Connecting to Buninyong’s past

TO step off Warrenheip Street and into the Old Buninyong Library’s reading room is to be taken into the 1860s.

Now serving as the town’s Information Centre, the space is run by about 15 Buninyong Library Trust volunteers.

It doesn’t just offer visitor experience suggestions, but historical information, guides, and maps on the town and district, and they sell books by local authors.

The Library Trust is the custodian of the Buninyong Cemetery Trust’s records, and visitors can look up their family history.

“People often donate their family history to us,” volunteer Liz Lumsdon said.

“It’s amazing how many people have rellies who lived in Buninyong at some stage, and they’ll come here to find out more.”

“Curios” from days gone by are on display, including boots made at the Buninyong tannery.

Local pupils of Buninyong Primary School and the Steiner School have taken trips to the library to enhance their classroom studies, and to learn from the volunteers who double as historians.

“You get excited when you find what people are looking for around family history, burials, or places of interest,” volunteer Ken Nicholls said.

“It makes them happy, and it makes you happy.”

The Old Buninyong Library was used as a free public library from 1860 to 1926, before it was rented out to different groups and tenants.

By the 1980s, the building had deteriorated so much that the Buninyong Shire, and community, pulled together to restore it, and established the trust to care for it.

In 1991, the fully restored building opened, and in 2004, it became a visitor information centre, which is open from 11am to 2pm each day.

The building is deceiving and “architecturally unique” as its facade is made of wood, not stone or brick.

Wallpaper on its walls was specifically re-created to establish the same look and feel of the late 1800s.

“The building is a surviving thing from the past, so it connects people to the past, but we’ve also got things here for the present, and the future,” Ms Lumsdon said.

“When it was the library in the early years, they’d have lectures, talks, the newspapers, and it’s not hugely different to what we do.

“For people coming here today, we’ve got history books they can sit down and read.

“I’m really pleased to be here, pleased that it’s still being made use of, and pleased that it’s always been managed by the community.”