Puaka and Matariki hold great significance for Māori, marking the beginning of the Māori New Year as these special whetū first appear in the midwinter sky. While the Matariki star cluster is celebrated by iwi across Aotearoa New Zealand, Kāi Tahu in Te Waipounamu also observe Puaka – the brightest star in the Orion constellation.…

What moments in time did the Ashburton Guardian photographers capture around Whakatere Ashburton throughout 1975? This selection of photographs from our large collection of Guardian negatives will take you on a journey across various aspects of life in our district 50 years ago. Although some of these images were published in the daily newspaper, most…

In this exhibition, explore the story of the SS Ventnor, which sank off Hokianga Harbour in 1902 carrying the remains of nearly 500 Chinese goldminers being returned to their villages. When those remains washed ashore, local iwi and hapū buried them, and passed the story down through the generations.

In 1957/58 the British Government conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests at Christmas Island and Malden Island in the mid-Pacific Ocean. This series of detonations was given the codename “Operation Grapple”. Operation Grapple consisted of 9 nuclear detonations between May 1957 and September 1958. The biggest of the detonations, Grapple Y, was equal to…