History,+A+Living+Heritage+2013

We set out to create digital stories recording the history, the living heritage of our local community, Otautau. On the first day Angela briefed us on looking at the world with the eyes of history. We talked about how old something has to be before it’s historical. We found out about ‘circa’ as a way of telling the approximate age of an event or thing. We took a tour of the Otautau shops with cameras, clicking buildings of interest. We noted useful information from plaques and printed on buildings, facades and signs. There are clues to history all around town. We went along to the cemetery and gathered information from there too. You can tell a lot about the people and events that have shaped a town from the cemetery. Back in class we brainstormed questions we wanted answered and people who might be experts to help us. We phoned ahead to make appointments for next week. On the second day we put on our research hats and off we went information gathering. Our first appointment was at the Library where we learnt how to use internal and web-based search engines to help our research. Angela told us about an online history site where old newspapers are digitally stored, at Papers Past and then we used that site to help us complete a worksheet about the living heritage of our local community. Then we searched catalogues to find information related to our area and we recorded our findings.

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At the Otautau Museum Mr Peter Campbell, Mr Peter Gutsell and Ms Cathy Onellion were experts who shared their knowledge with us. They showed us around the museum and then took us into the courthouse where Mr Campbell gave us a brief overview of the history of Otautau. They answered our questions about “back in the day” and gave us the Otautau Museum fact sheet.

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otautau_museum@yahoo.co.nz

[] We hurried back to school ready for interviewing more local experts. We asked each person basically the same questions, and we recorded their answers, so that we can compare the information we got from each of them. We were able to draw out more information from our visitors by asking more questions. For the people we interviewed our questions stirred up memories about life when they were young, about who owned the shops and what used to be sold there, what’s the same and what has changed.

 We found out that farming and forestry have always been important to Otautau, and that it’s always been central to Western Southland. Fire and floods have affected the people and history of Otautau. World champions in Athletics and in business have come from Otautau and Western Southlan d. An interesting thing we learnt was that Slaughterhouse Rd was a place where butchers killed animals for meat.

Mr Willie Kennedy shared his perspective of growing up in Otautau in the late 1980s and 1990s. One interesting thing he told us was there used to be a big sphagnum moss factory in Otautau. Mr Bill Anderson brought us photos and books that were fascinating to look at, especially those about the Big Flood of 1984 and a record book of the Otautau Athletics Society.

After lunch Mr Davidson told us about Otautau and Fairfax, a wee town close to Otautau. Polio was a disease which closed schools in New Zealand for a time back in 1947-48. The radio was a great form of entertainment especially listening to “The Biggles” and “Dad and Dave.” He was very busy during the 1984 floods. Mr Davidson had been a bridge builder so we still use many of his bridges. Check out these online history resources. [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []

[|http://www.historicplaces.org.nz/]

On the final day we will pull all our research findings together. We’ve got photos, some books, stories we'd heard from people, answers to our questions. media type="file" key="Otautau history by Josh Jake & Ronan.pptx.mov" width="270" height="270"media type="file" key="Otautau History by Joel Ethan Bradley.pptx.mov" width="270" height="270" media type="file" key="Otautau History by Emily Sadie Cecelia Tayla.pptx.mov" width="270" height="270"media type="file" key="OTAUTAU HISTORY BY ASHLEIGH BROOKE AMELIA.pptx.mov" width="270" height="270" media type="file" key="History by Jake, Matthew & Jakob.mov" width="270" height="270"media type="file" key="Research Trip Around Otautau.mov" width="270" height="270"

We reflected on taking part in this GATE Initiative. Jake said the highlight has learning about the history of Otautau. “I’d love to be able to come to a thing like this again.” Tayla said, “Ive found out a lot of the history of Otautau. A highlight would be going around and looking at the old buildings and the cemetery and who used to live here.” Sadie enjoyed everything about coming to this course. She said, “I’ve learnt about Otautau and things we haven’t known about before.” Ronan and Jake both loved visiting the little library. They said, “It’s so quiet, we could just stop there and read.” Playing giant chess was another positive thing about coming here. Josh thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Otautau. He said it had been fun to be taught by Angela.