ST ARNUAD is home to Australia's only Bible museum, writes COLIN TAYLOR

What book is the best best-seller of all, published more often and in more languages than any other in recorded history?

It's the Bible, a book written over 1600 years by 40 diverse authors on three continents in three languages.

It was the first book ever printed and has been published, in whole or in part, in more than 2500 languages and counting - Shakespeare only got to 50 and Harry Potter reached 70.

With innumerable other partial versions, DVDs, audio and online resources, the Bible easily holds its place as the most popular book in the world.

So where would you expect to find a large-scale Bible collection in Australia celebrating this publishing and cultural monolith?

Look past our glittering capital cities to the western Victorian town of St Arnaud, where Australia's only Bible museum is shoe-horned into two formerly dilapidated historic main street shops.

The museum is the hobby of retired pharmacist Ellen Reid and her daughter, Jean, a former food scientist, IT administrator and bookshop manager.

Ellen and her husband, Jim, a schoolteacher, began seriously collecting Bibles and biblical artefacts in 1981 during a six-month family holiday in the UK.

Ellen later travelled around Europe and the US to build the collection and the couple spent four years in London from 1996, where they ran a second-hand bookshop.

When they returned to Australia, their shipping container was filled not with furniture, but with 12,000 books.

After some years at Ferntree Gully, and Jim's death in 2005, Ellen and Jean decided to set up a museum to display their ever-growing collection.

"We preferred Victoria, but were looking all around Australia and still couldn't find exactly what we wanted," Ellen says.

"That was a shop with a house, on a highway, with a hospital, banks and important stores in town."

Late in 2008, the pair found an old butcher's shop in St Arnaud for sale, built on a site where a miner's cottage was first erected in the 1870s.

The cottage was converted into two shops in 1901 and 1908.

Over time, it also housed a saddlery, lolly shop and movie theatre.

Since then, they have also taken over the adjoining tyre shop and converted it into a cafe.

"We bought here at the time of the global financial crisis and everyone thought we were mad," Ellen says.

"The area was in drought, but the day we came it rained."

The old shops have a local heritage listing, but were in a sad state.

Ellen and Jean have spent the best part of two years renovating them on what Jean describes as "a shoestring budget".

"We found six live termites' nests, but, unfortunately, no gold," Jean says.

Ellen and Jean are partners in the museum.

Ellen is the collector, while Jean is the web designer, curator and property renovator.

"It's the only Bible museum in Australia - and the only one in the world owned and run by women," Ellen says.

It's a place where even the atheists say "wow".

The museum houses more than 1100 exhibits - not only Bibles, but musical instruments, incense, coins and stamps, archaeological artefacts, models, postcards, miniatures, microfiche, nativity sets and oils.

Few exhibits are behind ropes or glass and visitors are welcome to touch.

"There are about 20 Bible museums around the world, mostly in America, but they're all owned either by big institutions or billionaires," Ellen says.

Jean says the aim is not to preach to people, but to teach Bible history.

"The Bible is so much the basis of our morals, our ethics and the laws of our land," she says.

The collection includes original Bibles printed more than 400 years ago.

One, a Geneva (or Breeches) Bible - 403 years old - was the same as those the Pilgrim Fathers took to America and Shakespeare used when he was writing.

The collected age of the Bibles here is about 15,000 years.

Most are in English, but they come from every continent except Antarctica - in 300 languages.

There are Hebrew scrolls, large Victorian "family" Bibles, miniatures that require a magnifying glass and Bibles covered in vellum, velvet, olive wood, mother-of-pearl and tin.

Some were printed for specific readers - braille for the blind, for Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, for the military, firefighters and police.

There's a copy of the official William and Kate wedding Bible, The Bible for Dummies and versions from Spike Milligan and Charlie Brown's Peanuts.

Other highlights include a Latin Bible printed in 1602, a Hebrew scroll of the book of Esther written on goatskin and a facsimile of the oldest complete Bible in the world, Codex Sinaiticus, written about 350AD.

Ellen and Jean have funded The Bible Museum from their own private resources alone.