Community Contributed

Coming Home

Kete Horowhenua2020-03-23T16:50:32+00:00
We are participating in a nationwide project to record the experiences of New Zealanders who have spent time overseas.

Celebrating Armistice day

Coming Home is a nationwide project celebrating the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day.

Our plan is to collect memorabilia from the Great war and (in our local case) any other overseas experience from our people. This may include the great Overseas Experience of any sort be it diplomatic or a more personal odyssey.

In particular we are interested in the effect that long absences from New Zealand have on people and their families.

We would love to record any stories, photographs, images of souvenirs on our own Kete Horowhenua database. We hope you are willing to share any material that you have the rights to and which may be in the keeping of your family.

Questions which come to mind are:

  • How do those who go away get home again, from overseas and from within New Zealand?
  • What was the journey like, and the arrival? What about those who do not return, what comes in their place?
  • How is the homecoming commemorated? A special dinner? a parade? a memorial opening?
  • What do those who leave bring back with them? Wives? Woulds? Diseases? Silences? Memories, Stories, Souvenirs?
  • How to service personel transition back into civilian life? How do organisations such as the RSA, family, church state, pubs and clubs feature in this.

Examples of suitable material could include:

  • Posters published by the government before 1944
  • A published written or artistic work whose creator died before 1958
  • Unpublished material before 1958 that you have copyright for.
  • Photographs, Correspondence, postcards etc.

You can also search other New Zealand sites for related material:

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