Toitu Otago Settlers Museum

A planned new report may shed further light on the best ways of protecting the remnants of a historic manuka causeway unearthed during construction of Dunedin's Wall Street retail mall.

Only another $520,000 has to be raised towards a $12.05 million community funding target for the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum redevelopment, thanks mainly to successful fundraising.

Toitu Otago Settlers Museum has won the Museums Aotearoa Project Achievement Award - Significant Project for its recently-completed $37.5 million redevelopment.

Visits to Toitu Otago Settlers Museum had topped 140,000 since it reopened in December, museum director Linda Wigley told the museum board at its meeting yesterday.

Thursday late nights have proved popular at Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, attracting 1690 people since the redeveloped museum reopened to the public in December.

The Toitu Otago Settlers Museum's $37.5 million redevelopment is adding to Dunedin's growing reputation as a nationally significant culture and heritage visitor destination, museum director Linda Wigley says.

Visiting Toitu Otago Settlers Museum netted Peter Hunt a bouquet of flowers on Valentine's Day yesterday.

Dunedin police are considering whether to lay charges after four tourists entered a stormwater drain outside Toitu Otago Settlers Museum last night to explore some of Dunedin's less familiar and subterranean sites.

Management of the Dunedin Chinese Garden is to be merged with the neighbouring Toitu Otago Settlers Museum as part of a shake-up designed to minimise the garden's cost to ratepayers.

More than 44,000 people have visited the redeveloped Toitu Otago Settlers Museum less than a month after it reopened, in a ''quite remarkable'' public response, museum organisers say.