Waimarino Museum ...a tribute

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 1, Issue 8, 26 July 1983, Page 3

Waimarino Museum ...a tribute

That little old Raetihi railway station is a museum piece in itself, but the artifacts it contains take us far further back than its birth date of 1917 and offer a glimpse of the lives of the men and women who laid the foundations of the Waimarino district we know today. These were the people who, from 1892 onwards, came mostly via the Wanganui River and the Pipiriki track to take up their allotments of standing bush and make of them green pasture lands for sheep and cattle. Hardy pioneers that they were, they pitched their tents amongst the tall trees and set to with axe and saw to clear a space and build themselves a slab whare before our rigorous winter clapped down upon them. To these primitive homes came wives and children, and that was where they liv-

ed for as many years as it took for their menfolk to clear and burn sufficient bush on their sections to enable them to sow grass and run a few head of stock. In time the crude whares were replaced by houses, shops appeared in the small township with its ever muddy main street and life became a trifle less hard for the settlers. But never was it easy for that first generation of settlers and a glance at the tools, implements, cooking utensils and other jtems on display in that small museum makes one wonder how they coped at all, particularly the womenfolk. Most managed with an open fire with pots and kettle hanging on hooks from an iron bar and, if they were lucky, an ingenious device called a crane (which is an outsize iron kettle hanging from an arm beside the fire) to be

swung round over the embers once cooking was completed in order to heat water for washing dishes, clothes or children. But, cope those early people undoubtedly did, and what is even more amazing are the refinements that went along with that coping. In the pioneer room at the museum can be seen full length christening gowns of white embroidered muslin and embroidered table cloths and doilys — we don't bother with such things today, we'd rather watch TV. But step back in time, about ninety years, and imagine doing a weekly wash in a galvanised iron tub with a scrubbing board. In that tub you will also bath the children — and yourself once a week in front of the kitchen fire. Should your imagination baulk at that there are hosts of photographs to show you. Not of people in the bath tub — perish the thought, they were far too modest for that — but of people doing the things they did in the difficult clothes they wore. Ankle length frocks were for wdmen, frilly pinafores for little girls, small boys had knickerbockers and their fathers wore shirt, trousers and braces — always braces, belts were just an extra and to hold the sheath knife. Those old photos tell one more than anything else and the museum has a fine collection donated by the generations which have built on the foundations laid by their hard-working, never-give-in grandparents who came early to the Waimarino.

There is more to be seen than one can absorb in one visit, fo'r the collection spans ninety years of history. There is a room of interesting tools of all kinds and some of the gigantic saws which cut their way through the boles of the great trees of the Waimarino forest; and

there are reminders of the district's sawmilling era. But that's another story. Mercifully, we have people prepared to preserve it so that those who come after may know what manner of men and women their ancestors were. Contributed by

Elizabeth

Allen,

Raetihi