Three grants received during 2011, coupled with the on-going efforts of our volunteers, have enabled the Association to undertake further work on our Collection.

A Community Heritage Grant of $4,400 from the National Library of Australia (see below) has enabled our Archivist, Yvonne Kelley, to work with Queensland Museum's Central Queensland Development Officer, Bronwyn Roper, to undertake a Significance Assessment of our Collection. This report was completed in late 2011 and will be a valuable document to help us to understand our Collection and to plan its future management.

A grant of $6,983 from the Jupiter's Casino Community Benefit Fund has enabled us to replace all of our old filing cabinets with new, lockable ones to better protect our collection, and to buy other equipment such as a data projector and screen and a special cassette tape device with which we are now converting cassette tapes of oral histories and events to the modern digital formats for preservation into the future.

Thirdly, Museum and Gallery Services Queensland awarded us $3,053 to purchase archival storage media. This includes special packaging and storage materials which are especially pure (eg acid free) so that museum collection items will not be harmed by the materials in which they are stored. There are also items to assist in detecting and eliminating possible vermin such as silverfish.

As our volunteers take advantage of these additional welcome funds, they are undertaking the parallel process of documenting the collection so that the details will be available in our database for access in the future.

While the basic structure of our public displays will remain relatively fixed for the immediate future, management committee members are working on the development of a series of changing displays to celebrate special events and highlight aspects of the collection. It is hoped that these new displays will help to attract repeat visitors.