Margaret River historian Jan Matthews is on a mission: to find a working stove just like the original Metters No 2 that once warmed the district’s “groupie” homes almost a century ago.
“They were standard issue in all Group Settlement homes in this area in the 1920s, so there must be one out there in a shed somewhere,” Mrs Matthews said this week.
The hunt for a Metters No 2 comes as the Margaret River and Districts Historical Society prepares for its next phase in bringing to life the group settlement home transported to the “Old Settlement” at the town’s entrance on Bussell Hwy.
Determined to offer visitors a genuine experience when the former Ellensbrook group house opens to the public in the coming year, Mrs Matthews said a working Metters No 2 would provide a key feature.
“We do have one sitting there at the moment but it is really just a rusted out façade with no real hope of us ever getting it fixed and working,” she said.
“There are a few Metters No 2 stoves around with the enamel door but what we really want is one with the plain black iron as was standard issue.”
The Group Settlement Scheme was the brainchild of the WA and British governments to open up the South West to dairy farming almost 100 years ago.
Mostly English settlers rushed to take up the offer of 160 free acres, but it soon became apparent the scheme was ill-conceived and many were doomed to debt-ridden failure.
Still, the group-built solid timber cottages had seemed like palaces to those who survived the tin humpies which had greeted most new arrivals.
Mrs Matthews said the Friends of the Old Settlement group was keen to open the cottage “ASAP”, but was reliant on volunteer input, an Augusta Margaret River Shire budget allocation and the completion of a professional interpretive plan to move forward.