Councillor Paul Cavalier,who lives in Gulgong,said it was devastating the town had lost the collection and the benefits it would have brought,thanks to opposition from a small but vocal minority.
“People … took it upon themselves to get personal and nasty about it,and that’s essentially what’s driven it into the ground,” he said.
“There were phone calls being made to museums all around Australia to try to find some dirt on Michael Durrant. It was a fairly terrible situation.
“It’s really nasty,and sad for the community … they don’t come knocking on the door with cheques for small communities very often.”
Voren O’Brien,who volunteers at two of the other Gulgong museums,said Durrant’s museum would have pulled tourists away from existing attractions and would have sounded the death knell for at least one of them. She said when she was asked to look into Durrant,she had struggled to find a digital footprint for him.
“It’s an outrageous thing to spend $4 million on,and the place they looked to construct it was Red Hill,the[site of the] founding story of our town,” she said.
‘It’s an outrageous thing to spend $4 million on.’
Local volunteer Voren O’Brien
She disputed the findings of the council survey,saying her own petition had found little support for a museum at Red Hill. She said a disproportionate number of children,who would naturally support a dinosaur museum,had filled out the council survey,a claim local mayor Des Kenney denied. The survey was distributed through Gulgong schools,as well as on social media and through council offices.
O’Brien said the debate,much of which was conducted on Facebook,had been nasty across the board. TheHerald does not suggest O’Brien engaged in such behaviour.
“There are still people being nasty to this day,saying everyone who opposed it were Karens and that they’d been looking forward to the dinosaurs,suggesting we’re keyboard warriors.”
The council believed the project would have drawn younger tourists to Gulgong,who may have been inspired to move to the area. Kennedy predicted up to 20,000 visitors a year. Durrant was to receive $4 per entry ticket and leave the collection to the council upon his death.
Durrant said he was “exhausted” by the stoush and informed councillors last week he was pulling out because he was concerned opponents to the project would keep fighting and ultimately win,costing council money in the process.
“The attacks kept coming,” he said. “They were saying ‘oh yeah,it’s just going to be replicas’ … They don’t seem to understand that museums all over the world use replicas.”
Former director of the Australian Museum Michael Archer,a professor of biological and geological science at the University of NSW,said he was aware of Durrant’s collection and the museum would have had educational value.
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He said it was normal for museums to display replicas because the original fossils were often fragile and heavy and could pose a risk to scientists and visitors if they fell from their mounts.
“When I was at the Australian Museum,one of the most popular exhibitions we had was a replica of the Tyrannosaurus Rex ... the sign clearly indicated it was a replica but it didn’t stop people being fascinated and loads of schoolchildren being bused in to see it.”
Durrant said Dubbo had since expressed an interest in housing his collection,as had towns on the NSW North Coast.