Windwells...channelling + divining

The Windwells exhibition was officially launched in the State Library of Queensland Gallery on Friday June 26. It was created by Pat Hoffie and Stefan Purcell. Heritage Information Services' Senior Reference Librarian Trudy Bennett carried out much of the research for the exhibition, using the many and varied resources of the John Oxley  Library collection.

Windwells ... channelling + divining is a fascinating blend of elements, fact and fantasy, reality and imagination. Here you will meet two real-life figures from Queensland's strange past:  J G Palethorpe, water diviner, and Professor J G Pepper, analyst, science educator, would-be rainmaker, and showman.

Here you can behold a once well-known spectral phenomenon, Pepper's Ghost, created by Professor Pepper the showman. And above all, you will see an imaginative  artistic presentation on the theme of windmills. As the State Library's Gavin Sawford writes in the current SLQ magazine: "Like the derricks that dotted the American landscape in the 19th and 20th centuries, the outback windmill symbolises both Australia's economic progress and the resilience of the country's early pioneers."

Windwells: Channelling + Divining is in the SLQ Gallery, level 2 from 26 June to 17 October.