MOTUEKA DISTRICT MUSEUM

with the assistance of

NELSON PROVINCIAL MUSEUM

PROUDLY PRESENTS:

Open now and on show until the end of September

Developed and toured by the Museum of New Zealand

Te Papa Tongarewa

Our Spring/Summer Exhibition has opened. It is all about the animals that were part of World War 1.

We have lots of stories to share with you.

MOTUEKA DISTRICT MUSEUM TRUST

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

TDC meeting Room, Hickmott Place

2.00 p.m Monday 9th September 2019

NEW BOARD MEMBERS NEEDED AND WELCOME

Please contact 5287660 or savepast@snap.net.nz

It has been wonderful having the exhibition about Appo Hocton at Motueka Museum. Appo was the first Chinese immigrant to New Zealand and settled locally in Dovedale.

We are very grateful to Nelson Provincial Museum for the loan of this exhibition.

This exhibition has now closed.

Last week was National Volunteer Week a good opportunity to celebrate the varied and essential work volunteers carry out all over New Zealand.

At Motueka Museum we depend on our volunteers in order to be open to the public. We have a dedicated, enthusiastic and wonderful group of people who volunteer at the Museum. They work on a rota basis to carry out the front of house function.

Volunteers welcome visitors to the Museum, provide information, answer questions, keep visitor records up to date and many other odd jobs. There is also plenty of voluntary work going on behind the scenes at the Museum: researching information for exhibitions, organising fundraising and publicity, maintenance of the building and of our vintage car "Lassie" a 1929 Cadillac La Salle, and as Board members.

Fergus Holyoake born in Motueka in 1911 said:

"We cannot know who we are and what our heritage is if we do not know our local history."

All the volunteers at Motueka Museum are part of bringing an awareness and understanding of the local history to the community of the wider Motueka area.

If you have any time to spare and are interested in volunteering at the Museum please call in and ask to speak to Jen our curator or phone 5287660 or email savepast@snap.net.nz

It has been fantastic to reopen the Museum with an exhibition of wonderful photographs from the Camera Club. The exhibition has been very popular with locals and visitors but time is running out to see it.

Three more days until Thursday 29th March 2018 to come into the Museum 10am - 2pm to have a look.

While you're here make sure you vote for the viewers' choice - your favourite photo in the exhibition.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

We are delighted to announce that the Museum has reopened today after being shut since July 2017 for seismic strengthening work.

The Motueka Camera Club have a great exhibition of photographs by local people and there is a display of old photographic equipment to complement it.

Please come and visit us soon - we look forward to welcoming you back.

We are delighted to be able to reopen the Museum following seismic strengthening work. It has been a time of upheavel with everything having to be packed up and stored away to keep it safe and then reinstalled once the building work was complete.

Most artefacts are now back in place and if they are not they will be soon!

We hope you will enjoy revisiting some of your old favourites in the Museum:

Scale model of Barque St Pauli which sailed from Germany to Nelson in the 1840's.

Saw display.

Our Taonga room full of treasures.

The Museum will be open Mon-Fri 10-3 and weekends 10-2.

Saturday 28th October 2017 10 am - 4 pm

Community Recreation Expo

Hosted by Motueka Recreation Centre

40 Old Wharf Road, Port Motueka, New Zealand 7120

Motueka District Museum will be at the Community Recreation Expo on Saturday 28th. Please come along and see us. You can find out about the seismic building work that has just been completed, what the museum has to offer and what is involved in volunteering with us. We look forward to talking with you.

The builders have been busy and the steel bracing is now in place to ensure our building is as solid as it can be. They did discover that the foundations were actually in good condition despite the age of the building (1913) so that was good to know. The building work is now complete and so begins the next phase - cleaning (lots of dust!), decorating, unpacking artefacts and respositioning displays.

Main wall in the Canton Room with bracing in place.

Framing up to cover the bracing.

Bracing in place in back office.

MOTUEKA DISTRICT MUSEUM TRUST BOARD

If you have an interest in the telling (or hearing) the stories about the history of our town Motueka.

