Maree Crawford is an island local, an avid bike rider and one of the volunteers who help oversee the Furneaux Museum’s extensive collection of documents and artefacts.

Marie knows that history often begins with the thing someone else might overlook.

A lifelong Flinders Island local, Marie has spent more than a decade volunteering at the Furneaux Museum, helping protect the people, places and moments that have shaped island life. Drawn into the museum by her mother, she now plays an important role in caring for the collection and sharing the histories that connect generations of islanders. Shipwrecks, Wybalenna, family records and everyday objects all become part of a larger account of how the community has changed.

With Marie, the museum becomes less a room of artefacts than a doorway into island life. Her generosity and knowledge help guests understand how every landscape, object and family contributes to Flinders Island’s history. In her hands, the past is not fixed behind glass. It is still being added to.