£50,000 Target For Park

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31135, 11 August 1966, Page 14

£50,000 Target For Park

A large queen carnival is planned for Christchurch next autumn to raise £50,000 for the development of the Ferrymead historical park and science museum.

Local bodies, industries, manufacturers, commercial and business firms and ser-

vice organisations will be asked to select candidates within their groups, and the queen of the carnival will represent the group that raises the most money. The carnival will run for six weeks about March and April and will be the first of its kind in Christchurch for many years. The queen will be awarded an attractive prize—possibly an overseas trip or a new car. I Among the first buildings

to be erected when the money is raised will be a tearoom and shop, a tramshed, and a building to house mobile exhibits in the Ferrymead historic park between the Bridle Path road and the Heathcote river. The park will be in an area of six acres owned by the Heathcote County Council adjoining the old Ferrymead Hotel. Within the park the project’s steering committee

plans to reconstruct the first railway line in New Zealand, a track of about half a mile from Ferrymead to Heathcote, and operate early-type locomotives on it. The committee also plans to build an early style railway station, lay a tramline for early trams, develop the area with trees and barbecue picnic areas, display old equipment such as chaff-cutters and pit-saws in the open, and build a children's sand-pit and

paddling pool supplied with water from a warm spring at the site. The Association of Friends of the Museum of Science’ and Industry has options to buy nearly 70 acres of low-lying land about a quarter-mile further up the Heathcote river with access from Truscotts road. ACROSS SITE The original Ferrymead railway ran diagonally across the proposed museum site and