If you want to be involved with keeping our wonderful Museum alive and vibrant for our community, young and old.

If you are proud of our Museum and want to support it.

THEN:

Come to the Trust Boards AGM and have your say.

WHEN: 11th September 2017

WHERE: TDC Meeting room, Hickmott Place.

TIME: 2.00pm (14.00hrs)

We look forward to meeting you!

The Motueka District Museum is now closed until December 2017 as seismic strengthening work is due to start on our old (1913) ex-school building. This is a major job for the museum as all the artefacts need to be protected and stored correctly to ensure they do not get damaged. Busy times ahead.

We apologise for the inconvenience if you were planning to visit. We will keep you posted on progress.

We look forward to welcoming you back with our Summer exhibition in December 2017.

There will be a closing ceremony (by invitation) this afternoon (30th June 2017) to mark the end of the exhibition Mai I Hawaiki Te Ahi Ka Roa – From our Ancestral Homelands to Our Home Fires of Today.

It has been a wonderful exhibition which has drawn in visitors from near and far plus many local school groups. It has been a privilege to have it at Motueka Museum.

Motueka District Museum is now going to be shut for several months while much needed seismic strengthening building work is carried out to our lovely old (1913) ex-school building. This is a major job for the museum as all the artefacts need to be protected and stored to ensure they do not get damaged. Busy times ahead.

The Museum is due to reopen with our Summer Exhibition at the beginning of December 2017.

We will keep you updated about progress.

Mai I Hawaiki Te Ahi Ka Roa – From Our Ancestral Homelands to Our Home Fires of Today.

This is a fabulous exhibition telling an important and fascinating local story.

The exhibition closes on Friday 30th June 2017.

The museum is open Sun 10 – 2 and Tue – Fri 10 – 3.

Come in and enjoy it while you can.

We are delighted to announce that our current exhibition: Mai I Hawaiiki Te Ahi Ka Roa has been nominated and is a finalist in the NZ Museum Awards. It is in the category Exhibition Excellence – Taonga Maori.

The winners will be announced on Tuesday 23rd May 2017.

You can read about the awards and other Nelson finalists in the following article:

The Museum has now returned to its winter opening hours as follows:

Tuesday to Friday 10am – 3pm

Sunday 10am – 2pm

We look forward to welcoming you inside.

We are excited to welcome you to our new exhibition opening at Motueka District Museum on Sunday 4th December 2016.

Fingers crossed for the weather on Sunday 9th – the forecast is optimistic at the moment!

The Sprig and Fern Charity Quiz night is a popular weekly event in Motueka. For the next two weeks funds raised will go to the Motueka District Museum Trust.

Get a team together and come along. There will be a special section to test your local history knowledge.

Raffles and prizes to be won.

We look forward to seeing you there. 7.30 pm start.

Motueka District Museum has been included in the 18th edition of Lonely Planet New Zealand guidebook. We are delighted! So come and check us out: “An interesting collection of regional artefacts, housed in a dear old school building.” Look forward to seeing you soon.

Grandma’s kitchen – what memories does that evoke? Warmth, aromas, baking, happy times?

Well our new exhibition is all about Grandma’s kitchen, with artefacts mainly from the 1940s and 50s, plus some either side of those decades.

There is bound to be something for everyone to look at and recall memories of childhood spent with grandparents during the holidays or other times.

It is only on for a short period, so the school holidays would be a good opportunity to come and have look, plus of course we are open on Sundays which is always a good chance to spend an hour or two looking around the museum.

The exhibition runs until Friday 30th October.

Do you remember the all important apron? Do you still use one?

We reopen tomorrow after four weeks of catch ups and open with the new exhibition "Gallipoli, in search of a family story" by Pat White. It is the story of his great-uncle Jack Dunn, the only New Zealand soldier (at Gallipoli) to be court-martialled and sentenced to death. The story is told through different mediums- paintings and poems by Pat White, photographs, diary entries and letters home.

Why was Jack Dunn court-martialled and what happened to him? Come along and find out.

Jack Dunn at the time of his sentence being read.

The exhibition opens 1st September and runs until Sunday 13th.

