Upcoming events and activities at your museum.

1. Working Bee - Thursday, 17 November from 10.00 am

To ensure the Museum is spic-and-span for the anticipated influx of visitors over the holiday season, we will be holding a working bee on Thursday, 17 November beginning at 10.00 am. So if you can spare an hour or two for dusting, vacuuming, weeding and general tidying, we'd love to see you. If you have any special building or carpentry skills, then you'd be doubly welcome as there are a number of minor repairs needing to be done. Refreshments will be available during the morning,

2. Live Heritage Day - Sunday, 29 January 2023

The Committee is currently planning to hold a Live Heritage Day on the Sunday of Auckland Anniversary Weekend, 29 January 2023. This will be our first such event in three years. Past events have featured a variety of activities including, butter making, rug making, flax weaving, a display of restored stationary engines and a vintage fire engine as well as demonstrations of a variety of farming and woodworking tools and much else besides.

We're now looking for suggestions and/or offers for potential displays and demonstrations for the event in January. So if you'd be prepared to put on a demonstration or mount an interactive display illustrating some aspect of Waiheke's heritage, please let me know. You can contact me either by return email, at the Museum on Wednesdays between 11 and 3 or at any time by phone at either of the numbers listed at the end of this message.

There will also be plant and bric a brac sales on the day and we will be advertising the availability of a limited number of stalls, in return for a fee, for anyone wishing to sell craft items and the like which are in keeping with our "live heritage" theme. As noted, there will be a limited number of places available for such stalls so we're offering members an opportunity to get in first. If you would like to book a stall please contact me by any of the means mentioned in the previous paragraph.

3. Repairs and maintenance of Champion Cottage

The committee is assessing the feasibility of mounting a campaign to raise funds for repairs and maintenance that are urgently required for Champion Cottage. At the very least, a number of weatherboards need to be replaced and the cottage needs a good coat of paint. However, as any builder will advise, one can never really tell what needs to be done until the cladding is removed and one has had a good look at the underlying structure. 

As we would like some idea of the likely costs before we go ahead and launch any campaign, we are currently in the process of seeking estimates from several builders. If you know of anyone who might be interested in giving an estimate or would like to do so yourself, please let me know either by return email or by phone at one of the numbers below.

As sourcing weatherboards that in keeping with the cottage's age and style is likely to be difficult (to say nothing of being expensive if we need to have them specially milled) if you know of any potential source of old but serviceable weatherboards, the committee would be interested in hearing from you.

4. Auckland Heritage Festival Display in the Waiheke Library

Many of you may already have seen the collection of photos currently on display in the Library as part of the Auckland Heritage Festival. A number of the photos were sourced from our archives and I'd encourage you to get along and have a look if you have not already done so. As a result of our involvement with the current display, we are now exploring mounting a regular, possibly monthly, display in the Library which will feature items from our collection. This might be a single item from the collection which has some current or perhaps novelty interest. Or it could be several "Then" and "Now" photos highlighting the changes our island's landscape has undergone. We will be trying to ensure a degree of variety in whatever is displayed and we'll send out an email to members whenever there is a new display.

5. Updating the Museum's own displays

Finally, from time to time there is discussion at committee meetings about whether our current displays, especially in the main building, need to be updated. Committee members have made a number of suggestions about possible changes in some of the cabinets but we'd also like to hear what ideas our members have for displays. So if there's something you'd like to see featured or made more prominent in our displays, please let us know. We're currently looking at replacing the current display featuring the late Ron Leonard with one highlighting the life of Kara (Kit) Nelson, a long-time member of the Historical Society who died earlier this year. 

In addition and now that the date of the Coronation has been announced, we'll undoubtedly be looking to mount a display of our coronation mugs, cups and crockery to coincide with that event.

That's all for now, but in conclusion, please be in contact if you can contribute in any way to any of the matters mentioned above.

Best wishes,

Logan Moss

President

Waiheke Island Historial Society

Ph: (09) 372 3666

Mobile: 021 02269536