AGOSTINA Hawkins, Glenelg Shire Council’s collections manager, has a big job ahead of her.

She and her team are around six months into the mammoth task of sorting through the entire 10,000 piece cultural collection at council – logging every item, describing it, and adding it to a new collection database system.

Ms Hawkins is the guest speaker for the Worthwhile Conversations event at the Portland Library this Saturday, and will be talking about what is in the collection, and how you go about sorting through it.

It’s a broad ranging collection, with paintings and photographs, artefacts and significant pieces of Glenelg Shire history.
“One of the things I'm most interested in is the Portland lifeboat (on display at the Portland Visitor Information Centre and Maritime Museum) and all the little objects that go with that, because it tells a story of the lifeboat which is super interesting,” Ms Hawkins said.

“But the thing that people are really interested in when you talk about the lifeboat is the part that it took in the rescue of people on board the Admella shipwreck in 1857.

Along with all of that, there are some items that are slightly harder to understand why they have been held onto, or the human story it tells.

“We've got a Wannon Water leak detector as well in the collection, so at some point, someone's had some really fabulous ideas about contemporary collecting, which is brilliant, but it's something that we've got to process and look at all the stories involved and see what there is to it.

“All objects are interesting whether they're a water leak detector, or whether they're a silver medal that was awarded to somebody for bravery, they've all got their stories, and they're all important in their own way.”

A former curator at the Warrnambool art gallery, Ms Hawkins has been at council for around a year.

One of the biggest challenges of the work, Ms Hawkins said, is avoiding being distracted by the countless historically fascinating titbits that she comes across.

“Going through the records, our aim is to do the skeleton of the record and make sure the core information is correct, then we can build on that once we've transferred the information.

“You’ve got an object and you do a bit of research, who’s the artist, when was it made, and you think ‘this is really, really, interesting, I'm going to have to document this’ and start to go down that rabbit hole.

“You do have to be really strict with yourself and I have been caught several times, as have some of the other team who are also working with me on this, and some of the conversations we've had about the objects, but it's such a fun part of the job.

The collection is currently kept in various locations, mostly in the gun room behind the Drill hall in Portland, while artworks are in storage elsewhere.

At the moment new additions are on hold while they take stock of what’s already there.

After the full audit is completed, the collection will be catalogued on a collections management system called Victorian Collections, which is accessible to the public.

“Once we have a really good idea of all the stories that we have in the collection or the objects, it then becomes much easier to tell those stories and to pull together exhibitions.”

To hear more about Ms Hawkins’ work, the free Worthwhile Conversations event will be at the library at 10.30am on Saturday, July 1.