Searching is never light work

Press, 30 April 1982, Page 1

Searching is never light work

Behind a row of tidy motel units in Hanmer Springs is a one-man museum show waiting to happen. The motel proprietor, Mr Lewis Carter, has been collecting for about 15 years with the idea of a museum in the back of his mind. A huge collection of old ploughs, farm machinery. coins, stamps, bottles, saddles, saws, and “everything collectable" litters his property.

Most of the items came from auctions and estate sales but he also believes in digging for finds. One prize was an assortment of sharks' teeth unearthed in the local marble quarry which Mr Carter said had been dated at 26 million years.

Some of his pieces are still in working order, such as the American Onan searchlight used during World War II which he bought from an

Army surplus store about 2U years ago. for deer shooting. The beam proved too dazzling for deerstalkers but when Mr Carter shone it at night on the Leslie Hills Bkm away a farmer said that the light was bright enough to read his copy of “The Press." "On a wide beam he reckoned he could muster the hills,” said Mr Carter. "I am collecting things every day," he said. At present Mr Carter is restoring an old steam engine, of the type used for wool scours at the turn of the century, which he is recovering piecemeal from a riverbed. “It has been on the go a while now and it will be a while yet." he said. Finance was a problem and it would probably be two to three years before he could build a log cabin to house the collection.