The Volunteers of Highfields Pioneer Village are very excited to be offering another very special museum to visit and enjoy during the Easter Vintage Festival – the Brennan Family Museum. The museum was the result of a 50 year long friendship between Volunteer Manager Ray Ashford OAM and his mate Merv.
Mervyn Roland Brennan was born and raised on the family farm at Oakey. His father Roland Brennan had first settled the property 20 years previously. Merv was a product of the post-depression era and was born right at the start of WW2, and passed away on Christmas Eve 2018.
The year Merv was born is represented in the museum by a 1939 pen. A penny in 1939 would buy two loaves of bread†his son Ron says. “The Brennan Family Museum is full of little delights from the era of Dad’s (Merv’s) early life growing upâ€.
Merv was a huge fan of music and antique gramophones and the restoration of them was his specialty. His treasures also include garagenalia items, fuel bowsers, stationary engines, tins and cans and old signs.
The Brennan Family Museum is a culmination of three generations of passion for ‘anything old’. Ron, his son, definitely caught the bug as a young man and is a lifelong motoring enthusiast and young James… Merv’s grandson has a craving for vehicles from our motoring past.
Merv Brennan, was also a prolific motor vehicle collector — as anyone driving by his property at Drayton, on Toowoomba’s southern outskirts, would have observed. Merv spent the last years of his life in Camira and later in Mudgeeraba.
The Brennan Family Museum stands as a memorial to Merv and is an ongoing labour of love for his son Ron and grandson James. The Museum will be open to the Public every day during the Easter Vintage Festival 20th to the 22nd April 2019.
The Festival has a fantastic line up of entertainment from artists such as Lyn Bowtell, Laura Downing and Cathy Drummond and there will be great food and a BBQ to support the Leukaemia Foundation. Demonstrations of Antique Machinery and age-old crafts will run every 30 minutes, and the program will include Milking the Cow, Sheep Shearing, Grain Threshing and the spectacular Grand Parade at 1:30pm each day.
For more info log onto the Facebook page or phone the Village office on (07) 4696 6309.
