The Paluma History Project – a brief history
by Les Hyland
On July 14th 2012 the official opening of the PDCA History Project took place.
Since then we have opened the Hall to the Public from 11.00 hrs to 13.00 hrs most Tuesdays and displayed the 26 pictures hanging on the wall and the now over 300 pictures in Albums on the tables. Roy, Colwyn, Les and Lynn try to welcome visitors, show them the wall pictures and invite them to browse the Albums. We offer Coffee/Tea and cake or biscuits for a gold coin donation and this is largely availed of as no eateries are open on a Tuesday. We have Brian O’Leary’s superb bird video playing on the large screen TV and have copies for sale. There are cards and books for sale and free copies of the bird list.
Initially we opened from 10.00 hrs to 12.00 hrs but we found very few customers in the first hour and an occasional glut at the end hence the change in timings. Numbers vary ; some days up to 30, others have no one. We do, however, have a number of locals drop in most Tuesdays for a chat and a coffee and they are very welcome to do so. Operation was constrained in 2018 while the building of the extension was in progress but reopened on 3rd July. Normally we are open every Tuesday except Melbourne Cup Day and for a period from early December to the end of February when visitors are at their lowest ebb.
We are greatly indebted to Brian O’Leary. He visited from the South Coast of NSW, looking for the Golden Bowerbird, could not get out the road to Birthday Creek, met Don Battersby and they found other bowers, other birds and Brian amassed pictures on his trusty iMac. We invited him to come to the hall on a Tuesday to plug into the power to work with these images and he suggested that we might raise funds for the PDCA by selling a DVD of “Paluma Birds”. This has been exceedingly fruitful especially as Jenny Robinson runs it in the “Rainforest Inn” and has very good sales to people waiting for their meals. Thanks Jenny & Neil ! The DVD is now on its twelfth iteration, runs for 33 minutes, shows over 100 species many of them in video. The quality of Brian’s images are nothing short of superb and he is, without doubt, one of Australia’s top bird photographers.
More recently, we have also been selling Linda Venn’s book “Paluma – the First 80 years” which is the definitive work for the era covered. We have copies of the publication by the late Neal Sellars “The Paluma Road, 50 years On” and its reprint for “ 70 years On” for sale. Our collection also has reference copies of “Our Benham Children”, “Tom’s Diary” by Tom Connor and others which will be detailed in a future post to this site.
Some research has been undertaken such as Lynn Hyland’s list of Presidents of the Paluma & District Community Association and Snippets from the PDPA/ PDCA Minute Books from 1965 – 2005. Linda Venn has contributed two albums of the history of Environmental Education in Paluma.
So in the six years of its existence the project has gone from small beginnings to an excellent resource and is financially self sufficient from the general finances of the PDCA. However, it must be acknowledged that it all started when Powerlink, while constructing the new line from Yabulu to Ingham, offered grant funding to local communities. We obtained over $7000 from this source which enabled us to frame 24 of the Thuringowa Library pictures and create Albums for some 250 more, to buy the large screen TV and theatre system and connect to satellite.