An excellent collection of artefacts from pioneer times can be found at the Noosa Shire Museum. From the range of farming equipment, carpentry tools, timber samples (as Pomona was known for its high quality timber), right down to a small replica of a pioneer style bedroom.

There is also a kitchen, home of the woodstove and ice chest and then there’s the outback ‘dunny’ that was still used by some in Pomona well into the eighties with regular collection by ‘the dunny man’ as we used to call him when he came to grandma’s house. And of course not to forget the absolute barbarism of the dreaded washing day.

If you hate washing day as it is, just take a trip to the museum and see for yourself all that was available before the modern washing machine as we know it. You’ll soon thank your lucky stars that washing no longer involves half an hour of boiling just to start with, there is no amount of scrubbing and scrubbing dirty stains with a wooden or corrugated glass washboard, no, you simply use a dash of a favourite reliable stain remover.

To the pioneer women, and washing was “women’s work” at that time, all that was available was soap, if they were lucky.

It also may surprise you to know that it was a Kin Kin farmer named Fred Dreier who invented the first washing machine patented in Queensland in the late 1920’s (Stollznow:1998).
If a glimpse into the hardships of just washing the clothes is too much for you then don’t move onto the collection of historical irons, you’ll probably have a heart attack.

However, with the range of old medical equipment on display at the museum it might not be such a good idea, just in case somebody decides you may need operating on. The Noosa Shire Museum is well worth a look for locals and tourists alike and is a cheap way to step back in time and explore the history of the Noosa Shire.