TO step off Warrenheip Street and into the Old Buninyong Library\u2019s reading room is to be taken into the 1860s.<\/p>\n
Now serving as the town\u2019s Information Centre, the space\u00a0is\u00a0run by about 15 Buninyong Library Trust volunteers.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t just offer visitor experience suggestions, but historical information, guides, and maps on the town and district, and they sell books by local authors.<\/p>\n
The Library Trust is the custodian of the Buninyong Cemetery Trust\u2019s records, and visitors can look up their family history.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople often donate their family history to us,\u201d volunteer Liz Lumsdon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how many people have rellies who lived in Buninyong at some stage, and they\u2019ll come here to find out more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCurios\u201d from days gone by are on display, including boots made at the Buninyong tannery.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get excited when you find what people are looking for around family history, burials, or places of interest,\u201d volunteer Ken Nicholls said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes them happy, and it makes you happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The building is deceiving and \u201carchitecturally unique\u201d as its facade is made of wood, not stone or brick.<\/p>\n
Wallpaper on its walls was specifically re-created to establish the same look and feel of the late 1800s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe building is a surviving thing from the past, so it connects people to the past, but we\u2019ve also got things here for the present, and the future,\u201d Ms Lumsdon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it was the library in the early years, they\u2019d have lectures, talks, the newspapers, and it\u2019s not hugely different to what we do.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor people coming here today, we\u2019ve got history books they can sit down and read.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really pleased to be here, pleased that it\u2019s still being made use of, and pleased that it\u2019s always been managed by the community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TO step off Warrenheip Street and into the Old Buninyong Library\u2019s reading room is to be taken into the 1860s. Now serving as the town\u2019s Information Centre, the space\u00a0is\u00a0run by about 15 Buninyong Library Trust volunteers. It doesn\u2019t just offer visitor experience suggestions, but historical information, guides, and maps on the town and district, and […]<\/p>\n