Cedar Hat Weaving Workshop

 On Saturday, August 25th and Sunday, August 26th, master weaver and cultural ambassador Jessica Casey once again amazed a lucky group of participants for her Cedar Hat Weaving Workshop. Jessica has held a series on ongoing workshops at the SCMA from cedar stripping to basket making, but this was the first cedar hat making workshop.

The participants worked hard throughout the weekend with the end result being their very own cedar hat, guaranteed to keep the sun out of your eyes! Take a look at these great snapshots of the event taken by our summer assistant Martin.

Vaughn Drag Saw

While logging techniques have changed dramatically over the past century, the forestry industry as a whole continues to influence the economy and culture of the Sunshine Coast. Here at the Museum, our extensive logging exhibit has recently been refreshed with more in-depth text panels and labeling. An artifact that deserves to be highlighted from this exhibit is the Vaughn Drag Saw. Check out this vintage piece of heavy machinery in operation!

Small Wooden Boat Festival 2012

Check out this short video of the Small Wooden Boat Festival 2012  and explore some beautifully hand-crafted wooden vessels!

Community History made Accessible

Thanks to a grant from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the Coast News/Sunshine Coast News is available online and freely accessible to the public. The digitized newspapers are searchable and browsable; single pages can be downloaded in the JPEG format, while entire issues are downloadable as PDF’s.  For this first phase of the project, we focused on issues of the Coast News in most urgent need of preservation (1945-1976, 1983-1987, 1989). Future phases of the project will see the remainder of the Coast News, along with other local papers, added to the database.

The archived Coast News collection provides a valuable historical reference for understanding individual lives as well as broader community issues on the Sunshine Coast. The collection spans 37 years of community history during a period of tremendous growth and development.  Stories about individual lives and specific events, including births, deaths, business, real estate and planning, provide valuable information that is not recorded in more formal historical accounts.  Editorials and articles provide perspective on opinions and views of the times. Few other sources of historical information are as prolific and as wide-ranging, or offer such a detailed lens into our community’s past.

With the ability to search by date or keyword, teachers, students, researchers, and the general public are just a click away from a wealth of free information. By providing easy access to the newspaper archives, we encourage public education and lifelong learning.

For more information and a live demonstration on the website features, please join us for our Open House to celebrate the Launch of the Newspaper Digitization Project, Saturday, August 11th, from 1 pm to 3 pm.

The very first issue of the Coast News, published July 11, 1945 in Halfmoon Bay.

The Largest Moth in the World

After returning home to the Sunshine Coast from a recent exchange in Hong Kong, I was surprised to see some species of insects that I saw in Asia on display at the museum. However, one species I never saw in Asia is the Atlas moth, a moth with a wingspan that has been known to reach over 10 inches!

Check out this ginormous insect in action below, and drop by the museum this summer to see the multiple Atlas moths in our collection, along with our well over four hundred specimens of butterflies, moths and beetles from around the world!

The initially aesthetically alarming yet fragile Atlas Moth lives in subtropical forests in South East Asia. They do not feed in their adult form, living 1-2 weeks solely off the fat reserves they build up as catterpillars.