Eclectic sample of our rural heritage

West Otago Vintage Club members, from left, Mark Tutty, Wilma Brock, and Charlie Davis, love to share their extensive local knowledge with visitors to the club's museum in Tapanui. PHOTO: RICHARD DAVISON

West Otago Vintage Club in Tapanui has a rich variety of items on display, from vintage machinery, to household and other items illustrating life in the area over the past 150 years.

Tucked away in small towns throughout Otago and Southland are the keepers of the community’s history. Today, Richard Davison visits Tapanui.

Unless you visit at the weekend, you'll need to summon a member of the West Otago Vintage Club to let you into its complex of museum sheds in Tapanui.

But that might just turn out to your advantage, as only then can you be certain of a personalised tour, allowing you a glimpse into the seemingly boundless expertise of some of its long-standing guardians.

And be assured there's plenty to take in within its hushed confines.

Encompassing more than 1800 objects, from buttons to steam engines; 4500 photographs; and more than 1300 library and family archive items, the challenge is not what to look at, but what not to look at.

A Cleveland Crawler, an unshowy beast, perhaps distinguished only by its box-like shape (no concessions to style or comfort in those days), and tank-style caterpillar tracks. It was bought hot off the press from the United States, in 1919, by local farmer Edward Murney, for the princely sum of £560. Not the oldest object in the collection, nor even the oldest vehicle that falls to a 1912 Marshall steam traction engine named Stella.

With such a rich and highly localised archive - cataloguing and illustrating first hand the post-European history of West Otago through a range of farming, sawmilling and domestic ephemera - naturally the museum attracts once-local, now remote families seeking clues to their collective past.

However, there's something for everyone to discover here, and each corner reveals fresh fuel for the imagination, building a story held in common by much of New Zealand's rural heartland.

Interestingly, Charlie Davis himself could be considered something of a museum curio.

The final remaining founding member of what is New Zealand's second-oldest vintage club (founded 1958), the softly spoken, vastly knowledgeable local makes time fly with his humorously spun yarns on almost any object you'd care to pick out.

A flour-sifter becomes a "mouse-poo remover", and tractors "square-dance performers" under his original gaze, and his love of the unusual and obscure quickly becomes evident.

One of 130 active and "less active" club members, Mr Davis says visitors will find any of those who volunteer at the museum have their own particular passions, and are usually happy to while away an hour or two.

So delve deep in West Otago this summer: you might depart the wiser.

Opening hours

West Otago Vintage Museum, 59 Northumberland St, Tapanui.

Open 2pm-4pm weekends and public holidays; other times by arrangement (03) 204-8306.

Adults $5, children free.

While you're there

Run the puppies: Black Gully furnishes a perfect picnic spot for your visit, and youngsters will love the historic play equipment. Walking tracks, native bush and more. Located 13km from Tapanui, turn off SH90 near Crookston, on to Black Gully Rd East.

Pick up pressies: Located in a former church, Whitechapel Gifts offers a wide range of regional, seasonal and year-round gifts, plus mountain bikes for hire, if you’re feeling energetic. 13 Forest St, Tapanui, Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm. (03) 204-8441.

Bring home bacon: Blue Mountain Butchery was established in 2017, and supplies a wide range of meats and artisan-crafted small goods, made on site. Bacon is traditionally cured before smoking in the shop’s original, 100-year-old smokehouse. 32 Northumberland Street, Tapanui. (03) 204-8759 / 027 440-7889.

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