One of Australia’s most interesting small museums, the Pioneer Women’s Hut is a museum in Tumbarumba that displays the lives and times of ordinary rural families. Located in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains, the museum in particular focuses on how the women within the families lived their everyday lives, telling the stories of their day to day lives.
The museum is dedicated to the collection and preservation of domestic objects that belonged to rural families of the time, and represents the stories of the women of the time, and how they overcame the challenges of looking after their family in early rural Australia.
Opened in 1958, the museum is run by a community of volunteers who are well versed in the meanings of the objects on display, and the stories around them. To the volunteers, the objects represent someone’s life, and the stories relating to the objects can cover anything from dealing with adverse weather conditions, to objects utilised around the home or the farm.