A reminder of what life in Dunedin was like in the 19th century is taking shape with the construction of a replica wattle and daub cottage at the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.
The cottage will replace one at the museum which displayed, behind glass, three rooms with more elaborate furnishings from a later period of the more-established European settlement.
The latest replica focuses on initial organised European settlement in 1848, when house construction was basic and furnishings spartan.
"People had to front up with a bit of grit and character," museum curator and historian Sean Brosnahan said yesterday.
Scottish early settlers used whatever materials were at hand, including mud and manuka wood.
When the museum reopens late this year, visitors will be able to walk into the cottage.
It is modelled on a description of a wattle and daub cottage built by an early Scottish settler, John Buchanan, in 1848, in Dunedin, near Maclaggan St and in the vicinity of the modern Jubilee Park, then thickly covered with trees.
Mr Buchanan had emigrated to Dunedin aboard the sailing ship Philip Laing in 1848, with his brother, Thomas. They had previously been weavers in Kirkintilloch, an area northeast of central Glasgow.
A descendant of the Buchanans, Helen Edwards, said seeing a duplicate of the Buchanan cottage being brought to life had been an "amazingly positive" experience, and "quite emotional".
"After great perseverance and difficulty I have at length succeeded" in building a house, Mr Buchanan had written in an early letter.
This work had been single-handed, except for two and a-half days' help from fellow immigrant Alexander Watson, he noted.
