Fundraising for a Masterton woman travelling overseas is this week set to turn Wairarapa farming history into literary choices and chat for English language students in Cambodia.
Shelley Pope plans to next month "depart the relative comforts of home" to complete a two-week shift in the Southeast Asian nation with Volunteer
Services Abroad.
Ms Pope and 11 other VSA volunteers from across New Zealand are to travel to Moy Sophea School in Cambodia, where the group will establish an English language library section and give the opportunity for students studying English at the school to chat with English-speakers.
As part of the group's fundraising efforts,there will be a screening at 7.30pm tomorrow at the Regent 3 Cinema of The Film Archive cinema retrospective Looking Back ?V NZ & Wairarapa Caught On Film, which traces the history of farming in the region from 1942.
Footage to be shown includes Vanishing Heritage from 1947, which focuses on family life on a Whareama sheep farm, Masterton township and surrounding district; Hill Country from 1960, featuring the Te Maire sheep farm and scenes of the Masterton A&P; Show, Castlepoint, and aerial top dressing and cattle farming in the area; Farming Annual Baa from 1954, showing old and new sheep-dipping techniques from full immersion and "the farmer poking the animal under with a stick" to the introduction of showers that disinfect the sheep "two dozen at a time, while the farmer has a quiet smoke".
Also being screened is a 1947 piece on Kiwi lighthouses that portrays their keepers and the duties they must perform. It shows Marine Department staff from Wellington visiting the Honeycomb Rock Lighthouse at Cape Palliser to carry out repairs.
???nTickets are $15 and may be bought from Regent 3 Cinemas. Contact Ms Pope at shelbypop@hotmail.com or 027 464 2988.
???nMore information on this project and VSA may be gained online at the fundraiseonline website http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/ShelleyPope/
