A few colourful tales have emerged from recent events linked to Waipā District Libraries’ Heritage Month.
Saturday’s talk on ‘Small town, Big stories – Photographs from the Museum’, presented by Cambridge Museum manager Elizabeth Harvey, told of an intrepid police constable who in 1875 leapt into the flooded Waikato River to successfully lasso and land the fast-disappearing low-level bridge of its day.
Elizabeth Harvey points out the bridge washed down the river and retrieved by a police constable at Small Town, Big Stories
Another tale was around a photograph of WW2 soldiers serving overseas, holding a variety of items posted to them by local woman Minnie Rippon. Minnie owned a sweet shop, and her touching gesture throughout the war was her way of sending home comforts to the Cambridge lads who had been her young customers.
Harvey’s presentation began with the showing of an image of a mother and child, taken on August 19, 1839, six months before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It is one of the museum’s earliest photographs, but the identity of the individuals in the image remains a mystery as it is simply labelled ‘old photo’.
“The documentation of photographs coming to the museum was nothing like it is today,” she said, impressing upon her audience the importance of writing things down – long or short – to document events or to name people and places in material given to the museum.
Small Town, Big Stories – the fire at National Hotel.
Some 7000 photographs make up a huge part of the museum’s collection, and many of those taken by Reg Buckingham through the 1960/80s are of significant national value. “Some are held in Te Papa, others at the Auckland Art Gallery. We are the copyright holders of that collection … we’re very proud of that.”
Many chronicle Cambridge’s progress through the decades, and show events linked to its residents. They include remarkable images of bridge building, floods and fires, street celebrations marking the end of WW1, and visually portray the creation in the 1940s of Lake Karāpiro and the hydro power station.
Harvey’s talk at the Cambridge Library was the second in the Heritage Month series. The first, which took place a week earlier, featured a talk by local author Celine Kearney on her book ‘Southern Celts’.
‘Southern Celts’ author Celine Kearney spoke about the lives of Kiwis with Scottish or Irish roots.
Kearney initially wrote it as an academic work for her PhD, which was awarded through Victoria University in Melbourne in 2017. It included the stories of 38 people she interviewed through her travels around New Zealand. After re-contacting them about a decade later, this time with the book ‘Southern Celts’ in mind, the number of final stories published ended up at 23, among them musicians, writers, a master carver, sculptor, sports people, a church minister, a Treaty of Waitangi educator and a museum archivist.
Kearney’s own story, as the granddaughter of three Irish-born grandparents and one born to an immigrant Irish family in Central Otago, is among them. She went on to work as a journalist and researcher, and now works in applied linguistics.
She said the book explores the ways Kiwis with Celtic connections bring those cultural aspects to their lives in New Zealand.
Next up in the Heritage Month lineup is a talk at Te Awamutu Library on March 13, entitled ‘Unveiling History: Te Awamutu Cenotaph’.
The Cambridge Museum is also presenting ‘Finding the Photographs: Michael Jeans Exhibition’ from March 15-21, and ‘Capturing Cambridge: Reg Buckingham Exhibition’ from March 18-21 – both in the Town Hall.
Then and Now: Small Town, Big Stories
