Access to Dunedin’s past has never been easier, Paul Gorman writes.
History is literally the foundation stone on which the Dunedin City Council sits. Big chunks of it can be found boxed, filed and shelved below the Civic Centre, two stops down in the lift, in the lower basement.
The city’s archives have undergone a nearly $1 million revamp in recent months. The council is now keen for the public to return to the new facilities and research away to their hearts’ content.
"Yes, we have lots of pictures of men," council archivist Prue Milbank says. "They’re very serious."
Archives of course build up their own histories throughout the years.
The Dunedin City Council Archive began in 1983. Its paper collection goes back to 1855, and the fragile Dunedin Town Board minutes book from that year, which Milbank carefully shows The Weekend Mix, and runs until 2002, when the council’s electronic data records management system began.
Despite the arrival of such modern filing methods, council standing orders require physical, signed copies of minutes and agendas to continue being archived.
According to the DCC website, the archives’ records were boosted in 1989 by the major local government reorganisation of that year. Included from the time of the amalgamation are proceedings and reports from more than 100 predecessor bodies, including the former Port Chalmers and Mornington borough councils, the Silverpeaks and Taieri county councils, and the Dunedin Drainage and Sewerage Board. Documents have also been acquired from other council departments and public donations.
After 40 years, and with changing legal requirements for the storing and preservation of such precious records, the archive was due for refurbishment. Work on the new archive began last July, with material stored elsewhere while efforts progressed. The refurbishment is now largely complete, and the archives are open again to the public, although some work continues on the temperature and humidity control system, which should be finished in a couple of months.
A council spokesman says the upgrade was necessary so the archive better met the Public Records Act’s requirements.
"Previously, the archivists shared their working space with the archive storage material, so part of the project involved creating separate dedicated storage areas, and a new working area for staff, as well as a public reading area separate from the storage space."
The upgrade also includes improved access for people with mobility issues, new and improved shelving, including mobile shelves, a new security system and weatherproofing to prevent moisture build-up.
As archivist, Milbank has oversight of this vast collection of information. She’s the kind of person you’d definitely want on your team at the pub quiz, especially if it was focused on olde Dunedin, yet coming from Tauranga she says she has had a lot to learn.
"I definitely know a lot of just random stuff about Dunedin. But because I’m not from Dunedin, a very generic thing that might have happened in the ’90s I might not know about."
"Part of that is you do an internship. So, I interned here with the heritage adviser a few years ago, and then applied for the [archivist] job here and got it."
Some of the visiting public’s most requested items are building plans, which have been kept since 1900.
"People are after these for information about their own houses. Heritage New Zealand also obviously uses building records for their work, so we are providing that for heritage properties.
"If someone’s a researcher, you can get the random niche questions, but from the general public it’s generally genealogy kind of questions. So, they want to know things like, ‘my ancestor lived in this house, can you tell me when or how long did they live there?’.
"For that we use the valuation rolls. So, they basically just are sectioned out by the legal description, and that’s what you have to use the cadastral [survey maps] to find out.
"Then going to the roll, you’ll see, for example, the house is on section 23 of block 17, and then it outlines who owned it and it has their occupation. If they were a tenant, it would have the owner’s name and the occupier’s name."
Proper storage boxes guard the documents against damage from water or fire.
"Even if a fire did start out at one end of the room, and all the sprinklers went on, a box is going to protect it, for a certain amount of time.
"Archives New Zealand has rules that we have to follow, in terms of the environment. It has to be 20 degrees, but no more than 25, and it’s not meant to vary more than a certain amount within 24 hours. Then also, the humidity has to be between 30 and 60%, and it’s not meant to change too much over time either.
"You just want to keep them stable. And then obviously you’re not meant to have pipes or hazards, and it has to be a secure facility, so we have swiped access."
Word has not gone out officially that the archives are again open to the public.
"Because of the way our archive had been set up, it wasn’t ideal for people coming in and we kind of did a lot of the inquiries for people. Now that we’ve got this new space, though, we are hoping that more people will come in and do the research themselves, because they do love doing so.
"We have a conversation with them first, asking what kind of records they want to look at, because we have to go and pull them out for them."
Some people stay in the archives longer than others.
"We’ve had researchers come in every day for a week if they’re doing a big project, but otherwise they might just come in for a couple of hours."
The types of visitors varies, but along with the genealogists there are plenty involved in tram and cable-car restoration.
"We’ve got a lot of the plans for the actual cable cars themselves. We get university students sometimes, if they’re doing a project, but we’re only open during business hours so we don’t really get school students much."
The range of documents probably goes beyond what the public might think is held, Milbank says.
These include:
• Plans for DCC buildings, such as public conveniences, the Moray Pl public baths, St Clair baths, the Winter Gardens, memorials and monuments, theatres, air-raid shelters, the Moray Pl synagogue, bridges, the Palmyra Community Housing Development, and the NZ and South Seas International Exhibition of 1925-26;
• The 1937 Housing Survey - households were surveyed across the country. Information provided includes a list of all the people living in a house (sometimes as many as 13), plus information on the house, such as how many rooms, if it had running water etc;
• Street name origins, and renaming (this happened a lot as the borough council amalgamated with the DCC);
• Cemetery records - plans, burial registers etc;
• Dunedin Botanic Garden diaries, inventories, acquisition books and seed registers;
• Records on Dunedin events, including royal visits ephemera and planning, the South Seas Exhibition ephemera, photos, maps and plans;
• Records from various groups and committees, including the Flood Relief Committee, SS Kakanui Relief Committee, Peace Celebrations Committee, Civic Ball Committee and the Festival Week Committee; and
• Cable-car, trolley bus and tram plans.
Among the council gifts and artefacts are the:
• Souvenir trowel related to laying the town hall foundation stone;
• The Bible used to swear in Dunedin citizens;
• The Mosgiel Borough Council mayoral chain; and
• The gold and glass necklace and ear-rings presented to Dunedin by Park Hoon, the Mayor of Dongdaemun, South Korea.
The archive
To make a time to visit the Dunedin City Council archives, email archives@dcc.govt.nz or phone (03) 474 3553.