We have books by Pat White on sale, with all the paintings, poems and writings which the exhibition is based on- the whole exhibition is far too large for us to hold all of them.

Get your cameras out and at the ready. The museum is running a photographic competition/exhibition. The objective of the exercise is for the museum to build an archive of photographs showing visual impressions of Motueka and District in February 2015. It is intended for this to become an historic resource for future generations, and we hope to repeat this every 5 years.

We have chosen themes to this effect:

Modern Landscape- covers horticulture, orchards, berries, hops, pasture, animals etc.Modern Buildings- High Street and surrounds, housing estates, farm buildings etc.High Street Fashion- vehicles on the street, people on the street, signage etc.Coastline & Waterways- Rivers, ditches, streams, beachesSurviving History- Old buildings, kilns, houses, farm machinery, old vehicles etc.

Each theme will have one winner.

Winners will be chosen by public vote.

Closing Date for Entries: 13th March 2015 at the Museum.

TERMS & CONDITIONS

Please bring with entry form an ELECTRONIC COPY: Jpg file 2MB minimum (on a Flash Drive) and a HARDCOPY: 6x8 size.

PLEASE NO digital enhancement – Flash Drive will be returned asap

COPYRIGHT: transfer of ownership.

By submitting an entry, the copyright of the image is transferred to the Motueka District Museum Trust, HOWEVER acknowledgement to you as photographer will be made when the photograph is used at any time in the future.

That is the business end of things. We do hope you will take this chance to enter and help the museum add to our photographic archives

Well it's not exactly a "new" look but it is spruced up and looking great. The moss is gone, gaps filled, a silicon coating put on to protect the bricks and the lettering (Motueka High School) now painted and stands out.

The scaffolding drew a lot of attention and made the museum "visible", in as much as locals actually noticed the building and were keen to find out what was going on.

Here's to the next hundred years.

Our tribute to those in our district who served in WWI and those left behind continues.

Here are some more photographs of precious items that have been lent to the museum for this exhibition.

We thank the families for their generosity.

The diary that saved a life

It is with sadness that we have to record the passing of one of the most stalwart supporters and workers for the Museum, the Historical Association, the Genealogy Society and the town of Motueka and the TDC.

We will miss the sharp intelligence, insights and great loyalty of

PATRICIA O'SHEA

No more pain and suffering. REST IN PEACE

At long last our council have agreed to have our lovely old building given a scrub up.

Surrounded by scaffolding, she has been given a waterblasting and looks one hundred percent better already. All the moss and lichen has gone.

The next step is to fill in holes and gaps in the parapets which will help stop leaking when it pours with rain.

The scaffolding guys did a great job when putting it up - managing to avoid damaging the garden - much to the relief of the Nelmac gardener.

We have a couple of "before" photos and of course some of the scaffolding - looks rather intimidating but hasn't stopped visitors to the museum or Muses Cafe which is good. When it is all done and dusted we will post some "after" shots.

So by summer our lovely old building will be looking good. There is still a lot of maintenance to be done, but at least this is a start.

The museum is proud to present our latest exhibition – Motueka’s War, WWI commemorations.

We tell the story of how the war affected those living in Motueka and surrounding district – those who went off to fight, those who didn’t return and those left behind to carry on with life as best they could.

This part of the exhibition goes up to Gallipoli. It explains what was behind the outbreak of war; which countries were allies and those that were part of the Central Powers; the various roles in the army; Motueka’s response to the war effort, both men who joined up and fund raising. Training the men, carried out mainly in Trentham, then embarkation and the arrival in Egypt.

We also have stories about our nurses, though not all were from Motueka but do have connections.

There are a number of exhibits from families whose father, grandfather or other relatives went to war, but not all returned.

After Gallipoli, the main exhibition will come out, but there will be an ongoing display of the war battle by battle and the role of honour will, sadly grow.

The exhibition runs from 2 September 2014 through to May 1 2015

Opening hours are the same: Currently Tuesday to Friday 10-3, Sunday 10-2 until December then it will be Monday - Friday 10-4, Sunday 10-2

Showing the main area of the exhibition.

