At the foot of Mount Kahuranaki on Kahuranaki Station lies a modern building which looks like a woolshed. But it’s not.

Although designed to look like a woolshed, in keeping with its setting, ‘Martie’s Red Shed’ is a museum which houses a novel presentation of many hundreds of artefacts which show the life and times of early farming in New Zealand.

Opened recently, the museum, close to Kahuranaki Road, proved the perfect subject for a recent ‘mystery tour’ by the Hawke’s Bay branch of the New Zealand Founders Society.

Founders is a New Zealand heritage society whose members trace their ancestry to the settlers who arrived in New Zealand before 1865.

Founders’ activities celebrate the achievements of the early pioneering families, by learning about their experiences and by helping to preserve historic places, old buildings and monuments.

Co-owners of Kahuranaki Station, Caroline Greenwood and Martin A’Court, explained to the group, that the museum’s artefacts were mostly from the seven generations of Greenwood families, extending back to the arrival of Dr Danforth Greenwood and his wife, Sarah, who arrived in New Zealand in 1843 and settled in Motueka.

The collection also includes items from Mr A’Court’s family who came from Jersey in the Channel Islands.

The displays are arranged in viewing rooms, showing the different themes of station life. From the indoors, showing sitting room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom and wash house and their accompanying items and furnishings, to the outdoors, showing all manner of tools, machinery and equipment for the workshop and wool shed.

Some notable items include a very early arc-welding unit, a hand-made set of very early water skis, designed from a photograph in a European magazine, vintage tractors, a boat on wheels, vintage camping gear and a working example of an apple-grading machine as was used in the early years of apple-growing in Hawke’s Bay. This was brought in and was not previously owned by the family.  

The Greenwood family is well known in Hawke’s Bay for their founding role in farming and for their long time support of the community.

The family once owned the historic Duart House and have played a large part in its restoration, enabling it to pass to council ownership in the 1970s. From that time the grand old homestead has hosted many different functions for the local community.

Visits to Martie’s Red Shed on Kahuranaki Road are by appointment only, by phoning 06 874 6676.