After more than five years the dispute between City of Newcastle and the Newcastle Maritime Museum Society over the museum's collection remains no closer to being resolved.
The collection has been in storage since the maritime museum at Honeysuckle closed in 2018.
City of Newcastle has since managed the relocation and storage of the items to the tune of $130,000.
The maritime museum society wants the council to keep paying for storage. Councillors will vote on whether to continue leasing the storage spaces for another 12 months on February 27.
The collection is stored across multiple sites, primarily the Newcastle Showground grandstand where City of Newcastle pays site owner Venues NSW for storage. Items were moved to the showground from a Thales site in Carrington in 2022.
Fourteen items were also transferred to Newcastle Museum, which the council said would be progressively added to its display as they were restored.
'Onerous restrictions'
Newcastle Maritime Museum Society president Bob Cook said progress on publicly displaying the items had been impeded by restrictions on members accessing the collection, including a cap on the number of members allowed at the showground and permitted site visits limited to once a month accompanied by a Newcastle Museum representative.
"The restrictions are so onerous we couldn't put a display together," Mr Cook said. "We really would have trouble doing that in a year if we can only visit once a month."
City of Newcastle said that restriction was inserted into the lease by Venues NSW.
Venues NSW confirmed it had an agreement with City of Newcastle to store part of the collection, and directed further inquiries to the council.
Newcastle council said the museum society was able to take back the items whenever they requested them, and members had not exercised their permitted site visits more than twice in the past two years.
"The most recent visit by the NMMS was in June 2022," a council spokesperson said.
"Committee members of the Newcastle Maritime Museum Society also requested a visit in December of that year but then cancelled the visit.
"They haven't requested to inspect the collection at any of the storage sites since."
There has long been tension between Mr Cook, who is a former Newcastle councillor, and Mr Bath over the maritime museum issue, exacerbated by the saga involving letters to the editor under the name of Scott Neylon.
Mr Cook was targeted by Mr Neylon in letters to the Herald for the museum's perceived lack of action on its collection, while Mr Cook has publicly accused Mr Bath of authoring the letters, which Mr Bath denies.
Service agreement not in place
Mr Cook said the museum society was not visiting due to City of Newcastle refusing to sign a service agreement that would outline responsibilities of both entities and give the museum society "standing" over the collection.
He said the society handed over the 14 items to Newcastle Museum on the proviso the service agreement would be signed.
City of Newcastle Jeremy Bath said he could not sign an agreement without something in writing explaining how ratepayers would be protected if the society couldn't fund the cost of eventually moving the collection.
He said this could include a copy of bank statements, an offer to go guarantor or identification of a third party willing to fund the relocation.
The museum society has made multiple suggestions for displaying the collection over the years.
Mr Cook is hopeful of displaying part of the collection in a dedicated Innovation, Arts and Maritime precinct being established by Ship4Good with a $315,000 grant from the Newcastle Port Community Contribution Fund.
Mr Cook said that would be a "medium-term" solution.
"It would mean we would be able to demonstrate the collection still exists," he said.
"That would help us with our long-term vision to display the collection permanently."
There have also been talks of exhibiting items stored at the showground during the Newcastle Show, which Newcastle Show chairman Peter Evans said he supported. City of Newcastle said that would be a matter for the museum society committee to discuss with the show committee.
"Our strategic plan is short, medium and long," Mr Cook said.
"When we made this plan, short term was to have legal ownership of our collection. The medium term was to put as many items of the collection on display as possible in as many locations around the community.
"We have loaned items already to places, for example Morpeth Museum, and we would try to make arrangements in the medium term to have exhibits of the collection in various places."
Grand plans for future
Mr Cook has grand plans for permanent display of the collection, that would include "interactive, high-tech modern displays of stories of our maritime history using some if not all of the artifacts".
He said this vision was shared by a number of influential people in Newcastle who could provide funding, but would not disclose their identities.
In the meantime, Mr Cook said he hoped the February council motion could be a turning point for the long-running saga.
The council said the collection remained the responsibility of the museum society and the future of its display and storage rested with its committee.
"CN's primary reason for supporting the NMMS collection since 2018 is to ensure that the locally donated and historically significant collection did not end up in the hands of liquidators and dispersed," the council spokesperson said.
"This is what typically occurs when a not for profit group is wound up."
