SOCIAL distancing was well and truly observed when University of Technology students took a recent tour of the location for the future Australian Milling Museum.
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That's because the students were part of a digital meeting on councillor Jess Jennings' laptop.
They were meeting with Cr Jennings, who is the museum CEO, and being shown around the museum's site at Tremain's Mill because they will be making an important contribution.
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As part of the university's Shopfront program - in which students do work for the community as part of their studies - the final year visual communication students will create a digital map showing the locations of hundreds of mills across the state.
"The Australian Milling Museum has been donated an historical first - an as-yet completely unpublished database of over 700 mills in NSW from 1788 to World War Two," Cr Jennings said.
"That was donated by a wonderful woman who we are greatly indebted to and want to recognise in the museum by calling a room the Sybil Jack Reading Room.
"I found her purely by chance through Facebook and social media.
"She's retired, lives in Glebe and is in her 80s and she spent several years in the late 1970s and early 80s, I believe, travelling around NSW, dragging her family at the time, going to every single historical society in local towns and to any sites where a mill was known to exist and has documented that in this database."
The milling museum will use that database to tell the story of the milling industry in NSW - a story that has already been told for the other states, Cr Jennings said.
The students will spend the next two or three months creating an interactive digital map that shows the timeline of milling across the state.
"You will be able to click on a mill in a certain area and get some information about it," Cr Jennings said.
"Once we get this database established for NSW, we'll be looking to expand it over time to be a national database that includes Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia milling industries.
"And the full realisation of this project will be a citizen history online database that anybody can contribute to."
Student Leila Polito said the university group had learnt a lot about the state's milling industry already and had been looking at other museums in Bathurst, such as the Rail Museum.
"This is giving us a really great opportunity to sink our teeth into an awesome project without as much guidance from tutors," she said.
"We can definitely take the reins and put our own creative strength into it."
Next steps
PUBLIC investment is still being sought to help make the Australian Milling Museum a reality, according to Cr Jennings.
"The museum is progressing in terms of the research and the collection is continually expanding and we're still calling for members who want to be a part of it," he said.
"We're looking at the best ways and which spaces to utilise in this building [the mill building on the Tremain's site] in order to go through the appropriate development application processes."
The creation of the museum will be part of stage two of the Tremain's development, Cr Jennings said.
Stage one has included the restoration of the ground floor of the Victoria Stores building facing Keppel Street, landscaping and the opening of the Doppio coffee shop on the site.
"The bigger picture is we're still looking for significant public and private investment to support the fitout of the museum," Cr Jennings said.
