The cottage was constructed in 1866 for Joseph Bishop, son of Captain John Bishop, one of the first three ships captains to bring settlers to Port Lincoln in 1839.

Museum Coordinator and member of the Port Lincoln History Group, Jackie Johnston, said that John Bishop decided to remain as a settler and bought up quite a bit of land.

“Jump forward about 23 years, when his son Joseph was about to get married, they decided to build a house on what was the family farm,” Johnston said.

“The only other building on the property at the time was the mill, built but never finished in the 1850s.

“We don’t know why the mill was never finished, but it was on the property. Hence the cottage was called Mill Cottage.”

The Bishop family live in the house until 1963, when Amy Bishop, one of Joseph’s daughters and the house’s final resident died.

“Amy was a prolific watercolor painter, and one of the museum’s most prized features is our collection of her paintings,” Johnston said.

“We have over a hundred of her paintings. We have some on display permanently and we’re holding an exhibition now of some of the paintings that we don’t have on display at all times.”

Amy Bishop left the cottage and her remaining land to her nephews and nieces, most of whom did not live in Port Lincoln.

“The general intention was that it was going to be subdivided and sold off. We’ve actually got a plan of how they’d decided to subdivide it,” Johnston said.

“However, Miles Bishop, Amy’s youngest brother was a member of the very newly formed Port Lincoln branch of the National Trust.

“He and his older sister Ethel were very keen that the house didn’t get sold off.”

They stopped the subdivision and sale and the cottage become the property of the local council before the National Trust took possession in 1966.

Mill Cottage and the surrounding farm were prepared as a museum and park and opened to the public on April 15 1973.

“The cottage has nine rooms of exhibits,” Johnston said.

“The first four are as the family might have had it, and the back three are a collection of early Port Lincoln memorabilia.

“The reception is in Amy’s art studio, and we have the old kitchen out the back, an original building open as it used to be.”

When the local branch of the National Trust collapsed, the property was given back to the council which then engaged the Port Lincoln History Group to operate the museum in 2004.

The group of volunteers will be holding a small celebration on Saturday 15 April to celebrate the Mill Cottage Museum’s 50^th anniversary.

A collection of invited guests with a connection to the early stages of the museum, as well as some members of the family, will meet at the cottage from 2-4pm on the day.

“The public is very welcome to come, we just ask that they let us know so that we have a good idea of numbers on the day,” Johnston said, adding that they can get in touch through the Port Lincoln History Group’s Facebook page.

“We will also have an exhibition of photographs showing how the museum has evolved over the last 50 years, which will be up for the next few months if people can’t come along on the day.”