Geraldton’s Tin Head museum in need of new owners

Budding tourism operators have a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to buy what could be Australia’s biggest collection of tins, with the current museum owner eager to see the tourist attraction live on. Robert and Margaret Gaston started their collection in 2005 with 30 tins on a wooden shelf. Friends of the Gastons had suggested the couple display the tin collection, which included a small tin given to Mrs Gaston when she was seven years old. About 16 years later, the walls of their Waggrakine shed are completely covered with more than 12,100 decorative containers from all over the world. The Tin Heads museum has been a favourite with tourists for many years, but Mr Gaston said the business and 19-acre property were now too much to manage on his own. “I think it is time I started to slow down a bit ... I am not getting any younger,” he said. The property was listed on the market just before Christmas, with the $1.2 million asking price including the Tin Head business, a three-bedroom home, a tractor, and other machinery. Mr Gaston said while the cost may be more than buyers initially had in mind, the successful applicant could start making money off the property as soon as they moved in. “People can make money out of it straight away ... I have done all the hard work so they can come along and carry on,” he said. “I think probably the price that we have got on the place is frightening a few people away, but because they haven’t been out here to look at it, they don’t realise the potential that is here. “They can make money by putting chooks in the chook shed and selling the eggs ... selling afternoon teas and all sorts of things, so the potential is quite dramatic, really.” Mr Gaston said the hardest part of listing the property was trying to put a price on the ever-growing tin collection. “They could probably value the land and the house, but nobody could value the tin collection,” he said. “My collection is known all over the world, and I get tins sent from all over the world.” “We accept all tins because what I do with the double-up tins is, we either sell them off or we will bring them to Vinnies, the Red Cross or one of those other second-hand stores.” “We might walk in and see two or three tins we haven’t got and we will give them a box full of tins as a trade-off.” Mr Gaston said he would not be taking any tins as souvenirs when he moved to Ellenbrook to be closer to family after the property was sold. “They are all my favourite tins, there is not a tin in the shed that I dislike,” he said. “I don’t see any one of them as that much more special than the others. “We have had people come along and say ‘I want to buy one’, but we can’t afford to sell them because you might not ever get it back again,” he said. “To take one out ... to me you are taking the heart out of the collection.”