Southland heritage

What a wonderful job being done in Oamaru in preserving their heritage and what a wonderful opportunity Priscilla Gear has in the job she has taken up at Whitestone City (a heritage tourist attraction there) to assist with this.

Priscilla was one of the key stalwarts in helping to preserve our Southland heritage at the nowabandoned Southland museum and is now moving to an area where heritage is valued – Oamaru.

Southland people have lost a wonderful museum with a wonderful staff team and the work they were doing at the much-neglected (by our mayor and councillors) Southland museum.

Our mayor and councillors just went to sleep, in my opinion, and allowed our museum structure to ‘‘fall apart’’.

Perhaps if we had had the Gore mayor and councillors who, when they were faced with similar building challenges five or six years ago, did something about it, we would still have what Gore has – a museum.

Perhaps if our mayor and councillors had done what my wife Sylvia and I have done on a regular basis and gone to be immersed in the wonderful displays our museum staff have been doing over the years, we would still have a museum.

It was a pity that a recent arrival to our city, the new city manager, was given the onerous task of closing what has been a city icon for so many years.

We have not only lost the main contact we have with our Southland heritage, but also a wonderful and dedicated museum staff, including Priscilla.

Neil Wyeth

Abridged – Editor