Items from Footscray at the Museum of Victoria

  • 2011-12-01
The Museum of Victoria has many items from various areas in Victoria. Among those areas is Footscray; they have at least 100 items in their possession which help to preserve the history of the city.

Items such as medals from the Jubilee in 1909 or the Sesquicentenary in 1985 are on display at the museum. Other items include hats, an example of a plough, photographs from the 1920s up to the 1980s, informational Booklets and Postcards from as early as 1905. People who have an interest in postcard printing in Footscray will be happy to see how postcard techniques and subjects have changed over the years.

A lot of this collection is ephemera that might be overlooked by some as being unimportant. However, such items show how life was for the average person. The photographs in the collection show how the city has changes and how the people have also changed; it is a window into the past that we should be honoured to be able to see. Many of the photographs are from the State Electricity Commission and others were donated by Footscray families. The Postcards, while mostly of buildings, also show us what life was like in Footscray in the early 1900s.

It is important that we remember the past; to paraphrase an often trite statement, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes. It is also important that we learn how life really was and what people were like. We will probably discover that we are more like our ancestors than we would like to think.

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