The museum opened in October 1948 with fourteen objects on two trestle tables. The block and tackle from Greenwich Wharf was the first thing written in the book, and it is still numbered 1948.1.1.
The other thirteen were: a sugar copper, a verandah rail, three hand tools, four pieces of cut stone, a shingle, a survey chain and a ledger. Nine of the fourteen are still here. Three were transferred elsewhere in the 1950s, one was destroyed by damp before the store was dry, and one cannot be traced.
We publish that last sentence because a register that only records what went well is not a register.