FAMILY heirlooms were dusted off and taken to Weston's Irish Club on Saturday for an Antiques Roadshow-style appraisal of clocks and watches.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
An array of rare and beautiful timepieces were on show for visitors to see, including three replicas of John Harrison's marine chronometers, which revolutionised navigation in the 1700s and allowed sailors to keep accurate time at sea.
The event, called Journeys in Time, was held as part of the Heritage festival celebrations, which will continue until April 21.
The display was organised by the Canberra chapter of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
Chapter president Roger Little said the replicas of the John Harrison clocks were very rare.
''They were used to find longitude and stop ships from sinking,'' Mr Little said. ''John Harrison made four of them, and we had three on display made by Norm Banham.
''We also had American railway watches, carriage clocks, Breguet watches and purse watches that had been enamelled and gilded.''
The club's members were on hand to appraise pieces that Canberrans brought from home.
''There's always a piece de resistance that shows up,'' Mr Little said.
''We can identify them and tell people where they came from. Often people bring in things they have inherited from grandparents, and they just want to know a bit about the history.
''We encourage them to write the stories down and keep it with the items. These items can tell a story, and if the story is lost it becomes difficult.''
Canberrans who wanted to get in touch with the past on Saturday also went on tours of St Paul's Anglican Church in Manuka, and discovered the remains of convict-era construction near Lake George.
Canberra Times columnist Tim the Yowie Man took a group of 25 people on a tour of the little-known convict canal near the Federal Highway, which was built in the 1830s for a wealthy landholder, Sir Terence Aubrey Murray.
This was followed by a trip to Collector's historic Bushranger Hotel and a visit to The Henge, a Stonehenge replica.
Tim said the trip was booked out weeks in advance, and he was considering holding another three or four tours to meet demand.