Introduction to the Scott Chest

The Scott Chest is a wooden sea trunk used by the Scott family on a voyage from Scotland to Australia in 1851–52. The chest contains a collection of over 200 items related to the life of the Scott and Murphy families in the Wimmera region of Victoria, including letters, tools, containers, photographs, books and so on—dating from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth century.

The Scott Chest (photo by Tom May, 2016)

The original migrant Scott family consisted of Peter, an agricultural labourer, his wife, Isabella, and six children. They were probably motivated to leave Scotland by harsh local economic conditions, but could also have been attracted by the opportunities offered in Australia, where gold had recently been discovered.

The Scott Chest was probably one of a number of containers used to transport family belongings. It was passed down the generations until 1985, when a family member gave it to Sara Maroske. Sara and Lachlan Maroske have joined forces in a project to identify and describe its contents. We hope by that by so doing we can recover the history of an unpretentious rural Australian family, one of many who settled in this country in search of a better life. 

Every item in the Scott Chest has a story. We have numbered each item and will introduce them, one by one, or in groups—putting them in the context of the Scott and Murphy family histories, and detailing their condition and rarity. The items speak to many cultural themes, including the history of technology, family, migration, faith, earning a living, war and death.