New Zealanders Share Their Museum Memories

Over the past month Auckland Museum has run a competition, calling on New Zealanders to share their memories of the Museum. For the last 80 years countless New Zealanders have visited the museum, taken photos and left with memories. Everyone has a museum story: the first time they visited, their favourite object or learning something new. The Museum has been overwhelmed by the response from the public, and below are a selection of the winning entries.

Jill McKenize – nee Archey:

Auckland

The new War Memorial Museum in Auckland opened on the 29th November 1929, eighty years ago, and my father Gilbert Archey was appointed the first Director of the magnificent new building; he was to remain in charge for nearly 40 years. As a child the museum was my playground. Some of friends thought it was a bit spooky but I didn’t have that feeling... well maybe a little. Sometimes after dinner my father would return to the museum to work and I was allowed to go too. I was frightened of the dark and the large rooms were quite spooky so my father would turn on a switch and I would wait in the pool of light while he went on and turned the next one on and then he would go back for me and turn off that light. That generation never left lights on ! And so we would progress though the building and up to a small room near the roof where he would do more work in his research on the moa. He would also do some of his photography of carvings in the quite without distraction.

Later, when the war was on, blackout curtains covered the seaward side of the Museum and it was even darker. One night I told him I could hear water running and sure enough there was a burst pipe. If we had not gone that night the waka would have been afloat in the morning and a lot of damage done. For a while there were two tuataras in a cage on the roof and my father and I would go up to check on them. No one believed me but recently an old friend confirmed she could remember visiting them. Then there were the film mornings. To boost the popularity of the main educational film, there were free cartoons shown - Popeye, Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse. Those mornings were very popular and I was always able to go and take a small friend. I was very lucky girl and have wonderful memories of my father and of those early days of the museum.

Tui Lafaele

Favona, Auckland

It has taken me a lot of visits to finally complete every section at the museum. From top to bottom, I have read everything. I do take my children to the museum but we go to sections that they want to do. I work Monday to Friday and take children to their practising and sports. I barely have time for myself, but when I apply for personal leave – my alone time – I spend the whole day at the museum. I love it, this is my quiet time, you don't have to rush around, no moaning from my children, no talking and I can pace myself. I'm not a geek – I just love history and reading. I can't imagine how long it would take to me to complete Te papa?

Alice McWilliams

Point Chevalier, Auckland

I was 10 years old when the museum opened. I lived near the zoo and loved watching the elephants, Jamuna and Rajah, there. One day, wearing a new suit and fashionable new black beret, I was standing with my friends in front of the elephant house, when suddenly Rajah snatched the precious beret from my head. “Give it back!” I cried, but he wouldn’t. Now, on my occasional visits to the museum, I ask Rajah, “What did you do with my beautiful black beret?”

Shirley Famer

Kohimarama, Auckland

I am 82 and attended Beresford Street School. We were taken to the Museum on foot when I was about 11 years old, and told very sternly not to look up at the metal male doing an arabesque at the gates. We probably would not have noticed, but because of the instructions we sneaked a glance! My late brother-in-law was a U.S. marine in Auckland for a while. During this time he was at the Auckland Museum illustrating and combining a booklet “Food is where you find it”. This was reprinted 7 times and I have been told that you still have one on file. Donald Peters, the marine, met and married my sister while here and she went to live in the U.S. They have both now died.

RT HON Ron Tizard

Grafton, Auckland

I own a photo taken by my mother Mrs J.M. Tizard, probably on the first weekend of November 1929. The man in the back row is my father Henry James Tizard who served as a machine gunner in France 1917-18 with the 1st NZEF, service number 308823. He was a private by rank and had been invalided back to England for much of 1918 suffering from peritonitis. He is holding my youngest brother William Joseph Tizard, then aged about 2 ½ years old. Desmond Henry Tizard is the boy sitting hunched under a white sun hat in the middle of the front row— aged just four years then, and I am the boy holding a beach spade on the right of the row. I was 5½ years old then. The other three adults and four children were a family group known to my father. I believe that the man had served with Dad in INZEF. The grass and weeds along the front of the bottom terrace below the Cenotaph is a sign of the times– the Museum was completed for the official opening ceremony, but the funds for its construction had been exhausted, leaving nothing for the completion of the forecourt and the installation of the two naval guns from the (scrapped) battle cruiser HMS New Zealand, this country’s gift to the British Royal Navy.