BAM! The Bathurst Boys’ Birthday Suit Calendar
Sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s, when Port Alfred was sleepier and more conservative than it is today, I was a little taken aback to find a calendar featuring good-looking men posing on or around tractors and machines wearing nothing but broad smiles. These local farmers and supporters were fundraising for the Bathurst Agricultural Museum through calendar sales.
The project was the idea of Laura Mileham. Photographer Andrew Elliot and his subjects met in complete secrecy for the shoot, and not even their wives knew what was under way. And so the brave Bathurst Boys’ Birthday (Suit) Calendar shook things up, making R30,000 for the Museum, attracting a KykNet minidocumentary of the story – with the fellas even appearing on the back page of the Sunday Times.
Today the models are still on their pineapple and stock farms. They remain stalwart supporters of ‘BAM.’ Their fathers may have joined a group led by farmer’s wife Shirley Hounsell in 1970, when she decided to preserve the history of agriculture in Bathurst, the heart of Settler country. Bearing out the aphorism ‘n boer maak ‘n plan,’ a working committee was formed and trucks were borrowed to collect suitable items, of which there was an abundance.
The collection started with just 30 items. Once temporary accommodation was provided by the Bathurst Agricultural Society, the building began filling up with fascinating artefacts. In 1978, the Bathurst Municipality donated land for a building on the present site, next to The Show Grounds; in time this was named the Geoff Palmer
Hall, honouring a key founder member.
Architect John English’s proposed Museum complex was based on some settler Frontier farmyards, comprising one large shed, stables and a double-storey settler house. It seemed an ambitious scheme in
1977, but before long it was officially opened by the Director of Nature Conservation, who acknowledged the Museum’s importance not only to Bathurst but also to SA.
Between 1981 and 1994, three building extensions took place, the last to accommodate items that had been lying outside.
The Museum’s present haul is almost 2,000 artefacts and machines. There are 80 tractors (32 still operational); 30 crawler tractors; 91 stationary engines; 20 carts and buggies; 3 wagons; 53 blacksmith, wheelwright tools; 93 dairy items and 195 household items. An apiary named after Brian Moxham was established, and the stationary engines were housed in the HH Norton Room.
Special new treasure troves, the Smithy (est 2018) and the Miller’s Room (2021), will be featured in the next ‘BAM’ instalment.
A visit to The Bathurst Agricultural Museum, one of the first and only such museums in SA, is as much a tonic as a day spent in the country. The attractions will astound and entertain you and your family. It’s open 9am-4pm weekdays and mornings only on weekends; school groups are welcome by prior appointment (Tel 071-282-9161).
The Bathurst Agricultural Museum, Part 1