Harden's Fire extinguisher

This is the final in our trilogy of exhibitions highlighting the varied collections of three well known locals. It is now the turn of Laurie Canton, whose collection is wide and varied. Many of the artefacts are well over one hundred years old and have the "fascinating" factor. Like the pig snouter (not an animal friendly piece of equipment, fortunately no longer used), the moustache cup and my favourite, the Harden's glass fire extinghuiser. These are just a few of the items on show.

Laurie’s abiding interest in the history of the region led to him becoming a founding member and patron of Motueka District Museum.

He began with his own private museum: it started as a hobby and for many years he collected items which he then displayed in his garage. The collection steadily grew, both in number and type of items, eventually becoming large and diverse with significant Maori and European artefacts.

Subsequently the Canton Family donated his collection to the museum and objects from that collection are now displayed here. We are very grateful for their generosity.

This is the second in our trilogy of "Treasures of our community"

Laura wearing her MBE medal

Over the next two months we are concentrating on Laura May Cook Ingram, MBE JP.

Laura, better known as Dede- a name given to her by her brother and stuck with her throughout her life- was a born leader, an indomitable woman and a very caring nurturing person.

This exhibition shows her life in Motueka as a teacher, a member of many different boards (Nelson Hospital and NZ Kindergarten Association to name just two), Justice of the Peace, drum major and very keen netball/outdoor basketball coach. On show are some items from her days of teaching and also personal belongings.

Did you go to school here at the museum (in the days when it was still a school of course)or Parklands? We have many class photographs from 1958 through to 1963, most have the names of the children and teacher but some don't. This is the case with all the summer swimming classes and netball players and we would love to know who they are. Maybe you are in some of them, or you know someone who is?

Do come in and see for yourself and maybe jog your memory. We would love to be able to add more names to the photographs. There is a book specifically for that purpose and you are more than welcome to write any memories you have of Dede and/or your time at school here under her tutelage.

This summer, instead of just one exhibition we are putting on three all with the same theme.

Treasures of our community showcases the lives of three local identities through their collections.

The first in our trilogy is Fergus Holyoake, a local historian and collector. Fergus took great pride in writing local history - his belief being that "we cannot know who we are and what our heritage is if we don't know our local history". Quite a profound, but true, statement. Much of his writing was published in the local newspaper, and copies of these are available to the public in the Research room, run by Motueka and District Historical Association. They also have many of his photographs available to look at.

Fergus collected a whole range of articles, most of them given to him by the owners or late owners' family. It is therefore an eclectic mix of artefacts, from a Victorian ewer (large jug), hand made nails, sports photographs, clocks to name but a few.

Along with Fergus' exhibition we are also showing "Kiwi Keith", the story of Sir Keith Holyoake - Prime Minister and later Governor General. This exhibition, which includes text panels, video and artefacts relating to Sir Keith, has come direct from Nelson Provincial Museum, where it was very warmly received.These will run from Monday 9 December 2013 to 28 February 2014.

The second in our trilogy will be about Laura Ingram, a teacher in Motueka for many years and a very persuasive lady when fighting for a cause she believed in.

Her story will run from March through April.

The third and final story will be about Laurie Canton - he had his own, private, museum, but when our museum was opened he generously donated much of his collection. His story will run from May through to June

Fergus Holyoake

After nearly six years the hopes of having a permanent tobacco display at the museum were realised. The exhibition was officially opened on Saturday 28 September by John Hurley, a member of the NZ Tobacco Industry Historic Trust.

About twenty people joined us to celebrate the opening, held in Muses Café –and a very pleasant afternoon tea was enjoyed by all. After the official part was over, guests went through to the museum to see the new exhibit, with a unanimous agreement on how good it is.

The idea was to create an old style tobacco kiln (an idea from John Hurley) which would include artefacts from the tobacco growing era, photographs (showing on a digital photo frame) and the film “The End of the Golden Weed”, produced for and by the NZ Tobacco Industry Historic Trust.

