Waiheke Island Historical Society

AGM 30^th March, 2014

Opened at 2.10 p.m

Apologies: Anne Anderson, Wes Burns, Marnie Fabian, Marlene Gray, Don McKenzie, Kara Nelson, Jan Scott, Priscilla Tobin, Bert and Margaret Woolcott

Present: Bob Anderson (+ proxy vote for Anne Anderson), Arnie Aretz, Mary Batten, Elsie Brown, Rosemary Burns, Christiane Hepburn (+ proxy vote for Tom Hepburn), Christine Hoffman (+proxy vote for Marnie Fabian), Mark James (+ proxy vote for Marine Le Minor) Paul Monin, Judith Phillips, Glen Rogers, Betty Tattersal, Jan Vail, Ted Wright

All were welcomed by Vice President Arnie Aretz in place of Anne Anderson who is in Hospital.

Minutes of last meeting: Proposed by Christine Hoffman and seconded by Mark James. Carried

Vice President’s Report

With Anne Anderson, our president, being absent you will have to make do with a Vice President’s Report.

I would like to thank the committee Anne Anderson, Bob Anderson, Christine Hoffman, Mark James, Judith Phillips, and Jan Vail for their hard work and support to keep the Museum up and running during the last year. We are also very grateful to Mary Batten, Elsie Brown, Priscilla Tobin, Elaine and Ted Wright who have helped with Guide Duty, Gardening and maintaining the Archive. Without them we simply could not have managed.

As you know the new lease for the Historic Village continued to occupy or should I say preoccupy the president and committee in 2013. The last two years have been very difficult for us: we were literally forced to tread water and just keep the Museum open, but could not instigate any changes or developments. Our biggest regret has been that, with the uncertainty over the lease hanging over us, we could not approach any funding charity to apply for a grant. We know we have missed out, but hopefully other worthy causes did not.

Now for the good news: the new lease was signed, sealed and delivered this week.

The new Auckland Council has adopted a policy of granting standard, uniform leases to all tenants. While understandable in view of the number of leases granted, this leaves little if any room for individual negotiations of most of the terms and conditions, especially for a small organisation like ours.

I will outline just the three most important changes:

1. Rent: we were very pleased and grateful to learn that Auckland Council is recognising that our work at the Historic Village and Museum is not a commercial venture but of cultural and social value to the community and has rewarded us by reducing the rent from $500.00 to a peppercorn rent of $1.00.

2. Insurance: this change has a much greater impact:

Auckland Council demands that all tenants have a third party liability insurance cover of $5 million which is $3 million or 150% more than our current cover of $2 million.

This will mean our insurance premium will go up by about $1000. The reduction in rent will help a lot, but we still have to find another $500 or have $500 less for other projects.

3. Boundary Changes: the area we occupy under the new lease

has been changed by taking out the wetlands on the Eastern and Western sides. This is actually to our advantage because the duty of looking after them is potentially quite onerous.

We have a copy of the lease including the new plan of the new grounds you can inspect.

Unless anyone has questions I propose that we draw a line, no, make that a double line under the topic of “Lease” and devote our time and efforts to the future.

Recent Projects and other news

New Computer: we were very grateful for a grant from the New Hope Shop allowing us to upgrade our computer. Keen to recycle the old computer, still running on Windows XP has not been put to grass. It will never see the internet again but is still useful in the Museum and we have loaded all of our Photo Archive on to it and will add other material, such as School Records to allow visitors “digital access to them.

New “Tool Shed” Exhibit: we have also started work on a new exhibit the which will soon house most of our tools in a “make-belief” tool shed, designed and built by Bob Anderson with a little help of his builder’s mate Arnie . Rumour has it that it might be very popular with our gentlemen visitors while many ladies may fail to see the attraction of a heap of rusty tools…

New “The Great Fire of 1997” Display: we discovered some remains having come through the 1997 old Woolshed fire and have assembled them together with photos and labels in a new more eye-catching display documenting our disastrous loss.

Edwin Carr Display – we have been donated a terracotta bust of the famous NZ composer Edwin Carr together with papers incl. musics relating to his work. We hope to mount a display of this soon.

New WIHS Publication: In 2012 we started a series of short pamphlets called “Waiheke Historical Pamphlets” with “Waiheke Island - An Outline of the Early History” followed in 2013 by “Milestones of Waiheke Island’s History”. More are planned.

Anyone who has used our Dixie Day’s book “Waiheke Pioneers” for research may want to look at and hopefully buy our latest publication: An Index to Dixie Day’s ‘Waiheke Pioneers’

You can buy all three booklets at special prices today.

