The Molong Historical Society is excitedly preparing for the grand opening of its ‘newest’ exhibit, a century-old wooden police lock-up that has not only stood witness to notorious doings over the decades, but has quite a lively tale of its own to tell.

“We've discovered that it was built at the original Manildra police station sometime before 1915,” says Cameron Wild of the Molong Historical Society, who has been instrumental in seeing the historic “12 foot by 11 foot six inch” police cell preserved at their museum.

“So, the story as we know it,” Cameron begins. “It was at the original police station. Got moved to the new police station in Loftus Street in Manildra, but that was subsequently sold, and the newest police station got moved further away.”

The second police station became a private residence, with the old lock-up included in the sale.

“He didn't want it there anymore, because it was literally at his back door,” Cameron continued. “It had started to fall to bits, and it was full of bats.”

At one point it was being used for a beer-making enterprise, he said, which certainly was not what the original builders had intended.

“And all the beer bottles blew up and made a bigger mess,” Cameron says, explaining that it was then offered to the Manildra Lions Club, which planned to install it at a local park.

“That didn't happen,” Cameron says. “Mrs Boucher, who had a pottery and tourist attraction on the outskirts of Molong, found out about it, approached this fellow, who swapped it for a garden shed.”

Mrs Boucher had wanted the Molong Museum to preserve the old lock-up and had willed it to them when she passed away.

Cameron says they began preparations to relocate the building early last year.

“There's a fellow in town that transports railway carriages, and he said that it wouldn't be an issue to lift it up, put it on a truck, bring it over here,” says Cameron.

The old cell was carefully loaded up and transported into town without a hitch, but then disaster struck just metres from the museum gate.

“Literally across the road here, so it only has to go ten more metres, and it fell to bits! Turned into a big pile of kindling!” Cameron recalls.

After the initial panic, the pieces were collected, stored away and then the massive job of rebuilding the lock-up began

“We rebuilt it piece by piece,” says Cameron, who had fortuitously numbered and documented all the timbers in case of just such a disaster.

“We had to get new corner posts and some horizontal slabs remade by a young fellow that's got a Lucas Mill, because some of the numbered pieces got broken.”

Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of an army of volunteers, the heavy 8x2 hardwood timbers were all manhandled into place, and the old lock-up stands proud once more on the museum grounds - and is even lockable.

“And that’s the original padlock,” Cameron says. “I think we've had 28 individual volunteers, skilled and some unskilled, plus all the committee have contributed in one way or another.”

“It’s been a huge community effort,” says Molong Historical Society Secretary Jan McIntyre.

“People just came out of the woodwork. They’d just come along and say, can I come and give you a hand.”

To celebrate the long-awaited arrival of the Museum's unique exhibit, there will be a grand opening at 11 am on Sunday, July 26. Member for Orange Phil Donato (himself a former police officer) will officially open the rebuilt lock-up. There will be a barbecue, plenty of activities and old bushranger songs performed by Geoff Tonkin.