Visit to Toitu, the Dunedin Settlers Museum.Ara-i-te-uru: welcomes visitors into the Museum with a Māori perspective on Otago’s history.Life for southern Māori changed forever in the late eighteenth centurywith the arrival of European explorers and subsequent sealers and whalers.Great displays.In every room a person on a screen that talks to you :)At the beginning of 1861, Dunedin was a village of some 2000 people. Civic leaders knew gold was to be found in Otago but they feared the opening up of goldfields would prompt hordes of unruly and immoral miners to descend upon them and destroy the ideal society they were trying so hard to create. However, by the middle of 1861, the Otago Witness newspaper proclaimed “Gold, Gold, Gold, is the universal subject of conversation”. The gold rushes had begun. Gold Gold Gold considers the effect on Dunedin as it was transformed into a rowdy boomtown, fueled by an influx of people and the extraction of bright fine gold.The journey from Britain to Otago was the longest voyage you could make in a sailing ship. It took months, was potentially dangerous, and mostly very boring.This display is an accurate recreation of the steerage quarters of an immigrant sailing ship bound for Otago.The golden haired maiden has just had a nap in her bunk bed and is waiting for her family to pick her up for dinner.A pleasant tramway ride.In the second half of the 20th century, Dunedin developed as a creative hub,with many significant artists, musicians, authors and designers of national and international repute finding inspiration in the city and its surrounds.
