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From issue: August 2000

“What did you use before TV?”

One of the main reasons for preserving old buildings is that they enable people who view or visit them to understand, in a vivid, immediate way, how people lived their lives in the past.

Dolls from the collection at Alberton. Photo: Krys Pfeiffer

Many of the properties of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust are among the old buildings which give people - young and old - such access to past lives. That the young as well as the old can learn at these properties was recently demonstrated, convincingly and charmingly, by a fax the curator received from four school children. Because children had in the past lived in Alberton, the curator was able to show them what toys children had "in the olden days" and how they kept themselves amused "before tv".

Places such as Alberton have a key role to play in teaching the young, and the not-so-young, about how our New Zealand way of life has evolved.