Waterbuck next to the Water ClosetThey found me in 1985 in a storeroom by the below-ground ladies’ toilets. No one knows how long I’d been there, but I was once a proud part of the museum’s mammal group exhibition in the early 1900s. I was probably shot in the wild, but I live on thanks to the famous London taxidermy firm of Edward Gerrard & Sons, who were commissioned by the museum’s then-curator because they could provide “a higher class of taxidermy than we could hope for in the Colony”. In fact, I might even have been shot to order – it was a time before much awareness of species extinction or conservation, when the Victorians saw the natural world as their own kingdom to use as they saw fit. The Shaw Savill Line brought me to New Zealand free of charge in 1907. I originally stood in the old museum in Princes Street with a zebra, a springbok and an impala until we were moved here and eventually put into storage and forgotten. Where are my companions now, I wonder?
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Join Dr Tom Trnski, Research Manager and John Early, Curator of Entomology and get closer to the stories, tales and historical information for this unique collection of objects.
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to save to your computer or media player - right click link and select "Save Target As" (3.14 mb). Download before you visit the Museum.
Download the Audio Tour Transcript (pdf 152kb) |
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Explore Secrets Revealed objects and listen to their stories |
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