The Mystery Ship Model

We were very surprised to find this splendid “seaworthy” model of a sailing ship outside our door without any indication to origin and the donor. An article in Gulf News helped to solve the mystery of the origin, but we still do not know the donor

It needed quite a bit of TLC, but Bob Anderson took it into “dry-dock” and give it the refit it needed. It will take pride of place in our shipping display soon.

Other challenges and opportunities

We continue to face problems in three critical areas where we desperately need your advice and assistance:

Manpower: We are still sailing with a skeleton crew. Holidays, overseas travel and illness, especially in winter can mean that we cannot open the Museum on our usual ‘open days’ which we utterly deplore.

We do need more help! We are not asking for a huge commitment in time: if we had a few more people giving just 4 hours ONCE a month (that is just 1.6 % of the hours you have between 8.00 am and 4.00 pm) we could probably stick to our advertised opening hours during the whole year.

There is no reason to feel daunted by the prospect of being a Guide on Duty. You will be shown the ropes by sitting in on a duty session with an old hand as often as you want. Don’t forget you will not be rushed off you feet all the time. There will be quiet periods during which you can write that letter or poem, compose a song or just read your book.

Even if you do not feel like doing guide duty you could still give much wanted help:

Keep the garden tidy – no fixed opening hours: you decide when and for how long you want to work. You can claim a certain area as you “patch” and it will be yours to look after.

Help to keep the Museum and the Cottages neat and tidy – again you determine the hours days, which, actually, are ideally outside opening times.

Shrinking Membership: Our membership is shrinking because we are not very good at marketing ourselves.

With you being interested in Waiheke History there must be people you know who are like-minded. Know somebody who has recently retired and is at a loose end? Joining our Society surely beats propping up the bar in a so-called sports club!

Let’s all try to introduce just one new member in the coming year!

Lack of Exhibition Space: We have come a long, long way since the opening of this building our meeting is held in as the first Historical Museum on Waiheke. We have a lot of exhibits we cannot display for lack of space and would dearly love another building. If you know of any old house no longer needed or loved, why not try to persuade the owner to donate it to us. The bequest would have to include the cost of the transport to the Historic Village, but the building will then carry the name of the person nominated.

I cannot imagine a better monument to a loved relative.

Financial Report by Treasurer Jan Vail:

I am pleased to present my report for the year to December 2013 to members of the Waiheke Island Historical Society.

Financially, the Society is in a sound position. Our income from donations and shop sales was slightly higher than the previous year and our expenditure was also lower. After adjustments for non cash expenditure, there was a small operating profit of $1,566 for the year.

Visitor numbers were up from 2012 mostly due to tour group operators bringing their customers to the Museum as part of their tour stops. Visitor numbers from normal visitors average out at approximately 24 each week.

We operate a water station for the Wharf to Wharf Fun Run in January and for our efforts we receive $250 from the W2W committee to add to our general funds.

We received a grant of $1,118 from the New Hope Shop in December for the replacement of our ageing and very slow computer system. The old computer has been set up in the Museum to display our extensive collection of photographs. Visitors can access the computer files and order copies of photos from us.

You will note that no rent has been paid to9 Auckland City during the 2013 year. There has been a change of lease policy under the new council from July 2012 whereby the rent has reverted to a “peppercorn” amount of $1 per annum if demanded.

As a voluntary organisation, the society is dependent on your membership fees and donations from the public to operate the Museum. The committee thanks you for your ongoing support.

Statement of Financial Performance for the year ended 31 December 2013.

Statement of Financial Position for the year ended 31 December 2013

Jan moved that the financial statements are approved

Moved by Christine Hoffman and seconded by Christiane Hepburn. Carried.

Nominations for committee:

Bob Anderson, Christine Hoffman and Judith Philips.

Nominations for committee and Officers:

President Anne Anderson

Vice Presidents Mark James & Arnie Aretz

Secretary Anne Anderson

Treasurer Jan Vail

No objections and Carried by all present.

General Busines

There was a discussion on the reprinting of Waiheke Pioneers and we will have to start from scratch re printing and include the index.

A Quiz Night is still to be arranged for sometime in April.

Next Saturday the 5^th April is a Garden & Cottage tidy up Working Bee starting at 10a.m. And later a BBQ.

Bring things to work with in garden or cottages.

Rain date Sunday 6^th April.

Speaker

Shirin Brown, Deputy Chair of Waiheke Local Board spoke to us on ways we could raise our profile and work with other groups and organisations

Identifying areas of historical importance on walking tracks around Waiheke.

Joining with other groups for readings at the Museum and the use of Day Cottage. Ideas were mooted with regards to Heritage Festival on Waiheke and also on ANZAC Day.

She was thanked for coming to our AGM and her contribution.

Meeting closed at 3.45p.m. followed by afternoon tea