Bella and friends: (L-R) Greater Shepparton Connected Community board member Lisa Bourke, Shepparton Heritage Centre fundraising committee member Jill Muir, heritage centre president Geoff Maynard, Bendigo Bank Shepparton branch manager David D'Elia, Lost Shepparton and Heritage Centre manager Geoff Allemand and centre vice-president John Dainton.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Like any ageing worker, Big Bella’s joints are a little rusty and she’s not as mobile as she used to be.
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The old steam traction engine has sat outdoors at the rear of the Sheppaton Heritage Centre through more than two decades of harsh summers and wet winters.
Now a group of the centre’s friends and supporters wants to build a shed to house Big Bella and several other pieces of historic machinery at the Welsford St centre.
“We want to put it on display, but under cover. It’s too valuable a thing to let rust away,” Shepparton Heritage Centre president Geoff Maynard said.
He said on the international market, old traction engines such as Big Bella were worth about $145,000.
The centre also has a Gelbart traction engine, and a Moline tractor and truck that need restoring and displaying under cover.
Mr Maynard said plans for an 8m by 12m steel shed had been drawn up, with see-through viewing panels, to sit on a site at the rear of the heritage centre.
He said costs were estimated at $46,000.
The Shepparton branch of the Bendigo Bank has kicked off a public fundraising appeal with a donation of $7500 via the bank’s Greater Shepparton Connected Community scheme.
“We thought this was a really worthwhile scheme,” GSCC board member Lisa Bourke said.
Mr Maynard said the Federal Government, local Rotary clubs and families who originally owned the traction engine had also been approached for support.
“We think we’ll raise the funds in pretty quick time,” he said.
Big Bella was built in Leeds, UK, in 1896 and was used in the early part of the last century for land clearing, removing river snags, log hauling and construction work, including the creation of the eastern channel of the Goulburn Weir, which supplied the Shepparton irrigation area.
Home: Bella sat at the John Pick Playground at Victoria Park Lake for many years.
After it was decommissioned, it sat in Queens Gardens, Shepparton, before being displayed at the John Pick Playground at Victoria Park Lake where it became a popular children’s attraction for decades until it was removed for safety reasons in the 1990s.
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