Our dear son and brother: William David Kemp

On 13 August 1915, 23-year-old William David Kemp, 12/774, was killed on the slopes below Chunuk Bair on the Gallipoli Peninsula. 

The W.D. Kemp collection of artefacts tells one man's story, at the same time as being a story symbollic of many Anzac soldiers involved at Gallipoli.

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Artefact of the Week: Stories from the Heritage Collection

The Puke Ariki Heritage Collection is full of artefacts with interesting stories to tell.

Whether its a prisoner's cricket ball made of string, a classic Kiwi board game or an ostrich egg that tells of a tragic tale you'll never know what you might find featured as an Artefact of the Week.

A new artefact from the collection will be added to this page every week. 

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Transcription of William Kemp's Diary

William David Kemp, 12/774, was killed on the slopes below Chunuk Bair on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

During his time at Gallipoli he kept a diary which reveals the everyday life of an ordinary soldier during the First World War.

Poignantly, Kemp's last entry ends with only half a page remaining in his diary.

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From your soldier boy: WWI postcards

The European craze for collecting and sending picture postcards arrived in New Zealand in the early 1900s, reaching its peak in popularity just prior to the outbreak of World War I. 

Although wartime restrictions led to a decline in postcard traffic, picture postcards remained a popular and convenient means of communicating news and images from afar.

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No Ordinary Snapshots - Pictures by Robert E. Wells, 1924-1958

In December 2003 Robert Wells gifted two albums of photographs to Puke Ariki, one containing family photographs and the other comprising prints exhibited by Wells at the New Plymouth Camera Club.  A selection from the latter album is featured here.

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Photographs from Whangamonona

Come on in, sit a spell, and get a feel for the place. There's nowhere in the world quite like Whangamomona. From the sheep races to the Presidential elections, there's something for everyone on Republic Day...

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Elsie Andrews Archives

Elsie Andrews was a champion for women's rights. She sought equal pay for female teachers, made stirring speeches on women's rights and called for peace in the middle of a great war.

Her diaries, poems and speech notes reveal a women of great strength and determination, a woman before her time.

Digitising the Elsie Andrews archives was a joint project between Soroptmisits International New Plymouth, Soroptimists International Waitara, Soroptimists International @ Mission and Puke Ariki.             

Without their efforts over three years this online exhibition would not have been possible.

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