The guided walking tours at the cemetery have been a popular event on Napier's summer calendar for nine years.
The guided walking tours at the cemetery have been a popular event on Napier's summer calendar for nine years.
A popular and historic Napier Hill walk that offers a chance to learn about the city's colourful and often tragic past has been selected as a finalist for a national award.
MTG Hawke's Bay's Napier Hill Cemetery Tours have been selected as a finalist in the Visitor Experience category ofthe prestigious Service IQ New Zealand Museum Awards.
Developed by MTG Hawke's Bay's curator of social history Gail Pope and award-winning author Peter Wells, the guided walking tours have been a popular event on Napier's summer calendar for nine years.
MTG Hawke's Bay director Laura Vodanovich said they were "delighted" the cemetery tours had been selected as a finalist for the visitor experience category.
"Public programmes are a way for the museum to engage with our community directly and the cemetery walks are a firm favourite with Hawke's Bay people every summer," she said.
This is the third time that MTG Hawke's Bay has been nominated in these Awards.
Participants are taken on a journey into Hawke's Bay's past where they learn about well-known local identities as well as ordinary men, women and children who have extraordinary stories associated with their lives and deaths.
Throughout the tour they hear stories utterley unique to the Hawke's Bay region, such as that of the farmer attacked and killed by a shark on Marine Parade or the unfortunate person who fell under the wheels of a train after a high-spirited picnic.
The cemetery project is said to have inspired more maintenance and planting in the cemetery. Better signage and a self-guiding brochure had also been developed; giving more people the opportunity to discover the historical significance as well as the beauty of the cemetery.
MTG Hawke's Bay reported the level of vandalism that occurred before the walks began had virtually ceased and that the cemetery has become a place of community pride and interest.
The winners are set to be announced at the annual Museum's Aotearoa Conference in Palmerston North later this month.
