Opening flourish for Flaxbourne centrepiece

A “phoenix project” birthed out of the 2016 earthquake is set to celebrate its opening day.

The Flaxbourne Heritage Centre’s official opening will be celebrated on Friday April 11 with a community day on the Ward Village Green and the first public cycle on the newest sections of the Whale Trail.

Flaxbourne Heritage Trust chairman Kevin Loe and the Whale Trail’s Zoe Gray say the joint opening of the centre and new cycle trails in the area is the culmination of years of work building, and decades of recordkeeping, for the entire region to be proud of.

“Jack Taylor left us with many, many years of collecting and writing the histories of the Flaxbourne area, and we’d outgrown our original archive building so were in the plans of what to do when the earthquake hit,” says Kevin.

“It takes time to raise the funds, get everybody on board and prove the case so now we’re nine years since the idea and eight years since the earthquake and people will be quite taken by what we have produced.”

While the Ward Village Green has seen the centre built, the Flaxbourne region has also seen its sections of the Whale Trail extend both north and south of the township.

“The opening is a collective celebration of two amazing assets in Ward that have connected the community and really invigorated it economically and socially,” says Zoe.

“To open the day we’ve got a 10-kilometer round ride out to Lake Elterwater from the shelter, and not many people have seen that side of Lake Elterwater before so it’s going to be awesome, we can get people out riding.

“The Whale Trail has construction teams building trail north and south of Ward, so we’re making great progress.”

Ward’s hall and village green became the hub of the Ward community after the earthquake, so Kevin said it feels proper to host the Heritage Centre – and Friday’s community day – there.

“For three weeks many people lived there while we waited for power to come back on, so it became sort of the point of assembly for the community.

“Flaxbourne has a lot of firsts – the first sheep station on the South Island, the first live crayfish shipment, the first wind farm in Marlborough.

“We want the community to celebrate as it’s their history we can all be very proud to share far and wide with much more than just a collection of artifacts”.