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From issue: February 2002

A Monument to Our Industrial Past

by Ian Dougherty

Dunedin has the only gasworks museum in the Southern Hemisphere and one of only three such museums in the world.

The Dunedin gasworks in 1969. What would become the museum buildings are in the top right corner of the gasworks site. Picture: Dunedin City Council Archives

The Engine House Dunedin Gasworks Museum, as it is formally known, was officially opened in February 2001, following nearly fifteen years of preparation. The museum stands as a living monument to what was New Zealand's first and last coal-fired gasworks.

The Dunedin Gas Light and Coke Company began producing gas from coal on the Andersons Bay Road site in 1863. The company initially supplied gas for street lamps, and later for commercial and domestic lighting, heating and cooking. The Dunedin City Council bought the gasworks from the company in 1876, and operated it for more than a century. At the peak of production in the 1970s, more than 18,000 customers were being supplied with gas via an intricate system of underground mains throughout the inner city and most suburbs.

George O'Brien's 1865 water-colour of Dunedin's Gas Light and Coke Co. works. Picture: Otago Settlers Museum

By the 1980s the coal plant was nearing the end of its life, and the cost of a refit and the declining demand for gas conspired to end the operation. In 1987 gas produced from coal was replaced by reformed liquefied petroleum gas imported from the North Island (and more recently by locally-produced landfill gas), and the city council prepared to demolish the historic gasworks buildings.

The frame of an 1879 gasholder makes an impressive entrance to the museum's engine house. Picture: Ian Dougherty

Concerned at the imminent loss of an important slice of Dunedin's industrial heritage, a group of enthusiasts led by the late Elizabeth Hinds formed the Dunedin Gasworks Museum Trust in 1987 to push for the preservation of part of the gasworks as a working museum. Elizabeth Hinds, Director of the Otago Settlers Museum, became the new trust's first chair.

Two young visitors framed in the flywheel of a 1926 Bryan Donkin Booster that was used to boost gas pressure to outer suburbs during periods of high demand. Picture: Ian Dougherty

Sacrificed were the parts of the gasworks where gas was manufactured and stored. They included a 1962 retort house, which was the last in a line of retort houses in which gas was manufactured from coal on the site. It was pulled down in 1989. The city's gigantic gasholders were also demolished: the last one, at Kensington, was cut up for scrap in 2000. An 1870s brick governor house, which contained governors that controlled the pressure of gas in the city mains, was also destroyed, in controversial circumstances. It was damaged in 1991 during demolition of a nearby gasholder, and then levelled, despite public protests.

The nineteenth century gasworks dwarfs a traction engine during Dunedin's first festival of steam in May 2001. Picture: Ian Dougherty

Saved from destruction and incorporated into the museum are a cluster of Edwardian buildings on a corner site that covers about a sixth of the former gasworks site. The red-brick buildings comprise a fitting shop, engine house and adjoining boiler house. A twenty-four-metre-high, slightly slanting, brick chimney attached to the boiler house is the oldest part of the museum, probably dating from the 1880s.

The engine house serves as both exhibit and showcase. It contains a rare collection of elegant working steam engines that were used to pump gas around the site and the city. The oldest is a restored beam engine that was made in Scotland about 1850 and shipped to the gasworks in 1868. More quirky exhibits include a commercial gas oven once used for warming pies for famished rugby fans at Carisbrook. The story of the production of gas from coal, and the history of the gasworks, are portrayed in visual images on the walls.

Although the gasholders have gone, the museum has retained the framework from one of the huge storage tanks. An 1879 gasholder was dismantled and the supporting pillars and lattice-work girders around the top were re-erected near the surviving buildings, on a site previously occupied by a more modern gasholder that had been reduced to scrap.

With their demise expected, the gasworks received little maintenance for several decades prior to closure. Thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars had to be invested in the restoration of the buildings and machinery. Many more years of fund-raising and restoration lie ahead. The city council affords some relief by leasing the site to the trust at a peppercorn rental. Admission fees provide a small income. For the bulk of its work, however, the trust has to rely on donations of time, cash and kind from enthusiasts, members of the public and local trusts.

Throughout the project, the intention has been to restore but not over-sanitise the complex so that visitors can experience what it would have been like to toil in an authentic Edwardian industrial workplace.
Gasworks museums have also been established at Biggar in Scotland and Fakenham in England. Speaking at the official opening of the Dunedin Gasworks Museum, the chair of English Heritage and chief executive of the National Museum of Science and Industry in London, Sir Neil Cossons, described the Dunedin museum as the largest, and by far the best and most complete.

Ian Dougherty is a Dunedin author who worked at the Dunedin gasworks during the holidays while attending Otago University in the early 1970s.