Visit the Lightning Ridge Historical Society
The Lightning Ridge Historical Society’s museum complex in Morilla Street, Lightning Ridge comprises two historic buildings surrounded by a garden of artifacts and relics of times gone by. Alongside the Heritage Cottage is a skillion roof protecting the Sherman’s Back Holden.
When you visit Lightning Ridge, be sure to stop by - when the sign is out, we are open!
The Heritage Cottage
The Historical Society was formed in 1982 to protect this abandoned miner's hut in Morilla Street, the main street of Lightning Ridge. Western Lands declared the block a Crown Reserve, Historical Reserve No. 96499. Today, the hut is managed by the Lightning Ridge Historical Society out of respect for the old timers, and is open for inspection most days to locals and visitors.
Occupied for forty years by Sid and George Graham, who extended their endless "verandah hospitality", the hut was built in 1932 by Albert Spicer when he struck opal.
Known today as The Heritage Cottage, the hut offers tourist information and select handcrafted items are for sale in an historical setting. The bark dividing walls, dirt floors and chimney made from flattened kerosene tins are typical of early Ridge architecture. The original wood stove may belt out heat, sending up whiffs of smoke, on a cold winter's morn!
“The cypress pine weatherboard siding has stood the time, the inner slab dividing walls are rough-hewn rafters as are the verandah posts, and wire ties hold the corrugated iron roof in place. Ant bed floors with some concrete, locally forged door hinges, and remnant canvas wall linings add to today’s Heritage Cottage provenance. ”
The Bush Nurse Association (BNA) Cottage
In the centre of the Reserve is the relocated Bush Nurse Association (BNA) Cottage. This modest three room Federation structure was built after Lightning Ridge opened the eleventh Bush Nurse Association in NSW, October 1914.
This rural health program was patterned after a similar program Lady Dudley, wife of the Governor General of the day, had established in Ireland, and was supported mainly by community funding.
The Bush Nurse Association (BNA) Cottage serves as a museum, housing items of historical significance to Lightning Ridge and the opal mining industry.
The BNA at Lightning Ridge was the longest serving in NSW, and the only one still able to support two nurses, when the scheme was absorbed by the Health Commission on January 1, 1975.
“Built by Tom Urwin and Ronald McDonald, the BNA is a sturdy, reverse construction cypress pine structure. Originally three rooms, doors opening to the north, the compact little cottage had open verandahs.”
Built of locally available cypress pine (white ant resistant), the Cottage Hospital is of a reverse construction (framework on the outside for economy). It was erected by volunteers at no cost, according to the Walgett Spectator, presumably under the direction of Tom Urwin and Ronald McDonald, local builders of the day.
The BNA is the only example of this style of architecture in the town, and must have been rather grand amongst the bark and tin huts!
The Australasian Nurses' Journal offers excellent descriptions of the interior decoration, as well as plights of attending nurses.
“The Bush Nurse Association was formed in Lightning Ridge in 1914, the eleventh unit of 119 over the next 60 years in NSW. Nurse Price, the first nurse, served until 1916 and lived at the Imperial Hotel (Diggers Rest in 2005).
Volunteers built the Cottage Hospital over six months 1915-16 but it could not be furnished until 1917. Medical services were offered in the front room of the building and the nurse lived in the back two rooms.
This community-supported medical service brought confidence to people on the opal fields. Women joined their opal mining men in the dusty village, and strength developed that brings us into the 21st century. Fifty nurses served in the community over the next sixty years. The NSW Health Commission gobbled the BNA scheme up in January 1975.
Today, the restored 1915 Cottage Hospital stands on the historical reserve in Morilla Street and serves as a tribute to all bush nurses. A new photo exhibition is revealed each Good Friday for locals and the coming season of visitors.
The Nurse Lucy display in the front windows is an expanding exhibit of associated paraphernalia. She served the community from 1919-1921 and has pride of place. Hannah Lucy left to join the Sisters of Mercy as Mary Audrey, and later became the first matron at Mater’s Maternity Hospital of Brisbane in 1960.”
Article: Edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources re: Bush Nursing Association (BNA) Cottage: The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, pp. 111-112; Walgett Spectator, 7 August 1912, 26 August 1912, 3 October 1912, 23 October 1913, 1 June 1916, 14 December 1916, 22 February 1917, 21 June 1917, 21 February 1918, 4 April 1918, 30 May 1918, 12 December 1918, 23 March 1922; Lightning Flash Newspaper, October 1969, 7 May 1971, 11 May 1972, 5 October 1972, 1 February 1973, 28 November 1974, 19 March 1981. Sources re: Heritage Cottage: Lightning Flash Newspaper, 25 February 1982, 21 April 1988, 17 November 1988, 18 June 1992; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 43; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, pp. 72, 75, 77.