Lady Bledisloe s Gift

Northern Advocate, 9 April 1947, Page 4

Lady Bledisloe s Gift

Hostel Needed

A donation of £125 in New Zealand currency for furnishing the treaty house and providing an oil painting of Captain Hobson, the first Governor, was made to the Waitangi Trust Board by Lady Bledisloe during her recent visit to the estate.

A resolution thanking Lady Bledisloe for her donation was carried at a meeting of the board yesterday. Lady Bledisloe also gave £25 sterling to purchase a cup, which will be known as the Elaine Bledisloe Cup, [or competition in the golf club at Waitangi. Other donations, for which resolutions of thanks were passed, were £SO from Mr F. A. Hellaby, of Auckland, which would be devoted to erecting a shelter for the whaling-boat presented by Mr T. Joyce, of Paihia, six 12ft Union Jacks from Mr M. Smith, of Auckland, and a portrait of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, which was obtained through the Prime Minister’s office, Canberra, by Mr A. R. Cutler, V.C., High Commissioner for Australia. The question of furnishing the treaty house and placing carved seats in the whare runanga were discussed at a subsequent meeting of the historical and Maori customs committee of the board.

It was also suggested that furniture of the 1840 period and portraits and

documents relating to people who were associated with New Zealand up to 1840 should be obtained.

Mr Vernon Reed said the objective was to build replicas of the rooms in the treaty house and furnish them according to the period with which the house was associated.

A suggestion to the Government Tourist Department that it erect a hostel to accommodate visitors to Waitangi was contained in a resolution which was passed at a meeting of the Waitangi Trust Board yesterday. It was explained at the meeting that the tourist traffic to Waitangi had increased considerably during the last few years, in spite of the fact that organised tours had not been as numerous as in previous years because of the shortage of transport.