The Ghost Museum

The quest for knowledge continues. Where I can I’ve been matching artifacts to the walks. Some artifacts leave me with more questions than answers, like where are they? I know about them, like the braided samples of blonde, brown and red hair taken from the Waitakere rock shelters, which used to be on display at Auckland War Memorial Museum and were written about by Maori Historian Sir Peter Buck. What’s not shown can be just as important as what is shown.

Truth is truth however it’s framed. Surely we can make up our own minds. We can look at the museum artifacts and ask questions. I used to park at Auckland Museum when I was having cancer treatment at Auckland Hospital in 2021. The hospital is just up the road from the museum and fortunately the radiation part of the treatment happened between lockdowns. The museum visits were something to look forward to before going back to my car. Now those galleries at Auckland Museum are closed because of asbestos, and Rotorua Museum is closed because of earthquake strengthening.

That’s bad enough, but what do you say when the museum itself is an artifact?

This empty lot is the site of the former Turangi Museum, parked off to one side of State Highway 41 beyond the southern fringe of the small town.

Fifty years ago the museum was regarded as a national treasure and attracted busloads – the parking area had to be extended to accommodate six buses at a time.

The pre-maori artifacts and other historical exhibits unearthed from the excavations for the Tokaanu tail race below the power station were arguably the most extensive collection of pre-maori moa hunter period artifacts in NZ.

Our visit was in the spring of 2024. It appears a revisionist “tornado” of epic proportions has razed the site. Only three mute relics are left rotting and rusting away – a section of one of the pipes from the tail race of the Tokaanu Power Station, a forlorn monument of a plough dedicated to the early settlers, Polynesian and European, “symbolic of the unity between the descendants,” and a lost anchor in the bushes. The message at the base of the plough is poignant, a mute commentary, a silent rebuke at our cancelled culture.

It all means nothing now. All that remains are questions, surely these could be on display at the Turangi Visitors Centre instead of being left to moulder? Do the council and iwi not agree with the dedication to the settlers?

Trevor Hosking, the archaeologist for the Tongariro Power Development wrote, “I designed and built a monument dedicated to the early settlers, both Maori and Pakeha. A large boulder with an interesting band of red iron oxide through it was used to represent the land we both live on. I carved a replica of a peg-topped stockade post to represent the Maori inhabitants, from those who had settled recently, right back to the first ones to arrive. It was fixed to a groove in the rock. An old horse-drawn swing plough was placed on top of the boulder to symbolize European settlement … Sir Hepi te Heuheu had approved of the drawings.”

The inscription on the monument reads: