Tawa Historical Society Incorporated

The Tawa Historian

Newsletter #35 – August 2014

Dear Members and Friends,

I have three matters to report to you to bring you up to date with work to which your Executive has been giving attention.

A History of Tawa
We are now at the stage that the text of our book is complete; its design and layout is almost complete; its cover is about to be designed; and printing will be able to commence before the end of August. In other words, we are well on target with the aims we set ourselves for the production of this book.

Your Executive gave considerable thought as to whether the book should appear in soft or hard cover, or both; and how many books we should produce. Once we had received quotes, it became clear that a hard covered book, though desirable, was simply not possible. Its production cost was almost double that of a perfect bound (soft covered) book. One of our aims throughout the existence of the Society has been to put on sale good books at a reasonable price. Having taken into account all the costs associated with the production of A History of Tawa (the purchasing of photographs and illustrations, the making of some maps and plans, and the printing of the book), your Executive has decided on a price of $45 per copy. For that price, the purchaser will receive, at 256 pages, the biggest book we have ever produced, with 65 photos, 17 maps, 15 tables, 11 illustrations and an index. We believe that it will be very good value for money.

We also gave attention to the number of books we should order. Obviously, the more we order, the cheaper is the cost per book. We have decided on a first edition of 300 copies, which, per book, will be almost 20% cheaper than if we ordered only 100. Given that this book will have a longer “shelf life” than some of the publications we have produced, we think it worthwhile to make a larger rather than smaller order. We do think, however, that members should purchase the book as early as possible in order to be sure of getting a copy. We will need to have a very strong demand to consider ordering a second edition, which would likely be of a much lesser number, and therefore dearer to print.

The Mayor of Wellington, Celia Wade-Brown, has kindly offered to launch our book, and this event will take place on Monday 10 November 2014 in the Mervyn Kemp Library from 5.30-7.30pm. The Wellington City Council has a policy of supporting the launch of any book written about Wellington, or part thereof, and we are grateful that the Mayor will lead this celebration. Refreshments will be served. Members, please mark this date in your diaries.

The Tawa Historical Society’s AGM
We will hold our AGM at 7.30pm on Wednesday 27 August 2014 in the Tawa Community Centre. The usual agenda of a Financial Statement and a Chairman’s Report for the 2113-14 year, and election of officers, will be followed by inviting our Deputy Mayor, Cr Justin Lester, to offer his thoughts on “What’s ahead for Tawa?” We think that will be something well worth hearing. Please mark your diaries, and make every effort to attend. Light refreshment will be served following Justin’s comments.

Tawa Memorial
Further to my comments in Newsletter 34, I can now report the following regarding the progress towards creating a Tawa Memorial. We applied for financial assistance from the Mana Community Grants Foundation, and in due course received $10,000 from them. That is a generous response, but far from estimated $70,000 to $80,000 that such a memorial will cost. To that sum we can add about $7000 which we have received from the 2013 Tawa Community Grant and from the Tawa Community Board.

We have met with WCC staff, and now have approval to proceed, subject to some conditions which, at the time of writing this Newsletter, have yet to be received. They are unlikely to be onerous. After discussion with the Community Board, the RSA, and the architect, we intend to proceed on this project in a staged manner, applying for funds for each stage. We have enough money in hand to embark of Stage 1, which will see the necessary clearance of space at the northern end of Oxford Street so that the basics of the Memorial can be set out, and the following Stages can be indentified and costed. Shortly we hope work on the Memorial will be under way. It will take more time to build than we had hoped, but we are in no doubt that what we are aiming to do is achievable.

Kind regards