Eclectic collectors of Brisbane lend their quirky treasures to museum show

One afternoon in the early 1960s, Barry Walker found two unusual bottles in bushland behind his school south of Rockhampton.

His mother recognised them as coffee-and-chicory bottles that were common when she was young. So Walker kept them.

Some years later, he found out about an antique bottle fair in Brisbane.

Some of Barry Walker’s Queensland-made historic bottles in the Precious exhibition.Credit: Claudia Baxter

“We walked into that hall and straight away I said, ‘This is it. This is what I’m doing. This is my hobby.’”

Now 70, the Graceville resident would go on to be president of the Queensland Historical Bottle Club. He buys and sells glass and stoneware bottles internationally, cleaning them with a machine he keeps in a backyard shed.

He also lends bottles to TV and movie productions as props.

“Probably the biggest one would have been The Great Gatsby, when they filmed that in Sydney. I’m talking hundreds of items – stuff from the 1920s,” he said.

“It’s just amazing where the hobby takes you: overseas, to different parts of Australia.”

Walker is lending about 50 rare bottles to the Museum of Brisbane’s Precious exhibition, an ambitious show of more than 3500 items gleaned from collectors across south-east Queensland.

There are wind-up tin toys, international dolls in their national costume, badges, Queensland Rugby League memorabilia, model ships, ornamental eggs, and rare band posters tracing Brisbane’s music scene.

Contemporary artist Tony Albert has contributed a selection of “Aboriginalia” from his personal collection.

“If you’ve got three of something you don’t actually need, then that’s a collection,” says curator Dr Sarah Engledow.Credit: Claudia Baxter

There are ancient chocolate tins and tea chests, antique beaded purses, terrifying vintage dental tools, and a bass guitar formerly owned by Kym Bradshaw from The Saints.

“You would never know this stuff was out there,” said curator Sarah Engledow. “Inside very ordinary-looking houses are world-class collections of this or that.

“A collection is the story of a person’s life, expressed through the objects they’ve gathered around them.”

Curating the show also introduced Engledow to some extraordinary characters – people such as Donat “Donnie” Tahiraj, former proprietor of the Phase 4 Records and Cassettes in Fortitude Valley.

Ipswich-based Tahiraj has a personal collection of up to 20,000 vinyl records, but he also collects matchbooks, vintage Brisbane band posters, and odd promotional pottery shaped like feet, made by 1960s commercial artists Harry and Cootch Memmott, who lived and worked in Annerley.

“Memmott’s work is souvenir ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers, and plates and things advertising either a place or a business,” Tahiraj said. “It wasn’t art, it was a hustle.

“Souvenir potters in Australia were wiped out in the 1970s by the arrival of pottery imported from Japan.”

Similarly, his collection of matchbooks memorialises long-gone Brisbane restaurants.

“In the pre-internet days, that was the way you’d promote your business, by offering someone a matchbook, and every time they’d light up a cigarette, they’d be reminded of that business.”

Harry Memmott dishes in the shape of bare feet. Memmott (1921-1991) made thousands of cheerful ceramic tourist souvenirs.Credit: Donat Tahiraj

Precious is one of the largest exhibitions ever held at the museum. Every item is displayed in cabinetry purpose-built by the museum’s framer, Craig Sproul.

Engledow said she approached curating it with few preconceptions, except one: avoiding plastic. “Just because I don’t like it …

“There are very few ‘collectibles’ in this show – objects that are manufactured solely to be collected and have no other purpose. There are some, like the 1956 Melbourne Olympic cards that were sold at Coles at the time and are very rare.

“But mostly it’s stuff that was never designed to be collected.”

Does Walker have a favourite among his bottles in the show?

“I have one from a company called the Helidon Spa Company Brisbane, a soda siphon that is pink glass, and it’s got a beautiful motif etched into it,” he said.

“It’s about 100 years old.”

Tahiraj said he loves collecting because every item has a story.

“I looked at a photo that my mum had of me aged two, and I’m surrounded by toys, which would have been my collection at the time, not realising that the pattern just kept going and going through life.”

Precious runs from April 2 to autumn 2026 at the Museum of Brisbane, Mon-Sun 10am-5pm.

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