Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to commend the community spirit and generosity of Mrs Isobel Harvey, a Kyabram woman who has spent much of her adult life collecting vintage women's and children's clothing. She now has a collection from the Edwardian and Victorian eras which is second to none. It includes not only dresses but undergarments, hats, handbags and shoes. It also includes things like the perfumed buttons that soldiers in the Civil War in the United States were given by their loved ones so they could smell the rosewater and lavender perfumed buttons when they went off to war.

This magnificent and very valuable collection has now been placed in the Kyabram Community and Learning Centre on exhibition so that more than Mrs Harvey's immediate family can enjoy it and be amazed at how clothing for women has evolved over the ages. I had the privilege last Friday evening of opening this exhibition, which shows only about a third of all her materials. Her generosity was very well acknowledged at the time because all donations for going to the exhibition as well as the profits from all the items on the trading table that Isobel has personally made are going to the Warramunda aged-care complex in Kyabram. Warramunda is an excellent not-for-profit community-run home for some of our area's most frail and elderly. What a very generous offer that has been.

Isobel and her husband have painstakingly set up this exhibition. As well, Isobel has made sure the provenance of the garments is well understood and she has written about them. She is now most keen that the collection passes into community hands. She has offered to donate all of her amazing garments, hats, shoes, gloves, buttons and underwear for a permanent display in Kyabram. We are now looking for a permanent home for this amazing collection. I can imagine how people would come from far and wide to look at the painstaking work that has gone into this collection over many decades. I want to commend Isobel and her husband. Isobel has not always been in good health. She has a generosity of spirit and a sense of community that is an absolute inspiration to others and to up-and-coming generations. I also want to wish her well in finding a permanent home for this exhibition somewhere in Kyabram where conservation of the collection will be well attended to and where there are volunteers or others who can make sure the exhibition is preserved for all time. It shows the evolution of women's place at home and at work, as well as the craft skills of the men and women who made these garments, and it reminds us of times past.