A former Wagga resident in possession of a rare piece of Wagga history is making a generous donation so the whole city can enjoy it.
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Leanne Cloake has been offered hundreds of dollars for her copy of This Is Your City – Wagga Wagga, but she has decided to donate it to the Museum of the Riverina for safekeeping instead.
“Early on in our time in Wagga, my workplace had a Kris Kringle where you could spend no more than $10,” Ms Cloake said.
“The lady that had me went to the op shop, found the game, and gave it to me, because the joke was I never knew the towns around Wagga.”
As soon as she opened it, Ms Cloake’s co-workers recognised the game was a lot more special than it first appeared.
“Immediately, one of my coworkers recognised it and he said ‘I will give you $500 for it on the spot right now, my mates would just love that on a Saturday night’,” she recalled.
“I said ‘No way’ – I love history and social history, so I thought this really belonged in Wagga, and I said if I ever left Wagga I’d donate it to the museum.”
Ms Cloake said the board game captures a piece of Wagga’s history lost in time.
“Some of the businesses featured in the game are still in operation, but some of them are long gone by the wayside, and I just thought it would be so exciting for the owners of those businesses and their families to go to a museum and see it in person,” she said.
“It’s a snapshot of Wagga in the mid 80s in terms of its commercial and social history, and I just felt we really needed to retain that.”
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