Chiltern is a perfectly preserved gold-rush era town, built in the late 1850s when diggers tried their luck on the goldfields and fortunes were made and lost.  Their legacy is a streetscape of wide verandahs and historic buildings that tell the stories of European settlers and gold miners.

The Chiltern Athenaeum Museum building was erected in 1866 and has previously been used as a Council Chambers, Town Hall and Library/Reading Rooms.  Unfortunately, the historic collections held at the Athenaeum Museum are at risk.  We need funds to purchase and install a Climate Control System which is essential to keep the collection safe for generations to come.

The Athenaeum holds a vast collection of items, photographs and records documenting the history of the Chiltern district and its people from the mid 1800s to the present.  Items relating to the gold rushes of the 1850s, evolution of the Chiltern township, notable citizens and the people of Chiltern, war service, cemetery records and famly histories.

The collection features memorabilia relating to notable Chiltern residents Sir John McEwen (18th Prime Minister of Australia), Alfred William Eustace (well known artist, famous for his gum leaf oil paintings depicting the spirit of the bush from the 1850s) and author Henry Handel Richardson (born as Ethel Florence Richardson, whose trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, describes an Australian Immigrant's life and work in the goldfields, was considered the crowning achievement of modern Australian fiction at the time).