NEWS/PRESS RELEASES

The New Zealand Museum Awards were celebrated in Hamilton as part of Museums Aotearoa's Conference 'Leading Museums' and The Kauri Museum at Matakohe won the award for an outstanding innovative project that contributes to the best practice in the Museum Sector in New Zealand.  The project was for Achieving CarboNZero Certification.  A world-leading sustainable museum operation.

The Museum's School Holiday Programme is a great hit with visitors.
Come and learn how to polish gum while Mum and Dad browse around the museum. 
Children of all ages are having fun during their holidays visiting the museum and learning "What it was like being a child 100 years ago".

Gum polishing and other fun acitivities will be continuing until 25th January 2013.

It was a lifetime highlight for me that The Kauri Museum was voted FAVOURITE ATTRACTION 11/12 FOR THE ULTIMATE TOUR SERIES FOR NEW ZEALAND at the Grand Pacific Tours awards evening held in Melbourne last week.

This series of Grand Pacific Tours is 20-seat coach that is high standard of luxury and convenience that is for high end travellers.  For example they stay 4-5 star hotels and while in Northland take in the Bay of Islands Overnight Cruise on the "Ipipiri".  These visitors demand the best and it was the cream of the awards to win especially taking in the whole of New Zealand.  The ultimate tour is very popular and travels from Bay of Islands in the Northland to Dunedin in the south taking in the best of what New Zealand has to offer.

Grand Pacific Tours is a most successful Melbourne Company who are New Zealand specialists and are 100% focused on providing the best coach holiday their company can provide.  On these holidays everything is taken care of and the visitors just need to sit back and enjoy the magical place that New Zealand is.  Their clients are mainly Australian although this season there are many joining the tour from the United Kingdom and North America.

Betty Nelley
Chief Executive Officer
The Kauri Museum


From left to right: Stacia Morris - General Manager Grand Pacific Tours, Betty Nelley - CEO The Kauri Museum, Peter Harding - CEO Grand Pacific Tours

The Museum's School Holiday programme is a hit with visitors.
A lot of Otamatea residents came under the "free admission" scheme.
School children in the area came to see the Matariki-themed kites display.
As expected, Miss Strict hit it off with the kids who even queued with excitement to sample the "strap".

The Pop-Up Book display is on show until 5th August.
This is a must see and experience for the young and old alike.
We would like to thank our volunteers Teri Donaldson, Margaret Powell, and June Weber for their help as "story tellers".

On Thursday, 26th April 2012 The Kauri Museum officially became the first Museum in the world to be certified carboNZero.

Graham Carter of carboNZero presented Betty Nelley, CEO of The Kauri Museum with a framed certificate in the presence of the Rt Hon John Key, Dr The Rt Hon Lockwood Smith and Northland MP Mike Sabin at the Tourism Meeting held at Matakohe.

Betty Nelley said that as a mark of consciousness to be sustainable, achieving carboNZero certification demonstrated excellence while showing integrity and best practice.

A majestic 19th-century sideboard commissioned for the newly built Criterion Hotel in Wanganui (the original burnt down) has been donated to The Kauri Museum by Mr Wayne Young.

Built in 1898 and measuring 2.8 meters across and 3.3 meters high, the iconic sideboard has spent much of its life in Criterion Hotel purchased by Mr Young in 1971; transferred to his other hotels in the early 70s, Waitara Hotel and finally the Duke of Marlborough Hotel in Russell, the place once known as the hell hole of the South Pacific before becoming NZ's first capital.

Now retired from its historic past Mr Young ensured that it goes to a very suitable home where it will be fully appreciated by everyone.


Photo shows the museum Matriarch 101-yr old Mavis Smith beside the 114-yr old historic sideboard.

 FORGOTTEN FILMS COME TO LIGHT - June 2011

Rare film footage that has lain forgotten in archives for generations has been compiled into a series of three video movies on the kauri industry and are now on permanent show at The Kauri Museum, at Matakohe in Northland.

