As I ponder the prompt ‘heritage’ and how it relates to New Zealand my initial thoughts were about the lost heritage in Christchurch post the 2010/2011 earthquakes when most of our city was destroyed and replaced by new. The interesting thing is that children of today will only ever know the new as that is all they have ever seen. However in the last month I have been visiting different parts of New Zealand either for family weddings or for work and many more options have come into my thoughts on heritage.

Our son got married in August in Queenstown to a gorgeous woman from the USA. They had a vintage themed wedding and wanted photos of our wedding and any others we might have. Family is really important to Luke and Kat so I took our wedding album down which also had the wedding photos of my parents and my husbands parents. These sat alongside photos of Kat’s family. What I had forgotten was there were other photos in the box and when I arrived I saw them all out on display. Photos of my parents, my in-laws, aunties and uncles – all gone now but well remembered. Our heritage is a strong sense of family.

In my journey for work last week I stayed at a gorgeous place in Oamaru called Poshtel. Each room was a different theme – thorougbred racing, harness racing, nautical, cricket, high country to name a few.

The cricket bats and wickets beside them were used by the expeditionary forces in 1914 where they were used for leisure prior to going into battle some time later. There was so much memorabilia and it all came from a private collection! The owner decided to showcase it in this themed hotel rather than keep it in storage. There was so much to see and reflect on.

However neither of the above are what I am using for my artwork this prompt. Instead when visiting Auckland for another family wedding we took a trip out onto the Hauraki Gulf to Kawau Island. It was here back in the late 1800’s Governor George Grey built his mansion as his retreat. Only accessible by water this place is now a government preserved asset and is quite magical.

This goes right back to the heritage / history of this country. I did not know this existed till a few weeks ago and it was well worth the visit. You could feel the children playing in the bed room with the library being a place of quiet. The rooms were all quite small especially the servants quarters out the back.

It was while I was here that I stumbled across how I would reflect heritage – not specifically about this place but about the layers involved in any heritage. How will I do this? you will have to wait to the reveal in a couple of weeks!