Lifejackets help to enhance experience

These Maunu Primary pupils show off Kiwi North's lifejackets bought for the museum's educational expeditions to Limestone/Matakohe Island and other harbour locations. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Kiwi North is high, dry and several kilometres inland so why would the Whangarei museum buy 40 child-sized lifejackets for visiting school children?

The unusual purchase will enable school groups from Whangarei and elsewhere in Northland to get from kiwi to kiwi more easily.

Kiwi North has recently tied up several threads to enhance trips to the kiwi creche and other conservation projects at Limestone/Matakohe Island in Whangarei Harbour.

One of the threads is a partnership with Whangarei Harbour Cruises to take school groups from the Town Basin to the island.

Up until now, groups have been taken by bus to the Onerahi wharf and the island's resident ranger has ferried them across.

Kiwi North learning experience officer Shirley Peterson said the new trip would provide a broader experience.

The boat trip down the Hatea River would offer the children a history lesson, a study of the wetlands and ecology and a close-up view of the workings of the bascule bridge, Te Matau Pohe.

As well as seeing the kiwi creche at the island, the pupils would learn about the old concrete works and its relationship to Portland Cement which is still operating, other ruins, Maori and early European settlement of the area, the programme to return breeding stormy petrel to the island, pest control, revegetation and other conservation projects.

"It's a really good learning experience. Whangarei Harbour Cruises are giving us such a good opportunity to expand the programme but, in order to do that, we needed to provide enough child-sized lifejackets," Ms Peterson said.

The lifejackets will be kept at the museum.

While a small grant was accessed to pay $400 for the lifejackets, the broader education programme draws on funds provided the Ministry of Education's Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom (LEOTC) scheme.

The fund can also subsidise the cost distant schools would chalk up chartering buses to get to the museum or its field trip sites.

The LEOTC scheme requires the museum to have 3300 Northland school children take part to remain eligible for funding.

The museum also offers on-site lessons using its archives such as "a mini beast hunt (bugs)", the Clarke Homestead and the pioneer schoolhouse where children learn about Whangarei's natural and human history, including its important shipping and boatbuilding past.

School trips organised through Kiwi North include to Clapham's Clocks and further afield to the Butler Point Whaling Station Museum near Mangonui.

"We've had some great feedback," Ms Peterson said of the museum's expanding education drive. "There are some fabulous resources in Northland."