History

we have a responsibility to record
what we can before all is lost"

Started by a small group of concerned local people whom saw a great need to preserve the History of the Eastern Bay of Plenty area. This began in 1989 and was registered in 1990

Stan Fretwell, Trustee, gives us some background. A large collection of equipment over this time has been worked on and restored mostly to working order all by volunteers who have clocked up in excess of 65,000 hours of labour, to date 2008. Our funds have been raised by all sorts of endeavours.

We also trained and taught young people to learn trade skills and helped over 100 back into the work force. Our failure rate was 8 out of 100 but because we could not get any Government help had to stop for ‘lack of funds’ although most of these people were sent to us from the Courts, WINZ, Secondary Schools and Blue Light Programmes.

We have proved as retired people we can still make a difference if given some help.

There is a huge backlog of stories, history, photos etc in the endeavour to break this area of swamp into high producing land that it is today. Also the Industry to support this endeavour that grew up throughout this time is note worthy too. Timber Mills, Flax Mills, Paper Mills, Railways, Board Mills, Dairy Company, to name a few.

What is often forgotten is much of the land went through as many as 6 owners before it was finally profitable enough to sustain the last person to take it on and so survived on the work and hardship of previous owners who went before them. Those who failed often walked off totally broke with only what they could carry. The human stories are often lost. My own family lost 3 properties through my Dads lifetime. Such was the cost to build what we see today.

Thus we have a responsibility to record what we can before all is lost. Every piece of equipment we have saved has its own story, of which we only know in part. The donors often tell us....

Key Contact:
Helen Stewart
Telephone: 07 323 7377
Email: helen@kea.org.nz