We are delighted to release our new Strategic Plan 2024-2030. The new Plan both draws from the past and looks to the future.
Over the next six years we’re going to be putting our efforts into five key areas:
- Te Ao Māori
- Innovation
- Population change
- Digital capability
- Community / collaboration
This is an exciting time for us as an archive, and we would love you to share our journey. Our new Strategic Plan is available on our website, read about it in more detail here.
Nō te atatū i te tuaono o Hūrae, i aituā tētehi tima rerewē i te ara tereina matua o Te Ika a Māui, i pahaki atu i te whaitua o Ōngarue.
In the early hours of 6 July 1923, the overnight express train from Auckland to Wellington ran into a landslip near the small settlement of Ōngarue on the main trunk line, north of Taumarunui. A large boulder of about 1.5 metres diameter was embedded in the landslip causing the locomotive train to derail.
The disaster marked the first major loss of life in New Zealand Railway history – 17 people lost their lives in the tragedy, with injuries to 28 individuals.
In July 2023, the Ōngarue Railway Disaster Memorial was unveiled by Ruapehu District mayor, Weston Kirton. The mayor's grandfather was station master at Taumarunui at the time of the accident.
This personal record from Eric F Burns shows one of the Ellis & Bernand Tramways operating in Ōngarue in 1954. The Ellis and Burnand sawmilling, and timber retailing operations started at Ōrākau near Kihikihi and expanded south to supply the timber needs of the North Island Main Trunk railway. Their cutting sites were linked to their sawmills by bush tramways, as seen in this archival footage. Part of this old tramway now forms the popular Timber Trail track, an 84-kilometre cycleway in the Pureora Forest Park.
The barque Ben Avon was wrecked in fog off Cape Palliser on the Wairarapa Coast on 11 November 1903. The pilot died and the ship was a total loss.
In 1969 a local diving club instigated a project to raise the Ben Avon’s anchor and set it in concrete on the shore. The event was captured by amateur filmmaker Jack Lovell, whose film was recently added to our online collection.
1. Ngā Taonga brand photography by Stephen A'Court
2.Screengrab from F27507 PERSONAL RECORD. BURNS, ERIC F. [E&B TRAMWAY ONGARUE]
3.Screengrab from F11269 PERSONAL RECORD. LOVELL, JACK. [LIFTING THE ANCHOR FROM THE WRECK OF THE BEN AVON 1969]
4.Te Māngai Pāho 30th anniversary logo
