History OF THE MUSEUM OF WAIHEKE

The Museum of Waiheke is run by the Waiheke Island Historical Society. The society was founded in 1974, and the museum opened a decade later in February 1984.

The Museum was sited initially on Anzac Reserve, adjacent to the RSA in Ostend. It moved to its current location in 1990, after the society was offered the gift of an old Woolshed on Onetangi Road, with the proviso that it restore it to a safe condition. Over the next several years, volunteers restored the building, and it opened as the new Museum in time for New Zealand’s 150th Anniversary year.

In the same year, three other buildings joined the now refurbished woolshed on the Onetangi Road site. The first, Champion Cottage, from Wattle Street, Oneroa. It was
renovated and furnished in the style of the 1920-30’s, when it was first built. Apart from a recent refurbishment, it is still set out and furnished in the same style.

Later that year, another cottage was donated to the Society and moved onto the site from Waikare Road in Oneroa. Initially, it was used to house the society’s library, archival material, and as a venue for meetings. During the mid-2000s, it was converted into an exhibition space and now houses displays of household and domestic equipment, and furniture, predominantly from the 1930s-1950s.

Finally, in December 1990, the original museum building from the Anzac Reserve was moved onto the new site. It is now called Day Cottage, in memory of the historical society’s founder, Dixie Day. It currently houses the Society’s archives and extensive photographic collection, together with items from the general collection that are not currently on display.

Disaster struck the Society on July 18^th 1997, when the Woolshed and all its contents were destroyed by fire. Fortunately, thanks to the Volunteer Fire Brigade’s effective work, the other museum buildings sustained only minor heat damage. The Society quickly decided that a replacement building should be built, and chose a spacious, fireproof farm building, suitably modified to meet the needs of a Museum. The new building, subsequently known as “The New Woolshed”, was opened to the public at Labour Weekend 1999.

In 2009, the last of the museum’s buildings, the old Oneroa police cell, was moved onto the Museum site from Waikare Road.

The Museum of Waiheke regularly attracts visitors from throughout New Zealand and overseas, and a recent count of entries in the visitors’ books showed that, over the past decade, more than 30,000 people from over 77 different countries had visited the Museum