Everyone’s a winner in this war

One could be forgiven for thinking that Narrabeen, an unassuming northern beaches suburb 23 kilometres from the centre of Sydney, is an unlikely location for an important military conservation project.

But this seaside suburb also happens to be home to one of the Returned Soldiers League’s most sought-after retirement centres, the RSL ANZAC Village and significantly, its LifeCare war museum.

“The museum houses over 5000 objects donated by past and current residents, a collection recording Australia’s defence forces from the First World War to present day conflicts and peacekeeping missions,” says Sophie Lewincamp, University of Melbourne Lecturer and Paper Conservator in its Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation (CCMC).

“The collection is especially significant because in many cases the donors and their families are actively involved in the oral history and interpretation of the collection and, as such, their knowledge of this ‘living collection’ is invaluable.”

RSL LifeCare is a charitable organisation founded in 1911 on Bare Island in Botany Bay ‘as a haven for those who needed help after fighting for their country’. It moved to its current home at Narrabeen on the New South Wales coast in 1938.

‘Narrabeen’ is a derivation of an Aboriginal word, narrabine, meaning swan.

It’s also, according to popular legend, the name of a young Aboriginal girl who helped soldiers recapture escaped convicts who had attacked the family and burned the homestead of Captain Henry Reynolds, a settler who arrived with the First Fleet.

In 2012, it has been conservation and cultural heritage students and staff from the University of Melbourne and the University of Canberra who have come to the rescue. They’ve been working with older Narrabeen residents and committee members of the museum to catalogue and preserve a range of precious memorabilia, including rare maps and letters dating back to World War I, military uniforms, medals and records, and a Japanese textile collection.

“The chance for conservation students to be involved in a project tied so closely to community offers insights into how their academic skills can be translated into programs that make a real difference at both an individual and national level,” says Associate Professor Robyn Sloggett, Director of CCMC.

According to Ms Lewincamp, who heads the project and accompanies the student group from Melbourne for each visit, the RSL LifeCare facility at Narrabeen has provided an experience that students would find difficult to gain in any other situation. 

“Working in a regional town with senior citizens on significant aspects of Australian history, with the people who actually made this history, is a unique opportunity for students to think laterally, respond creatively and with consideration, and learn what it is like to operate a small museum,” she says.

“The hot, humid, coastal climate of Narrabeen provides the sort of real-life challenges we can only dream of as teachers of conservation, encouraging as it does, mould and insect infestations in the food rations, textiles and paper material.”

But in the estimation of all involved – the teachers, students, residents and museum committee members – it has been the interaction between them that has probably been of most value.

“I really enjoyed it when the residents would come in and tell their stories about the objects,” says Lucy Willet, one of the University of Melbourne graduate students undertaking her Master of Cultural Materials Conservation.

Lisa Yeats, who is also completing the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation and is winner of the 2012 Association of Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (ADFAS) Conservation Student of the Year Award for her ongoing research on the RSL project, agrees: “At the end of the day, although the objects themselves are important, it’s the stories and meaning behind them that we are actually conserving and preserving.

“The stories of the people behind the objects brought them to life, and made me realise the potential of, or need for, conservation to go beyond the material aspect and incorporate the intangible and the oral histories surrounding objects, to gain a richer understanding of them.”

www.cultural-conservation.unimelb.edu.au