Joanna Szczepanski was our designer and researcher, who did a great job. Joanna, sadly, left us to work full time at Canterbury Museum before the installation, so we called upon our talented Secretary/Treasurer Jen Calder to complete this part of the project. Jen did a marvellous job of painting the floor to resemble the inside of a kiln- the pipes and furnace. The photographs show the evidence on a job well done.

We were also blessed with help from a couple of our volunteers, who put in a lot of time and effort in painting, installing items and general help where needed.

To get to this final stage (of opening) there are a number of people to thank for both donations (monetary and goods), research and volunteer time.

We would like to thank the following businesses for their generosity in both goods and time: ITM, Think Water, Guthrie Bowron, Abel Glass and Gavin Christie.

To the volunteers who gave of their time so generously and the final thank you goes to our financial sponsors: Lottery grants Board, the NZ Tobacco Industry Historic Trust and our own Trust Board.

If you are in Motueka at any time, do come in and see this fantastic exhibition.

Fabric Tobacco Leaves

The Kiln

Photo of a grader at work

Updraught Kiln Pipes

Our new, permanent tobacco exhibition is now open. Apart from static displays there is a screen showing the film "The End of the Golden Weed", the story of tobacco growing in the Motueka Area, with personal memories of a unique industry from the 1920 to 1990s. There is also a digital display of photographs spanning a number of years.

The exhibition has been built in the shape of an old kiln, including a chimney. The interior floor has pipes showing how an updraft kiln worked.

It’s hard to beleive the Peninsula Bridge in Ngatimoti is 100 years old! The bridge was first opened by the Hon. R. Mackenzie, the MP for Motueka in 1913.

On 6 July 2013 Lassie turned up in all her splendor joined by a 1928 Dodge Victory, a Model T and a 1913 Unic among others to help with the celebrations. Locals from the district gathered to share stories and a cup of tea. Overall it was a wonderful day. We hope the bridge stands for at least another hundred years!

We know some of Lassie’s fans really care about what’s on the inside. So here are the facts and figures:

She was originally purchased for £1,300 from Perfection Motors Ltd. Nelson in 1930.

Engine: 8 cylinder 5,500 ccFuel Efficiency: 12 – 14 miles to the gallon (about 6 – 7 kms per liter)Seats: 7 peopleBody Style: SaloonTyres: 18 inches (45.5 cm)Extras: pipe lighter, blotter with La Salle crest, fog light

The interior has been reupholstered and the white wall tyres are new but otherwise our Lassie is in original condition. Fancy a ride?

The museum has been hard at work updating its exhibits. About this time last year we started on the installation of our new horticulture and transportation exhibit. The Fruit Garden of New Zealand, which opened in October 2012, was made possible in part thanks to a grant from the Lion Foundation.

This year the Lion Foundation has been instrumental in helping us get our collection photographed. We have been able to hire a part time assistant to photograph the collection.

This year we are continuing with the redevelopment of our permanent exhibits and will also be producing a new exhibit on the tobacco industry. The projects are made possible in part thanks to grants from the Lottery Grants Board and the New Zealand Tobacco Industry Historical Trust.

We are also please to announce that our temporary exhibits will get a revamp as we have recently confirmed funding from the Cantebury Community Trust for new exhibition furniture. We will be get brand new cases and mannequins.

Our beloved Lassie is a 1929 Caddilac La Salle 340 V8. She was originally purchased in 1930 by W T Evans who gave her the nickname Lassie. About a decade later Bert Hickmott purchased our Lassie. In the 1940s and 50s she was used as a school bus in the Riwaka and Brooklyn areas. Some 40 years later she came into the care of the museum’s trust.

In 2009 Lassie made a comeback after spending several years in storage. Her first official duty was to christen the new Ruby Bay bypass in Mapua along side many other vintage cars in 2010.

Since 2011 she has mainly been used as a wedding car, escorting people on their special day. A ride in our Cadillac is part of the prize package in the Dream Maker Dream Wedding Competition.

Want a ride in our Caddy? You don’t have to wait for your wedding day! Become a sponsor and find out how you can cruise around in our vintage car.