Memorial Show at Auckland Museum

Forest and Bird, Issue 91, 1 February 1949, Page 8

Memorial Show at Auckland Museum

AUCKLAND SECTION’S EXHIBIT THE accompanying photographs show the exhibit prepared for the Auckland Section by. Mr. Robin A. Watson, of the Section’s Committee, at the above Show. It set out to contrast the original glories of the New Zealand bush upon the arrival of white settlers with their depletion in subsequent years in the brief span of about a century. It was intended as a challenge to all New Zealanders to learn from past mistakes how to plan and act now not merely to save the remnants of our bush but to expand them. The story, reading from left to right, leads from the bush-covered condition of New Zealand in 1840 to the deterioration and erosion of the present day, but lest this should serve merely to give a sensation of despondency and frustration a panel, which aroused much interest, was devoted to pictures of beautiful views and some bird sanctuaries in and around Auckland which could be imitated, how to achieve this being suggested by a small model landscape garden which occupied the floor of the first bay. Use was made of “composition lines” or ribbons leading the eye of the spectator from exhibit to exhibit as the plan unfolded. The display, which took days of patient work and planning on Mr. Watson’s part, was an

unqualified success, and has since been shown in the window of an Auckland shop and at the Otahuhu Centennial Show.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS

The first picture shows the left hand bay, the model garden being laid out with golden kowhai, scarlet clianthus and brilliant horopito in the background. On the next, terrace crimson and pink manuka, golden trusses .of kumarahou, bronze leaved rangiora, etc. The lawn was planted with New Zealand daphne, violet veronica, variegated coprosma and similar low growing and showy shrubs, the rock borders with creeping fuchsia and the central bed with white, pink and mauve hebes. A nectar trough with tuis on it (partly hidden by notice) had native clematis and creamflowered bush lawyer climbing up the supports, and in the kowhai tree was a nest with a sitting bird.

In the adjoining bay, shown in the second photograph, the focal point was a tiny warbler on a scale outweighing a bag of gold, typifying the valuable work of birds. Here, and in the exhibits to right and left of the camera the activities of the various groups of native birds were set forth, nectar-eating pollinators, insect eaters, fruit-eating seed distributors, rodent eaters and scavengers.