Kiama’s Pilot’s Cottage Museum has been recognised on the state stage, collecting a Highly Commended award at the Museums and Galleries of NSW Imagine Awards this week. It is an achievement that says a great deal about the calibre of work quietly happening in this town.
Out of 114 entries, only 28 awards were given. Major institutions with full time staff, curators and budgets many times larger than Kiama’s, including the Australian Museum, the National Maritime Museum, Powerhouse and UNSW, walked away empty handed. Kiama Historical Society was the only organisation across the Illawarra, Shoalhaven and South Coast to receive an award.
The prize acknowledged the museum’s transformed Aboriginal history displays, a project developed in partnership with respected Wodi Wodi Elder Dr Aunty Joyce Donovan. Over the past year, the Society has rethought the entire museum through a simple question, whose history is missing?
The answer reshaped everything.
A volunteer team quadrupled the space dedicated to Aboriginal stories and placed them at the centre rather than the margins. The result is far more than an updated display. It is a shift in how Kiama tells its past, moving away from a settler only lens and towards a shared story that invites honesty, awareness and reconciliation.
When I sat down with Tony Gilmour, he described the outcome as a “living museum”. Stories are not fixed behind glass. They are open to the ongoing knowledge, guidance and correction of Aboriginal people. Visitors are encouraged to see the whole landscape of Kiama, from long before colonisation through to the present, as one continuous story.
It matters. It shows what can happen when a community organisation chooses curiosity over defensiveness, partnership over tokenism, and truth over comfort. It also shows what happens when volunteers believe in the work enough to carry it through.
In a year where heritage debates have become louder and more divisive, Kiama has been recognised for doing something far more generous. Listening. Learning. And making room.
An award was not the goal, yet it confirms what many already know. Good things grow here when people work together.
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