Monday, 21 March 2022
Maleny District Sport & Recreation Club Community Newsletter Being
Friends
with
The Friends of Pattemore House are delighted to be opening “Fairview” to the public again from this Saturday 26th March. Like many heritage centres, the property was closed to the public during the last Covid wave. However their volunteers have not been idle during the closure, teaming up with one of Australia’s most distinguished historians and surveyors, Bill Kitson, now retired and living at Witta with his Dutch-born wife of 53 years Angeline, Bill says no one is more astonished than he about how his life turned out. Creating a new display together called “Surveyors and Selectors”, Bill and the Museum of Lands Mapping and Surveying (Brisbane) generously donated several fascinating items to the Friends that have been crafted into the new display at Pattemore House, and linked to the original surveying and selection of the property in 1879. Well-known around the world, the many times awarded and accomplished surveyor, and retired senior curator of the Museum of Lands, Mapping and Surveying in Brisbane, Bill spent his early career surveying roads for the Department of Lands, Mapping and Surveying.
Bill Kitson eld by the Dept. as managers – but unable to face the prospect of being desk-bound, Bill instead convinced them to allow him to create a museum, in order to preserve the mapping and surveying history of Queensland. The original museum was established in the Lands Administration Building (now the Conrad Treasury Hotel) with Bill putting together one of the best collections of its type in the world. In 1987, the museum moved to the newly constructed Landcentre in Woolloongabba and in 1988 an agreement was signed with the Queensland Museum to become custodian of the collection, with the department providing staff to manage and run the museum. Recognised as an expert in his eld, Bill is in demand for talks and presentations; he estimates he’s done more than 2000 presentations all around Australia during the past 35 years. He talks passionately about early Queensland surveyors and how they played a role in shaping the state. From laying out towns to
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Founded in 1839, it is the oldest government department in Queensland Government. But in search of adventure, he began working on the Brigalow Scheme for private surveying rms. “We climbed mountains, we cleared hills, we measured all the borders of Queensland and I was as happy as a pig in mud” said Bill. In the 1970s and ’80s, the best eld surveyors were called in from the
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Maleny District Sport & Recreation Club Community Newsletter
https://malenysportandrec.org.au/