Here are a couple more press articles, this first one very in-depth indeed:
From the Manawatu Standard
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/eveningstandard/4004358a20377.htmlIt's all going south Manawatu Standard | Saturday, 24 March 2007
In the eyes of its champions, the Ohakea Air Force Museum's impending demise is the penultimate act in a saga of bungling, short- sightedness and betrayal, says MERVYN DYKES.
In some ways it's probably just as well the RNZAF no longer has a strike wing. Supporters of the Air Force Museum at Ohakea might be tempted to use it.
They feel betrayed. They believe they have been taken advantage of and some of them are upset at officialdom's apparent ignorance of the history of the museum and RNZAF Base Ohakea.
Private citizens in the Manawatu, Rangitikei and Wanganui regions poured hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of labour into improving the museum site and establishing the associated memorial gardens for airmen killed in action.
Families and individuals donated memorabilia, much of it treasured, to the museum they believed was the district's own.
Now they have learned that the Air Force Museum Trust, which operates the main Air Force museum at Wigram, Christchurch, plans to shut the museum down on April 15, even though plans are well-advanced to make Ohakea New Zealand's only operational military airfield. As such it would be the logical site for an Air Force Museum, but for the high cost and logistical problems of making the move from Wigram.
Local items now on display in the Ohakea museum are to be packed up in boxes and sent down to Wigram for storage.
The Air Force plans to take over the site as the new home of its helicopter unit, 3 Squadron. When this happens, the museum supporters fear that not only will the museum be lost, but the gardens honouring war dead will be paved over.
Museum supporters say they have been told by some of the planners that they were not even aware that the memorial gardens existed.
Peter Calkin, manager of the Ohakea Museum from 1993 to 2004, believes the cash contribution over the years would be about the $500,000 mark, with payments in kind lifting the total as high as $800,000.
Others take a more conservative view, but still believe that at least $250,000 to $270,000 in cash was raised by "major stakeholders" alone.
Former pilot and the last president of the Friends of the Ohakea Museum, Tony Pierard, is one of those who kept on giving.
"I had this hip pocket which said 'Harold Pierard Ltd' (a plumbing company in Palmerston North) and I stopped counting once the total passed $150,000," he tells present museum manager Paul Gibson during a visit to the museum on Tuesday.
"There are plenty of other things I could have done with that $150,000."
Then he asks what will happen to the items people donated to the museum on the understanding that they would be displayed at Ohakea.
Mr Gibson, torn between his own sadness at the impending closure and loyalty to his employers, can answer Mr Pierard only by saying that all donors are now told that gifts are likely to go into the humidity and temperature-controlled storage units at at the Air Force Museum in Wigram. From the point of view of preservation, he maintains this is the best place for them.
If a family wants to see items again, arrangements can be made to have them sent back for a viewing before being returned to storage.
"This happened as recently as two weeks ago," he says.
Mr Pierard is not too impressed.
"I can see people are going to have to be more careful with anything like this in future," he says.
When the same question is put to the director of the Air Force Museum in Wigram, Therese Angelo, she says: "The collection belongs to the Museum Trust Board as a whole."
If donors wished their gifts to be displayed in their home areas, the requests could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, perhaps involving arrangements with other organisations such as Te Manawa Museum in Palmerston North.
Supporters of the museum learned of the April 15 closure date in a public announcement by Mrs Angelo on March 12, but it came as no surprise to them.
There is more than a touch of bitterness when Peter Calkin says, "The trust didn't want us then (when he was manager) and they don't want us now."
He claims the Ohakea Museum was starved of support in the hope that it would fold.
"My last job as manager was an instruction to close down the Friends of the Museum," he says.
The Ohakea Museum opened in 1976, but there were difficulties in allowing the public access to where it was then located in a restricted area of the base.
This lead to it being moved out of the operational area in 1993 to its present location where visitors could drive in from the highway.
At the time, the senior engineering officer on the base, Wing Commander Chris Torr, acted as liaison officer with the museum.
He has since retired from the service and is technically the secretary of the no-longer-active Friends of the Museum support group.
He claims the Museum Trust in Wigram and certain senior Air Force officers supporting the Ohakea Museum's closure are "completely oblivious to the heritage and history of the base".
As a case in point, he refers to an officer saying the Air Force might demolish Ohakea's two concrete hangars.
The hangars were made with minimal use of steel about 1939 to a design unique to New Zealand, he says.
"There are only four of them left in the world and they're going to put a bulldozer through them?"
The museum building itself is one of few surviving World War II or pre- war wooden mess halls. Briefly, during the redevelopment of Milson Airport in Palmerston North, it became the terminal for fledgling National Airways Corporation.
Peter Calkin, the first manager of the museum on its new site, says that in its early days the museum received tremendous support from the surrounding community.
Today, he estimates that even though the museum has limited visibility from nearby State Highway 1, it has entertained more than 500,000 visitors. Others, who do not visit the museum proper, spend quiet times in the memorial gardens.
"The museum was a brilliant project to be associated with," says Mr Calkin. "It was a beautiful place and there were wonderful people to work with, but it was a shame the trust lacked the commitment to keep it going."
Eventually, he left to "pursue other interests", but has never forgotten those days and is quick to spring to the museum's defence.
The museum trust announced the closure of the museum in a carefully worded document that attributes the decision to deteriorating buildings and an uncertain future.
"The centre is now due for a major refurbishment of its buildings and exhibits and uncertainty over the future of the site have precluded any major capital investment," it says through Mrs Angelo.
