The Emerald and District Museum has been awarded $7700 as part of the 2025 Community Heritage Grant program to digitise its Nobelius Ledgers, which is a collection of national significance.
The museum is one of 50 community organisations across Australia to receive funding in the latest round.
The museum’s president, Pauline Murphy said the grant would help safeguard the region’s history while making it accessible to researchers and enthusiasts across the country.
“The Nobelius Ledgers are incredibly important and digitising them means that even if something happened, like a bushfire, the information would still be preserved,” Ms Murphy said.
“It also makes the collection accessible to people far beyond the area. We’ve already had inquiries from South Australia and other states from people researching tree varieties or historical gardens.”
The Nobelius Nurseries were once one of Australia’s largest private nurseries, founded by Carl Axel Nobelius.
After his death in 1921, three of his surviving sons took over running the nursery.
They sold off large parts of the land, including what is now the Emerald Country Club, and the lake area, which was originally a spring-fed dam for irrigation before it became Emerald Lake Park.
“What remains today is a fraction of the original nursery,” Ms Murphy said.
“If you walk through the park, you can still see lines of trees, remnants from the nursery, and a number of heritage-listed trees. The park and the collection are heritage-listed, so we must maintain the historic trees, replacing anything only with the same species.”
The digitisation process involves photographing every page of the ledgers and having volunteers from Digivol to transcribe the entries to make them accessible online.
Treasurer of the museum, Julia Bell said three ledgers and a number of catalogues and documents have already been digitised and two more large account books are due to follow.
“This gives people another dimension to search by name as well as by date and ensures these historic records are preserved,” Ms Bell said.
The museum previously received $6300 in 2024 through the same grant program to support earlier stages of the Nobelius Ledger digitisation project.
Ms Murphy said the museum is also receiving ongoing support from the Cardinia Shire Council, which contributes some annual funding for running costs and capital projects.
She said this support was crucial for maintaining the museum and its nationally significant collection.
“The Council understands the value of this heritage. Without their support, the museum and the gardens could just be another green space,” she said.
“We’re extremely grateful for their commitment and for the backing of our local members, including Mayor Cr Jack Kowarzik who has a personal interest in history.”
In addition to the Nobelius digitisation project, the museum is working to catalogue other paper documents, preserve oral histories, and make its collections more accessible through platforms like Victorian Collections and Trove.
Ms Bell said students from universities assist with transcription and cataloguing as part of their internships to gain hands-on experience while helping in preserving local history.
“The history of the area doesn’t end with these ledgers,” she said.
“It’s about capturing the stories of families, the people who lived here, and making that information accessible for future generations.”
