RACHEL Burns has been fascinated by the past for most of her life.
She has been a volunteer at Nambucca’s Headland Museum for many years and in December 2023 was the driving force behind the centenary celebrations for the Nambucca Heads railway station.
Her involvement included writing a commemorative history of the railway, the people who serviced it, and the benefits it brought to the town and region.
Rachel is currently eagerly awaiting the proof copy of her new work, ‘Nambucca Stories’, with a book launch to be announced in coming weeks.
Assisted by a cultural grant through the Royal Australian Historical Society and painstakingly researched, this soon-to-be-published collection of 68 stories illustrates the arrival of a range of European settlers and the resilience that ensured their survival.
The collection covers everything from seafaring tales, to the timber industry and dairying, and from the Battle of Waterloo and the Eureka Stockade to the ANZACs and the beginnings of coastal tourism.
“I was always going to volunteer at the museum when I retired but walking my dog around Nambucca Cemetery every day really made me curious about the ‘stories behind the stones’,” Rachel told NOTA.
“Cedar cutter Charles Vaughan, and early settlers Marmaduke England and Robert Gordon are there (in the cemetery), to name just a few.
“Luckily the Headland Museum has a filing cabinet of their histories to delve into.
“The stories became radio pieces, then newspaper articles and now I have hopefully preserved them by putting all 68 of them into a book.”
By Carrolline RHODES
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