Athwart the showground hill the museum stands -
A monument to hardy pioneers;
Explorers, squatters, servants, women-folk:
The herdsmen, farmers, miners, sturdy wives,
Whose strength and vision hewed from virgin scrub
The precious things we claim to be of worth,
From grazing lands and mining sites and farms,
Which proudly now comprise Our Heritage.

Securely housed in glass display cases;
Arranged on shelves with printed story tags;
Adorning walls and hung in ornate frames;
And standing proud upon the wooden floors,
Are relics part of those days gone by
When horses plied the rutted dusty roads,
With pioneers atop the swaying coaches
Or ridng tall across a brave new land.

A roving native dropped his axe of stone
Beside a hollow possum-housing log;
And now both axe, and log with rough cut hole,
Remind us sadly other folk once lived
Where soon new-comers sheep and cattle grazed
To nurture hopeful plans of wealth untold;
Of spacious homesteads gracing boundless lands
And golden grass to far horizons stretched.

 A miners pick rust-pitted by lack of use;
A dolly pot and tamper for crushing ore;
A tiny heap of black alluvial tin;
And photos showing men and sluicing boxes,
All serve to recall the way Stanthorpe begun,
Astride a creaking wagons halting track,
Above the Quartpot's winding rock-strewn course,
Away back then in eighteen seventy two.

A winch for pulling trees on virgin land,
Now place of luscious fruits and tangy wines;
A double furrow plough once drawn by horses
To turn the fecund but sandy granite soil;
So many things recall the steady growth
Through passing years of slow relentless toil,
Of ordered rows of orchards and trellised vines
Out spread across the blooming country side.

Athwart the showground hill the museum stands;
A monument to eager folk of former times;
The storemen, blacksmiths, trading men,
Their loving wives and sons, and daughters too
Whose honest hands with purpose built a town
To service those whose sweat and salty tears
Once rained upon the any precious things
Which proudly now comnprise Our Heritage.

written by Geoffrey Hamlyn-Harris