Past president and library volunteer Joyce Hayes Picture: STEWART CHAMBERS.
By PETER SWEENEY
THE Berwick Mechanics Institute and Free Library is celebrating its 150th birthday, and is calling on the public to “pop-in” next Wednesday.
Fifty years ago – when the august organisation was celebrating its centenary – a woman walked into the AGM of the Berwick Mechanics Institute and Free Library with a couple of friends.
She became a member, not long after became the library manager.
Her active service with the unique and quaint Berwick library ended just a few years ago; her life ended last month.
Nobody in its 150-year history has given as much to the Berwick Library as 90-year-old Pam Darling did.
When she took over, the subscription fee of the library was two pounds and six shillings. Mrs Darling would often open the library following a meeting the night before to be greeted “by a fug of cigarette smoke and a floor littered with butts.”
She would clean the mess and light two fires, one in the meeting room, the other in the library. When wood was in short supply, an outside toilet was pulled down and timber from it used. And the key to the library hung on a verandah post on the Commonwealth Bank in High Street – so groups could let themselves in and out. That’s when everybody knew each other and honesty prevailed.
The genteel Mrs Darling wasn’t the only person whom the humble weatherboard library has had a “magnetic” pull on.
“This lovely little place has had a huge influence and impact on many, many people,” Lyn Wyatt, who took over from Mrs Darling as library manager at Berwick, said.
“It has touched the lives of many people, both volunteers and book borrowers.”
It has been like that since 1862.
The men behind the formation of the Berwick District Roads Board (the forerunner of the Shire of Berwick) – Messrs Bain, Brisbane, Buchanan, Wanke, Troup and Barr – were instrumental in the founding of the Berwick Mechanics Institute and Free Library.
The first library was sited on a block of land on the corner of Peel and Irby streets, the latter which is now Rutland Road. The building was a basic square and remained there until 1877, when government permission was sought to relocate to a more convenient site in High Street. The land was donated to the institute by Robert Bain, a founder of the organisation and also the publican of the Berwick Hotel.
In 1881, tenders were called for the “erection of a chimney, lining, painting and otherwise putting into repairing the institute.”
One of the primary functions of mechanic institutes, which were born in Scotland and England in the 1800s and were voluntary self-help organisations with a primary purpose of self-improvement and educating the working classes, was to provide up-to-date information, including government notices, newspapers, magazines and journals, hence the term “free library.” However, only paid up subscribers were permitted to borrow books.
The Berwick library was open from 8am to 10pm daily until 1879 when Annie Stephenson (who lived next door) remarried and moved away. Then the library was open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. These days, it is open every day except Wednesdays, Sundays and Saturday afternoons.
For the first 30 years of its life, the Berwick Mechanics Institute was used for numerous activities, including lectures and penny readings, these popular events being given by local or visiting dignitaries.
Next Wednesday (24 October) the Berwick Library will celebrate its illustrious past, its present – and toast to a planned long future – with an open day.
There will be morning and afternoon teas, cookies and congratulations, but the biggest buzz the hard-working committee will get is if people come in their droves.
“It’s a day for people to come and see what we do,” Mrs Wyatt said.
“They can look at the archives, artworks, historical documents, our Casey collection (including portraits of Lord and Lady Casey, four drawings by Lady Casey and paintings by her aunt and well-known wildflower artist, Ellis Rowan) and look at the thousands of books we have.”
