Heritage Matters on Otago Access Radio

By Southern Heritage Trust | Posted:

Twenty episodes of "Heritage Matters", the programme produced on behalf of Southern Heritage Trust for Otago Access Radio have gone to air since its inception in March 2016. 

The production team is taking a break over the Christmas/New Year holidays, so the next three programmes will be a selection of some of the stories broadcast during the year.

Monday 26th December will include extracts from the letters from Gallipoli written home by H.D. Skinner who later because director of Otago Museum; the treatment of conscientious objector Archibald Baxter; the world-wide effects of the flu epidemic following world War One; and we go back to the early days of the St Clair hot water pool when a few eyebrows were raised over open-air bathing.

Monday 9th January, is mainly centred on Otago harbour - the history of Quarantine Island, and letters written from the son of the island's keeper to Dear Dot of the Otago Witness newspaper; we meet Otago's first newspaper editor, Henry Graham, who started the Otago News, clashed with the "City Fathers" and was finally buried in an unmarked grave at Port Chalmers cemetery. We also learn about some of the hulks - wrecked ships - round the harbour.

Monday 23rd January features a number of disasters - the Hyde rail crash in 1943; the sinking of the Pride of Yarra in Otago Harbour which claimed the lives of the new principal of Otago Boys High School and his family; the unsolved murder of James Ward ; and the exploits of highwayman Henry Garrett in "Stick em Up gully", near Outram.

The programmes are broadcast at 12 noon on 105.4FM and at 7 pm on the following Sundays.

If you miss any of the stories, they are all available on podcasts via the Southern Heritage Trust or Otago Access Radio (www.oar.org.nz) websites.