1999: Westland Industrial Heritage Park
July 20, 2025
By AHNZ
Westland Industrial Heritage Park, Hokitika, was established in 1999. When I visited I was humbled by the beautiful old machines and the welcoming and informed staff. However, I was also blown away by the embarrassingly large and modern warehouse space this little club was sitting on.
A few old Boomer blokes who will likely keel over sooner than we’d wish are sitting on a gold mine of toys here. Paid for by us with hundreds of thousands of dollars doled out by (I suppose) MBIE, Lotto, Development West Coast.
As such, it’s not an organic entity born of the community. It’s an artificial network pumped up on the whim of outsider’s financial steroid injections. What happens when that is withdrawn?
“We never expected it to be like this…It was mainly for half-a-dozen old fellas that wanted to play around with old engines.” – Ian Gilbertson, secretary and founding member. Hokitika Guardian (June, 2024)
“The Westland Industrial Heritage Park grew out of the Westland Farm and Vintage Machinery Club that was formed in 1981. This group of like-minded mechanical enthusiasts formed the club to save some of the machinery that operated in the district, if possible, in working order…A new organization, the Westland Industrial Heritage Park, (with a membership of around a dozen was formed in 1999, initially working as a sub committee of Heritage Hokitika and incorporated in 2002) and has charitable status. The original purpose, to save and restore the last of the historic machinery that made Westland what it is today, remained.” – Westland Industrial Heritage Park Strategic Plan (2021 – 2025,) Westland District Council
I’d dearly like to be involved in more heritage or community projects but I know what happens. Someone in the group would suggest applying for this or that government income stream of stolen money. I’d point out that our society would then be living beyond its own means by taking handouts. We wouldn’t appreciate or even know our own resolution or self-esteem or muscle from the “free power” being doled out at other people’s expense. The group would smell money and throw me out the nearest 2 story window to get to it.
Dollars spent voluntarily show you how much genuine love and interest there is for our heritage. Government money corrupts these feedback signals. Everyone thinks they can be the one to wear Sauron’s Ring and make it serve Goodness but they are, all of them, deceived in the finish.
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Image ref. Westland Industrial Heritage Park, Facebook (2004)
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