Well stocked hardly describes this 1870s era store with its collection of product and paperwork going back over 140 years.
The National Trust is a community-based organisation dedicated to conserving Australia’s Indigenous, natural and historic heritage through amazing properties like Maryborough’s Brennan & Geraghty’s Store Museum. Here you can take your children through a time warp – back to the early twentieth century in the store that time forgot. With some items of stock dating back as far as the 1890s, Brennan & Geraghty’s Store is like no other shop.
Established in 1871 by brothers-in-law Patrick Brennan and Martin Geraghty, the store remained in the same family for 101 years, until its closure in 1972. The doors closed on over 50,000 stock items, in addition to the store’s trading records. Following acquisition in 1975 by the National Trust, Brennan & Geraghty’s Store was reopened as a heritage museum with an interesting twist on consumerism.
Discover shelf after shelf of products used in an era when the latest technology was a wireless radio, when milk was still delivered by hand in a glass bottle that was washed and returned for reuse and decades of records were handwritten into huge volumes! These records, and the goods left on the shelves, show how retail trading once was conducted in a regional Queensland town.
The Brennan & Geraghty’s Store complex includes the store itself, a stable, a cottage and ‘Uskerty’, the early twentieth-century residence built by Martin Geraghty. All are constructed in light-frame timber and iron, with parts of the store, including the fittings, recycled from other buildings previously located on the site.
Open from 10am to 3pm, seven days a week, Brennan & Geraghty’s Store is open for exploration 11 months of the year and closed mid-February for annual maintenance. Locals and tourists can experience this location for a small entry fee donation, as listed below.
