Constantly, we hear Tauranga needs more tourist attractions for visitors, and particularly for those visitors arriving by cruise ship.
Why do we not create a maritime museum entitled the Rena Disaster Museum?
The former information centre at Mount Maunganui, now up ‘for lease', is the perfect location with thousands of foot traffickers passing it's door off ships. Then there is all of the domestic and international tourists who visit the area.
Schools would find it a valuable learning centre for teaching about the disaster and the environmental issues it has caused.
This building would make a superb site for such a project.
Maritime New Zealand has a complete photographic record of the Rena disaster and all of the information that goes with it; and no doubt a good many disaster relics. The Rena disaster, I believe, is the second most costly shipping disaster clean-up in the world; the first being the Costa Concordia.
Surely, that in itself written on the building would be sensational enough to pull people through a museum door.
The art gallery could help with layout and display of the photographs and items.
And I am sure there are many big companies in Mount Maunganui, which would be only too willing to sponsor a mounted photograph and an information plaque to go alongside each photograph.
So long as their company name was mentioned on the bottom of the plaque.
It need only take one full-time person to run the museum, as I am sure there are many suitable, reliable volunteers who would willingly spare a half-day each week to keep the museum manned and operational.
A admission charge of $5 would not be too much as an entry fee. Souvenir items and books, telling the story of the disaster, could be sold to help with costs.
I can just picture such a museum thriving with a bit of initiative motivation and active participation from forward-thinking people in our community. When the Tauranga Museum is finished, the building could be used for another purpose.
Margaret Hills, Bethlehem.