The Louise Flierl Mission Museum, which features more than 1000 culturally-significant artefacts from Australian Lutheran international mission fields, has a new home. The museum, which opened in March 1998 in the old St Paul’s Lutheran Church building in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, has been rehoused in the LLL building, at 175 Archer Street, North […]

The Louise Flierl Mission Museum, which features more than 1000 culturally-significant artefacts from Australian Lutheran international mission fields, has a new home.

The museum, which opened in March 1998 in the old St Paul’s Lutheran Church building in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, has been rehoused in the LLL building, at 175 Archer Street, North Adelaide.

Its artefacts have been gathered since 1886 by missionaries and laypeople serving in the church overseas, principally Papua New Guinea. They include masks, shields, bows and arrows, spears, sorcery and magic bundles, flutes, tools, clothing, jewellery, pots, drums, bilums (string bags), storyboards, and much more.

In June 2018, the Committee for LCA International Mission initiated a project to relocate the museum. A team of volunteers, under the guidance of project manager Timothy Pietsch, and with advice from a former curator of the South Australian Museum and an Artlab Australia conservator, has packed up the artefacts and relocated them to the newly refurbished site.

The next few months will be spent setting up the museum with a new layout and creating new interpretive signage, before the museum is planned to be opened to the public on 16 June 2019.

The museum is open Wednesdays from 10.00am to 4.00pm. Bookings for Wantok Place can be made for group visits, by emailing wantok-place@lca.org.au or by phoning the museum manager, Timothy Pietsch, on 08 8267 7410. Visit the website for more information at www.lca.org.au/wantok-place