Queenscliffe Maritime Museum

One cold and blustery day in May, thrity two members braved the weather to attend the Queenscliff Maritime Museum. We were treated to one of the best and most interesting museums of its type ever seen.   

The Queenscliffe Maritime Museum has developed since the last Queenscliff lifeboat was offered to the Borough of Queenscliffe for care and display. A committee was formed at a public meeting on March 13. 1980, to investigate how the lifeboat could be preserved. This led to the formation of the Queenscliffe Lifeboat Preservation Society Incorporated which oversaw the early stages of restoration of the vessel and the establishment of the Maritime museum which opened in 1986 to display the lifeboat.

A purpose built archival repository was added to the Museum in July 2006. This stand-alone building is temperature and humidity controlled to house works on paper such as charts, maps, photographs, paintings plus some other artefacts which require controlled atmosphere storage. The collection is of charts and other documents relating to Port Phillip and adjacent waters and date from the commencement of European settlement.

The Museum has since expanded to cover the maritime history of Queenscliff, Southern Port Phillip and Bass Strait. In 1998 the name was changed to the Queenscliffe Maritime Museum to better reflect the ever expanding collection.