"Rather than allowing further deterioration in anticipation of the need to move from the site the Museum Trust Board and the RNZAF have reluctantly decided to close the Ohakea Exhibition Centre.
"The Board acknowledges the efforts of the dedicated staff and friends of the museum during the last 14 years.
"The well-being of the staff at Ohakea is the first priority and management will do all they can to provide support and assistance.
"The Ohakea team is to be commended on their dedication and hard work in providing a popular visitor experience, which is closing through no fault of their own.
"Looking to the future, it is hoped that there will be some form of new visitor centre at Ohakea when the final relocation of operations is complete.
"The Museum Trust Board and RNZAF will work together to ensure that the history of Ohakea and its squadrons is properly displayed in any potential new centre."
But asked what the timing is likely to be for any new visitor centre, she says she will not know until the Air Force finalises its plans for No 3 Squadron's new home.
With the best site probably being beside State Highway 1, Transit New Zealand was likely to be involved as well.
"The timeline's not mine, although there are some interim things we could probably do."
Ohakea-based Air Force spokesman Flight Sergeant Paul Stein agrees.
"We are still working through the plans, but they are three or four years away yet," he says.
Why then, if the new buildings are several years away, is the museum being closed now?
Mrs Angelo says the decision was made for pragmatic reasons. The museum building had been allowed to operate without major work being done on it for 14 years. At the 11-year mark when consideration was given to an upgrade, uncertainties created by plans for the consolidation of Air Force activities at Ohakea meant there was no point in spending large amounts of money.
After the school holidays in April, the museum traditionally went into a quiet time with only about 500 visitors a month, so it made sense to close in a leisurely fashion then rather than a last-minute scramble.
She says her understanding is that work on the taxi-ways and related areas would start in 8-10 months (Flight Sergeant Stein says this is routine maintenance and not part of the redevelopment).
Present manager, Paul Gibson, favours moving the museum to a location just outside the base beside the highway.
"The stretch of State Highway 1 between Sanson and Bulls is the busiest stretch of State Highway 1 in New Zealand," he says.
"Eighteen months ago I was told there is a traffic flow of 12,500 vehicles a day.
"About 20 percent of the vehicles are commuter vehicles, which leaves 80 percent as recreational road users and potential visitors."
He says that Tourism New Zealand maintains as a rule of thumb that two hours of travelling is the maximum for a day trip.
Above that an overnight stay is usually involved.
"Within a two-hour radius of the museum there are 850,000 people," he says. "Wigram has less than half that."
Mrs Angelo challenges the assumption that high traffic volumes necessarily mean high numbers of visitors. This has not happened for the Army Museum at Waiouru, she says.
But Mr Gibson has conducted an experiment of his own. He erected a small museum sign on a grassy knoll overlooking State Highway 1 and was rewarded with a noticeable increase in attendance.
At present, the Ohakea museum serves as an excellent northern shop window for the Air Force Museum at Wigram, he says, and it is at Wigram where all the sophisticated storage facilities are available to protect and preserve donations and exhibits.
"I was told when I joined two- and-a-half years ago that Wigram had about 900,000 items in storage, not counting the exhibits."
Ohakea has two aircraft on display; Wigram has 28. There are eight staff members at Ohakea and links have been cut with volunteers. Wigram has 30 people on staff and 90 volunteers.
However, Ohakea has what will soon become New Zealand's only operational Air Force base. Wigram has no base.
Operation Takitini, set up to concentrate all of the RNZAF's operations at Ohakea is about "bringing together", say some of the champions of the Ohakea museum, so why not move the main museum from Wigram to Ohakea?
As an alternative they suggest placing the Ohakea museum under local control.
Chris Torr argues that communities able to make going concerns out of a Dutch windmill at Foxton, horse-drawn carriages at Feilding, steam power at Tokomaru and a motorcycle museum at Kopane would certainly succeed with an Air Force museum.
That is better, he argues, than being directed by a Christchurch Trust Board that had to be "dragged kicking and screaming every inch of the way to recognise the Ohakea museum."
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And the second report, from the Rangitikei Mail
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/eveningstandard/3999330a20381.htmlOutrage over museum plan By LAURA RICHARDS - Rangitikei Mail | Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Bulls residents are up in arms over the plan to close the Ohakea Air Force museum.
Bryce Tamblyn says he has had a long-time association with people at RNZAF Ohakea.
The museum is closing on April 15, a decision that was only made public last week.
Mr Tamblyn says many of his friends over the years have been Air Force personnel and their wives whom he has met through the Clifton School Parent Teacher Association and clubs like Rotary.
The Bulls Rotary Club used to meet at the Crew Room Cafe at the museum until the club disbanded a couple of years ago.
Mr Tamblyn also employed many people with family links to the base, at the petrol station he operated in Bulls.
"I'm so fired up over this," he said on Saturday morning.
"We've got to find a way to stop it."
Mr Tamblyn said he is as angry now as he was when he decided to join a protest at Parliament after the Government's decision to scrap the strike wing at Ohakea.
He said a lot of people give items to the museum and "it holds a lot of history of this area".
He is questioning the idea of sending items of the collection to Wanganui.
"The whole thing is bizarre.
"Ohakea Museum is an icon for Rangitikei and Manawatu districts."
Planespotter Steve Dyer of Bulls is not impressed with the idea of the museum closure either.
"Ouch. What a horrible decision." Mr Dyer said he would do anything he could to keep the museum open.
He said he likes to spend a day on the weekends at the museum and around the two planes stationed there.
He has always been fascinated with airplanes and enjoys his time there.
He heard about the closure last week. "I still can't believe it. I am extremely disgusted. It's the wrong decision."