The Southern Heritage Trust celebrated its tenth anniversary with a lunch on Sunday 16 December 2012 in the elegant surroundings of the Otago University Staff Club. Nearly forty members and their invited guests gathered for what turned out to be a very pleasant social occasion.

The main item on the agenda was an illustrated presentation by John Barsby entitled "Past Present and Future: A Decade in Retrospect". In this he described the origins of the Trust in 2002, rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of a previous less successful venture, and went on to analyse its many  achievements over the decade under the three headings Advocacy, Publications and Events.

Singled out for special mention were the Trust's advocacy for the preservation of the Dunedin prison and the Dunedin Gasworks, its series of attractive publications, including eleven trail brochures and three significant booklets, and a number of special events culminating in the very ambitious and successful Dunedin Steam Festival of 2012.

Prof. Barsby paid tribute to the special contributions of individual trustees, and emphasised the importance of the volunteer workers sent by WINZ under various employment schemes. The Trust should be congratulated on its achievements so far. It had established a very positive public profile, which would stand it in good stead during the coming decade.

A group of some 45 Southern Heritage Trust members and friends enjoyed a sneak preview of the almost finished rebuilding of the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum on Friday 9 November 2012.

The tour began with an illustrated presentation by the museum's director Linda Wigley, which set the scene and gave us a foretaste of the varied techniques of presentation which will characterise the new museum, as well as of the sheer range of objects and images which will be on display. The party was then led through the various spaces, many completely new, such as the new entrances, the shop, the study area and the cafe; the only parts that were readily recognisable from the old museum were the transport display and the photograph gallery of the early settlers.

The new museum will display Otago's heritage in a highly imaginative and attractive way and will be be a significant addition to the attractions which Dunedin has to offer. The formal opening is on Friday 7 December, followed by a weekend of activities open to the public 8-9 December.

The 2012 Dunedin Steam Festival over Labour Weekend (18-22 October 2012), the most ambitious venture that the Southern Heritage Trust has ever undertaken, has come and gone, and in spite of some glitches with the star of the show, the steam engine Ka942, which broke down in Christchurch on the way down from the north and then ran out of oil on one of its series of trips to Sawyers Bay, the Festival has been generally regarded as a resounding success.

It says something for the impact of the Festival that it featured on the headline news of Radio New Zealand National's Morning Report on the Monday, followed by a well compiled  feature by Radio NZ's reporter Ian Telfer. The local newspapers also devoted generous space to the various events, including a three-page feature in the Star under the heading "Dunedin embraces Steam Festival".

The Festival started on the Thursday evening, when it was officially opened by Mayor David Cull at a ceremony in the Railway Station. Mayor Cull unveiled a specially commissioned panel celebrating the centenary of the building of the iconic TSS Earnslaw in Dunedin in McGregor's Foundry, which was located just behind the station. Among the invite guests who attended, notable were two groups who had dressed up for the occasion, representing two very different aspects of the age of steam: the Images of the Past group of women in very elegant Victorian costumes, reflecting the growing prosperity of the middle classes in the wake of the industrial revolution, and Steampunk fraternity with their imaginatively outlandish costumes and jewellery, reflecting the science fiction novels of the day written by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and others.

Of the two major events, one was the film show in the Regent on the Saturday evening. This had the audience rising for the National Anthem in the traditional way before the programme started; it also followed old custom by the inclusion of 'shorts' before the main feature, the 'shorts' in this case being archival films of  Dunedin in bygone days, including cable cars, trams and men in flat caps, presented by the Hertitage Film Trust. The main feature was  the compilation "When Comedy was King", which had the audience rolling in the aisles (well, not quite literally) at the slapstick antics of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and other comic favourites from the days of the silent movies.

If the audience number of about 300 at the film was a little disappointing, the Steampunk Ball at the Savoy on the Sunday evening was a sell-out with over a bundred people attending. It was a chance for the Streampunkers to strut their stuff, including out-of-towners who came from Oamaru, Gore and even as far as Hawkes Bay, Tauranga, Auckland  and Whangarei and indeed to show their stamina, with the dance floor packed to the music of the lively Strange Brew band.

One of the most pleasing features of the Festival was the opportunity it presented for local museums and other groups to showcase their wares. The Dunedin Gasworks Museum, with its impressive machinery fully steamed up, reported record attendances over three days; [the Hocken Library put on an exhibition on the TSS Earnslaw and the Age of Steam]; and many smaller associations, the Otago Model Engineering Society, the Ocean Beach Railway, the Taieri Historical Park, the Otago Peninsula Museum, the Waikouaiti District Museum, the Quarantine Island community (which organised ferries to the island and had 300 people to their picnic in spite of the wet weather), the Otago Heritage Bus Society (which provided a free shuttle service between the various venues) and the Port Chalmers Museum, were able to display their attractions to the wider community.

Thanks are due to the Dunedin City Council, which together with the Otago Community Trust provided major funding for the Festival, Allied Press, which provided the Star Shop in Lower Stuart Street as a Festival Headquarters, to the volunteers who assisted with the various activities, and especially to Southern Heritage Trustees Ann Barsby and Craig Bush, who spent countless hours over sixteen weeks and more working to ensure the success of the Festival. They are now planning for a repeat performance in two years’ time.

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