Catherine Groenestein
South Taranaki Museum Trust trustees Jim Baker and Dave Crompton, left, administrator Bronwyn Wattrus, centre, collections assistant Rob Groat and museum team leader Luana Paamu, right, are looking forward to the opening of their new building.
A trust devoted to caring for the relics of South Taranaki’s past is on the hunt for some new blood.
The South Taranaki District Museum Trust urgently needs several new trustees because two long-term members, Marie McKay and current chair Roseanne Oakes, will both step down at its annual meeting in October.
The trust runs the district museum, Aotea Utanganui – Museum of South Taranaki, on Pātea’s main street, in partnership with the South Taranaki District Council.
It’s a good time to join because the trust is in good heart, with the museum just about to open its new $1.2 million building, trustee Dave Crompton, of Hāwera, said.
“We’re looking for people with an interest in history and in preserving South Taranaki’s history, people with a bit of worldly experience,” he said.
They met monthly, and could hold meetings anywhere in the district.
Trustees provided oversight for the museum and helped to raise money for projects such as the new building, while the South Taranaki District Council took care of the staff and the running costs.
And they all shared a love of old items, he said.
Catherine Groenestein/Stuff
Trustees Jim Baker, left, and Dave Crompton are hoping for several new faces to join them on the trust.
On one occasion, he was invited to look through an old house about to be demolished, and found a grubby photo album full of A4-sized prints of photos from the 1870s.
The new building was getting fitted out and should be opened by Christmas.
“I find it pretty satisfying, to me, it’s a sense of achievement, being a small part of a cog in building it,” Crompton said.
Fellow trustee Jim Baker was just a boy in 1967 when his farmer father, Livingston Baker, a keen historian, started the Pātea Historical Society with John Heremaia, and later set up the museum.
ANDY JACKSON/Stuff
The trust oversees Aotea Utanganui: Museum of South Taranaki. (File photo).
His father discovered the Waitore artefacts, which are the oldest dated wooden artefacts ever discovered in New Zealand, estimated to be from the 1400s. They are on display in the museum.
Baker remembers getting sent out one night after dark by his mother, who was worried because his father had not come in for dinner, and found him digging by the light of a full moon.
“Dad used to dig all the drains on the farm by hand, in case he found something,” he said.
- Potential trustees are asked to send an expression of interest by email to [email protected], or by snail mail to 127 Egmont St, Pātea.
