Gulgong Holtermann Museum is housed in two State Heritage listed buildings in Mayne Street Gulgong. This quaint and quirky streetscape will transport you back to the 1870’s with its unique gold rush history and introduce you to the world of digital detail. Just step through the door of the American Tobacco Warehouse and Fancy Goods Emporium to experience the contemporary design and exhibition within, and immerse yourself in the UNESCO listed Holtermann Collection of photographs.
In 1951, a hoard of some 3,500 glass plate negatives, charting life in the NSW gold fields, was found in a garden shed in Chatswood, Sydney. These negatives were the remains of thousands of glass plates taken by Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss along with some of the photographs taken for Holtermann’s Exposition and included some magnificent panoramas. The plates were later donated to the State Library of NSW in 1952 by Holtermann’s grandson. The Holtermann Collection has since been digitised by the State Library of NSW and in May 2013 was inscribed on the Australian register of the UNESCO Memory of the World. Fortunately there are more than 350 Gulgong images in the collection and photographs are now on permanent display within the Gulgong Holtermann Museum.