They have been launched across five interactive television screens at a 'premiere' with House Speaker, the Rt. Hon Lockwood Smith, making a keynote address, citing the movies as a vital educational resource.

The Kauri Museum Curator, Bet Nelley, says the movie display is "a technological advance to tell the story of the past."

The videos, on DVD are the work of Kiwi film-maker Tom Williamson.

Kauri - The Timber  tells of how the huge trees were felled in the bush and transported to the sawmills; Kauri - The Gum  relates how the swamps were worked and the product was collected and sold while Kauri - Heart of the Forest, Soul of a Nation, tells how attitudes changed from ruthless timber extraction to total protection.

"The kauri DVDs started for me when I received a commission from the Department of Conservation to make a video record of work begun in 1999 to stabilise the driving dam on the Kaiarara stream on Great Barrier Island," Mr Williamson said.

"But the audience needed to know something about the kauri logging days to know why driving dams were used at all, and therefore why it was important to preserve the best and largest surviving example of an uniquely New Zealand idea."

"There were several important chunks of kauri history missing so I approached The Kauri Museum.  That led to searches in the national archives, Alexander Turnbull Library and National Film Unit and there I found material that had not been seen for four and five generations."

Ms Nelley said the story of how the kauri resource was exploited "is essential to understanding New Zealand's history.  There are several fine books on the subject, but this new video history taps into libraries and archives and presents the past in ways never published before.

"Interviews with survivors who worked during the last days of the tree felling, and with people involved in restoring the damage today, offer very personal perspectives on the events of the last 150 years.

"These videos on display are hugely important.  We cannot stop still - we have to be forever reaching out and continually strengthening the Kauri story and to be searching, researching and filling any gaps in the story.  We aspire to be the centre of excellence for Kauri research.

For me personally the 'film stars' are Northland people i.e. Bruce Alexander on Kauri Timber or Milan Jurlina on Kauri gum who are the last living who share the most amazing stories from those industries.

The DVD (Kauri - the history) is available exclusively from The Kauri Museum.


House Speaker, the Rt. Hon Lockwood Smith making a keynote address.


From left to right:    The Kauri Museum Board Chairman Derek Hope,
Rt. Hon Lockwood Smith, Curator Betty Nelley and filmmaker Tom Williamson.

 

  WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THIS HUGE KAURI LOG!


                   
Visitors look in amazement at the 5m kauri log (2.44m in diameter; 7.93m girth; weight 14.2 tonne)

Large containers sitting on the top of the logs have been a talking point with visitors at The Kauri Museum.  What is happening to the kauri logs?  Some of the huge kauri logs have been stored in an inside environment for as long as forty years.  It has been a challenge to stop them drying out and to stop them cracking.  Where in the world would you find such large logs stored in a Museum?  We had to call in experts and scientists to help.  Bet Nelley, Curator of the Museum said that scientist Dr Jonathan Palmer and experienced saw miller Nelson Parker who has a wealth of experience preserving ancient kauri are working together on this project talking with other conservators.  The dilemna has been how to carry out preservation with such a huge article that is on display to the public.  Generally, to stop old timber drying out, it is put in a bath but this was impossible for such a giant log.  We are unable to shower it with water.  It is our responsibility to preserve these precious logs and to keep the logs looking good for many more decades.

The trunk or log of a living tree has water being pumped through part of it (sapwood) and oils and resins being stored in other parts (heartwood).  When a tree is cut down the log starts to dry out.  Frequently, one of the side effects of this are cracks appearing in the wood.  It is a bit like your skin getting too dry and also sometimes cracking.  These logs have been on display for several decades and have dried out.  In order to try to prevent more cracks from forming we are injecting back into the log some wood "moisturizing lotion" called polyethylene glycol (PEG for short).  From each canister there is a feed pipe leading into a hole which has been drilled about one third of the way through the trunk.  We are monitoring how much PEG is being stored but expect this process to take over six months.  Another thing we have done is "seal" the ends of the logs so that further moisture loss is prevented.

This is an ongoing project that is carefully being measured and monitored.