Dunedin Gasworks Museum
Recently I went and worked at the Dunedin Gasworks Museum. The reason for which I went there was because it was a new and exciting tourism venture in the City of Dunedin, well I didn’t know that it was exciting but I had a pretty good idea that I would like it because that is the sort of thing that I am interested in (old building and things that still work and have been working for a long time). I arrived at the gasworks one Sunday about midday; my job was to walk around and see if people needed help with anything and to assist where needed. I had a great day doing this, I met some of the people for which they were the guides for the day and it was a great time. I learned so much about the gasworks and how it has operated and is now run as a tourist attraction.
Now enough about me, the Gasworks is the main topic of this blog, so here is some information about it. The gasworks was built in the 1860s to accommodate for the gas lamps in the central Dunedin area. The company running the gasworks soon noticed that they could expand this to encompass the inner Dunedin area. So that is what they did, mass numbers of pipers were built and installed around Dunedin so that the city could be ‘powered’ by gas. So Dunedin became a (mind the pun) a ‘Gassy City’. Soon it was not only the lamps in the center city being powered by gas it was also stoves and gas cookers in the kitchen. The factory soon expanded its property to accommodate for this and was one of this biggest gasworks in the country. At the time the gasworks was built outside of the city so it was an ideal place for it to be operating, this soon became irrelevant as the city grew and grew due to the gold-rush in Central Otago. The city’s population sky-rocketed and the gasworks was the benefit from this.
When I went there I discovered that there wasn’t a large team of men that operated the works, at the time there were only 4 men working on the works at once, this was due to the fact that the works were easy to maintain, there is a main furnace that powers the separation of the gas from the coal. The coal is heated to a high temperature so that the gas rises and is then sucked out through a labyrinth of pipes to different machines that had different uses for it. One of the places that it was sent was to a containment dome; this was used to hold the gas until it was needed. The containment dome was a large dome that had a pump and release system operating on it, so when the gas was pumped into it the dome would rise as the gas rises. (There were four of these on-site, all but one is gone now and the one remaining is only the frame, without the dome inside it).
Nowadays the gasworks is owned by the Historic Buildings Trust of Dunedin and operated through the Goldfields Heritage Trust. The Historic Buildings Trust protects old buildings that are part of the history of a place. This is a good thing because if this trust was not here then some of the buildings that have created Dunedin to be the city that it is now would not be here, some of the other buildings around Dunedin that are protected are the Old Art Gallery in Logan Park, the (3rd) First Church of Dunedin. The Goldfields Heritage Trust on the other hands works with the councils and other organisations to make sure that a selected part of our past is protected and made so that it can be enjoyed by all who come to Dunedin and those who are from Dunedin and just want to know about our history, some of the other things that are operated by this trust is the BNZ (Bank of New Zealand) building on Princes Street, Central Dunedin. This building is no longer used as a bank, but the architecture of the building is (in my words really amazing and beautiful), it is built in the Elizabethan style of constructing buildings.
For more information about what I described in this blog please go to the Gasworks’ website http://www.gasworksmuseum.org.nz/ respectively you can find more in-depth information about the Goldfields Heritage Trust by going to http://goldfieldstrust.org.nz/
The Gasworks Museum is a great place for Voluntourism… What is this you ask?!? Well let me tell you what it is. Voluntourism is the combination of two words ‘Volunteering’ and ‘Tourism’; this is where there is a volunteering aspect of the travel for which you are taking for a charitable cause, meaning that you are not going to work at this place so that you are in the idea of getting paid, you are doing it so as to help the person, company, organization which you are going to. Now that’s all sounding a bit complicated but it’s really not. I went to the gasworks with the intention of helping them so that they can become more of an attraction (I also did it as I knew that I would enjoy it… which I did), that’s what I’m saying, volunteering somewhere is a really fun thing to do, I mean I didn’t know much about how gas was created from coal before I went there and now I know heaps about it, I was dumbfounded about how cool it was, and that is a great thing with Voluntourism you don’t know everything so why not go out there while you are you (I’m 20) and get to know something cool. Now doing something like this is not for everyone but trust me I really enjoyed it and people my age that were also there enjoyed it too I feel. If anyone is considering doing something like this you can go to http://www.voluntourism.org/news-wisdom0705.html and who knows where you might end up from there, you can get to see some amazing things and places not normally seen by travellers, and at the end of it you can say “I worked there for a few days and loved it”. I mean, how many people can actually say that they have been to Africa and worked over there as a volunteer, just think of the possibilities, I know that I want to travel the world and what better way than to do some cool things while you’re out there?!?
Ok the reason that I chose to write I blog is because I think that it is easier to write a blog than to create video. Not only that it is also that with a blog it is easier to convey a message for which I am making, I can put my own ‘spin’ and emphasis on it. Making it a more enjoyable and informative read, but that’s just my opinion.
Well I hope that you who read this found the information provided informative and I hope that you do go out there and have a go at voluntourism, trust me you wont regret it.
Liam Crawford-Smith
-45.866567
170.518091
