The exhibition, which opened at the Gawler Heritage Gallery in May, explores how the postal service, the telegraph and the telephone exchange kept the Gawler community connected to each other and the wider world. This is the third Interpretation Australia national award won by the Gawler Cultural Heritage Centre
The aim of this exhibition was to deliberately target two groups of people in the community with stories and learnings around communication. Young people whose experience of personal communication is smart phone driven and very much focused on individual handheld devices and older people who have lived experience of more outmoded communication practices.
The exhibition explores the growth and changes in technology that have led us to the era of smart phones and explores the challenges of the preceding technologies. It also aims to reconnect older people with their memories of STD calls, operator enabled calls, receiving telegrams and aerograms and the hobby of stamp collecting.
You can view rare early colonial letters, telegraph equipment brought to South Australia by Charles Todd and a collection of funky antique phones.
Play with exchange equipment and listen to the voices of the women of the Gawler telephone exchange as they ‘connect your call’.
Visitors are encouraged to see if they can beat the clock with a letter sorting challenge and try their hand at morse code with our telegraph equipment. They can connect to the hobby of stamp collecting through the free giveaway packets of fun and colourful stamps from around the world.
This exhibition is an opportunity to understand more about the evolution of communication technologies that have been fundamental in keeping communities informed and connected.
In their summation, the expert panel of judges commented on the innovative submission we presented which included a short film. They commented that the exhibition was well thought out and artfully executed.
More information on the awards can be found here: https://interpretationaustralia.asn.au/congratulations-to-our-2023-national-awards-for-excellence/
Quotes from Gawler Mayor Karen Redman:
“Down the Line is an exciting opportunity for visitors to understand more about how the communication technologies we take for granted have evolved, through this engaging and interactive exhibition.”
“It's exceptionally gratifying to see our third national award for heritage interpretation come our way as a result of this work, and the investment by Council. Town of Gawler values cultural heritage and good interpretation brings these stories alive”.
“I'd like to congratulate Cultural Heritage Centre Staff and volunteers, the exhibition designer Synthetic Creative Services and community members involved including Martin Walker and Tony Bayliss and other individuals who loaned objects from private collections for this exhibition.
“The Heritage Gallery opened in April 2019 and since that time more than 34,000 visitors have experienced our exhibitions; that's an incredible accolade for the Town of Gawler, and this award is further recognition that Gawler is a leader in this space”.
Quotes from Exhibition Designer, Synthetic Creative Services:
“We purposefully spread this exhibition beyond the Gallery and into the lobby and café space so that visitors had multiple opportunities to engage”.
“This exhibition has been particularly appealing to young people who enjoy making phone calls from the traditional phone box in the café, using the magneto line to call their friends in the Heritage Gallery. It seems like a bit of fun, but it is an opportunity to learn about early telephony”.