lived in the vicinity of Currarong at that time but word quickly spread around the Shoalhaven and many families ended up with souvenirs of the wreck.
The driving force behind the exhibition is Colin Jack, a society committee member and Currarong resident who prepared a talk on the Merimbula for the 80th anniversary last year.
He negotiated with the Powerhouse Museum the loan of a model of the steamer that was last week installed at Nowra by Timothy Morris, conservator, mixed media, metals preservation and heritage management.
The Lady Denman Heritage Complex has loaned from its collection a galley door that was once part of the Merimbula, while the Bega Museum has made a deckchair available.
From the society’s own archives is a porthole salvaged from the ocean and cleaned by Jervis Bay Diving Club in 1978, and these artefacts are complemented by a series of photographs.
The exhibition will be officially opened by society president Lynne Allen, this Saturday, March 28 at 2pm.
She will also launch a booklet, The Wreck of the Merimbula, that has been written by Mr Jack who has promised to reveal a few stories that have not made it into print.
Interested members of the public are invited to attend the opening in the museum at the corner of Kinghorne and Plunkett streets.
