‘I don’t think this is the entrance’ the woman expressed at the inauspicious doorway to what was once the primary school in Clunes and proceeded to head around the back of the building. We were both hoping to visit The George Lee Medlyn Bottle Collection, better known as the Clunes Bottle Museum. The museum is housed in the 1870s schoolhouse of South Clunes State School which was also a knitting mill from 1923 for over 45 years and is a stone’s throw from town. I decided to persevere, having experienced a plethora of hidden or obscure museum entrances large and small from around the world. Bratislava in Slovakia probably wins out as the city with the most inconspicuous and small museum entrances and I was immediately taken back to my memory of travelling there in 2018. Like Bratislava, the Bottle Museum was hardly overrun with patrons, either. I greeted the one staff member sitting at a desk sporting a high vis vest with an inoffensive “Hello, is this the bottle museum?” to which he leapt out of his chair, keys jangling in hand and replied ‘Yes, it is!’ The other customer joined us and we both submitted our $3 fee in coin. Not allowing his physical disability to affect his work, our guide curled his hand around the money and inserted it into the little letter box and proceeded to unlock the doors to the museum. As it was clear we were not going to get a guided tour I attempted to follow him around to ask questions as he switched on all the lights but couldn’t keep up with his pace. Before I had time, he had returned to his office and we were left with the didactic panels and a selection of the over 6,000 bottles collected and housed here.
The curation was thematic, with the first room housing salt glazed beer bottles, glass salad bottles and pharmaceutical bottles. Recalling the process of salt glazing from my undergraduate days majoring in Ceramics I read with interest the label explaining how they were in effect raw glazed, meaning that the salt that is forced into the kiln at stoneware temperature of 1280 degrees creates the only glaze which would have of course have been economical. I wondered how they could get away without glazing the insides given that they were used as beer bottles. Sure enough, people became ill as the interiors of the bottles could not be cleaned properly and the process had to be stopped. My favourite corner was the apothecary, which reminded me of the stuff we used to put inside our bodies many years ago without question; today’s anti vaxxers have nothing to complain about.
‘Working in the colony was a thirsty business’ began the didactic label about the cordial and soft drink bottles. On the 1850s goldfields, water was often too precious to drink, and resulting in the proliferation of ‘sly grog shops’. This is where the soft drink business took over. Like many who hoped to make their fortune from the gold, it was business that was more lucrative; the German Ernest Eberhard was one of these successful ones who purchased an already existing soft drink company, developed it further and used local spring water as a basis. The labels from many of these bottles are still intact, sporting colourful and flowing typography and design. I wished I could have tried the Cloves Cordial.
The individually designed and faceted glass salad bottles from the goldfields stood out as objects of beauty with their long thing necks as each manufacturer tried to make their design different from their rivals. As Australia didn’t have a glass making industry at the time, they were shipped to Australia from England or USA and then filled with the salad oil, vinegar or sauce.
With little need for climate control, the bottles were displayed either behind glass in cabinets or interestingly, behind chicken wire. The hotel bar reconstruction and miners’ interiors gave some context to the objects. I really wanted to sit up at that bar and enjoy a drink from one of those bottles and hear some stories from those who used them.
The museum showcases more than just bottles. An intriguing papier mache doll is situated in the corner of the bar. The ‘Doll with no name’ is said to have been made in the 1880s and raffled at the Colac Fair in 1884. It was given to a young girl named Mable Wheadon for ‘being a good girl’. The unusual use of papier mâché gives the doll a slightly sinister appearance like you see in other older dolls. And the doll perhaps wasn’t the only apparition in the room. In 2019, the museum was visited by two different paranormal teams, from Bendigo and Beechworth. Many of the staff and volunteers had previously sensed presences in the rooms and the Carma Paranormal from Bendigo identified the usual suspects and a new one! Be warned!
After close to an hour of fascinating, illuminating and whimsical viewing, I thanked the ‘curator’ and made for the exit only to be told ‘Wait, there’s more!’. Again, he sprung out of his seat, keys around his neck lanyard and stooped down to open what seemed like a secret back room. In this much more light-filled room, in one corner was the sink with hand written signage about making sure to wash your coffee cups and juxtaposed with the sink in the middle of the room was the ‘Summer Exhibition’, a volunteer curated collection of bottles and ephemera on the theme of Medical and Pharmaceutical Items: ‘A look at historical pieces related to medical, pharmaceutical and chemistry’. One of the displays showed a range of silver syringes. With a Covid booster jab appointment next week, the huge had me worried as it was also a booster syringe; fortunately, I re-read the label and realised it was designed for use with large animal; or was it the syringe that was large?
The collection was formed by George Lee Medlyn, who was once a sheep farmer and wool classer in St Arnaud. Lee had started collecting bottles when he found them fossicking on the goldfields. After his first wife died, he moved to Clunes and met Joyce Harrison when she was judging at an antique fair. Companions for the next thirteen years, they purchased the old school building to house Lee’s bottle collection and travelled together, collecting more bottles. Following his death in 1994 the collection was bequeathed to the Shire of Clunes and Talbot. The collection is said to date back to 1500AD and is reputed to be the largest collection of bottles in the Southern Hemisphere.
With such an extensive array of bottles spanning five hundred years representing a plethora of untold stories, this museum could easily be developed into one of the world’s best. An air-conditioned building, spot-lighting, a greater number of thematic exhibitions and a range of public programs could draw huge audiences to Clunes. But maybe it’s best to keep the museum as is so that visitors can appreciate its unique character, such is the style of charming Clunes.
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