MEMORABILIA
The Montmorency Eltham RSL has accumulated a significant number of items of memorabilia over many decades which display many facets of military conflicts since as far back as the Boer War or which are more directly connected to the service life of veterans or their family and descendants. Some items are on display in glass cabinets, a number of mannequins are dressed in a range of uniforms, and a significant part of the collection is carefully stored in archive boxes in a separate locked room. In addition to those physical reminders, the Sub Branch has also collected a wide range of books related to those themes. In addition to the items from Montmorency and Eltham, we also obtained a number of pieces of memorabilia from the Heidelberg Sub Branch when it closed in 2013.
We have had many of these items of memorabilia for decades, often being obtained as informal donations from various members who were veterans of military service or who had relatives who had been in one of the Services. These informal donations were simply handed over when they were no longer required at home or were thought to serve some purpose in the Sub Branch's collection. The result of this has meant that the provenance of many of those early items has not been formally documented in terms of what connection the item had with the Sub Branch, nor has there been any clear written indication of whether the item was formally donated or just handed over as a 'long-term loan'. We have now clarified a policy whereby we only accept permanent donations and require some paperwork to be signed by the donor indicating 'donation' rather than 'loan'.
We are almost reaching the point that available storage space is becoming a problem, given the number of our memorabilia items and the size of the book collection. Accordingly, we have drawn up documents which outline the Purpose of our collection, and the criteria which we take into account when deciding to accept an item offered for donation. These documents can be read here: Memorabilia Collection Purpose; Book Collection Purpose.
Over recent years, a concerted and organized effort has been made to systematically record the details of each item in our collection. We have been assisted in this regard in no small way by the support of 'Victorian Collections' which is a State-based group working within the Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA). The 'VC' group has provided training in recording and storing historical items, and made their online platform available for cataloguing our collection thus making it available for public viewing and research. Importantly, 'Victorian Collections' provided funding of $5,000 to enable us to carry out this work. While the cataloguing is an ongoing project, the work which has been done so far can be viewed on the 'VC' website where our Sub Branch has been allocated a section to make our memorabilia register available for interested folk and for research. That website can be accessed by clicking this link
Scroll down and then a sample view of many of our items can be seen or the Search box can be used to find items of a particular type.
Occasionally, some of our items are lent out (usually one of the local primary schools, accompanied by one or two of our members) for history and other educational purposes. We have also lent an item for use by students at Deakin University who required genuine military articles for a short film they made involving soldiers returning from WW2. In this way, the Memorabilia Group is able to maintain a connection with various groups within the local or wider community.