This butter churn was donated to the property by a local resident in the 1960s, and is representative of the self-sufficient life which the Turner family led. This churn is a rough-and-ready homemade example, made from undressed timbers with a metal handle at the side to spin the barrel and introduce air into the cream and speed up the churning process. Butter pats, also still held in the Cottage, were then used to squeeze out excess milk and press the butter into shape.

The Rai Valley is a remote place, even today. When Charles and his brother Arthur built the cottage, little did they know that they would be the only settlers in the valley for a whole decade. While Charles cleared the bush and worked on the roads, his wife Tilly would keep the house, look after the four children, and grow vegetables to feed the children and any passing travellers. 

These cow bells were rung outside at mealtimes to call the family in from the bush and new pasture lands to feed.

This montage of three photographs was taken some thirty years after the Turners arrived. What once was a densely forested valley is now stripped of bush, and burnt stumps are visible in the foreground.  The small settlement of Carluke, of which the Turner’s home was the first building, is visible in the middle distance. This village grew up around William Brownlee’s sawmill, which was established in 1907, and employed some 100 people in its heyday

This painting was donated to the members of the newly established Rai Valley Pioneer Home Committee in 1967. It was painted by Mrs Ruth Burgess, and shows the Cottage in its state as a chicken coop. The Pioneer Home Committee was formed in 1964 and it would be another five years before the cottage was restored to its former state. Minutes from 1962 record one member of the Historic Places Trust describing the refurbishment as “a dickens of a lot of work”.