CONNIE Kimberley may not have been surrounded by dolls and dolls houses as a child but she is making sure young visitors to the Historic Village Herberton do.
The co-owner of the award-winning tourist attraction in far north Queensland – one of the best known living museums in Australia – scouted auctions in southern Australian cities for many years, collecting items to put on display in the new toy shop.
Mrs Kimberley has made sure that everything reflects toys from the bygone era, right down to the material the dolls dresses are made from.
Many items like the 100-year-old Victorian dolls were given a new lease of life, painstakingly restored to return them to the best condition possible.
The shop features a display dedicated to Boomaroo Toys, a pre-World War II line of Australian-made trucks and vehicles popular in the 1920s and 30s, five dolls houses, the much-loved Pedigree line of dolls from the 1940s and 50s, a 1940 Pinochhio toy and a collection of the Seven Dwarfs believed to be from 1930.
Mrs Kimberley said the new shop, which had its official opening over the Easter holiday weekend, provided another dimension to the visitor experience at the historic village.
“This is what children did in those times,” Mrs Kimberley said.
The new temperature-controlled shop replaces an old, smaller shop whose extreme conditions were causing items to deteriorate.
The new building, which is around 100 years old, has been been fully restored.
Village co-owner Craig Kimberley said there were hundreds of dolls on display with some dating back to Victorian times.
“Connie and I are just delighted to be opening the children’s toy shop,” Mr Kimberley said.
“The floors have been fixed, it has a fresh coast of paint and it is climate controlled to protect the toys from any deterioration.
“We have created some lovely scenes displaying the dolls and just as children would have played with them, we have a tea party, nursery, teddy bear’s picnic and the parlour.”
Traditional games from yesteryear are also on display as well as a new sporting section complete with croquet, cricket, tennis, golf and cycling.
A working model railway is the centrepiece.
It depicts Herberton more than 80 years ago takes pride of place in the new toy shop display.
The 2.4 metre long railroad has taken its inspiration from Herberton circa 1930s and features 20 buildings complete with pub and hotel, train station, church, saddlery, blacksmith and more.
The model is amazing in detail.
It features a wedding, a funeral and miners toiling underground for tin which the town was built on.
Around 100 hand painted people, trees, landscaping, period motor vehicles and a picturesque waterfall complete the setting, with the Jacaranda tree and church replicas of the same pieces that feature in the town.
Craig and Connie Kimberley commissioned Frank Kopke, Townsville, to create the masterpiece, with assistance from the local men’s shed in Townsville.
The toy shop is the latest new display to open at the village, an open air museum.
Its buildings and thousands of items on display reflect everyday life in north Queensland as it was from 1880s and onwards.
The village will host its annual Pioneer Weekend on 15 and 16 May, with prizes for fashions on the field and experts in old-time field demonstrations such as blacksmithing, tin panning, wood chopping and small engines.
