One of New Zealand’s best and most innovative private museums, Tawhiti Museum in South Taranaki recreates the region’s history in vivid 4D detail.
In 1975 former art teacher Nigel Ogle bought the 70-year-old Tāwhiti cheese factory and began the process of converting it into a museum filled with his own handcrafted displays.
Today, Tawhiti Museum is a testament to creativity with scale model dioramas and lifesize figures crafted with incredible realism and painstaking attention to detail.
One of the museum’s more recent additions is the Traders and Whalers exhibition, created in conjunction with Weta Workshop. Here, visitors can take a theme park-style ride in a small boat through dark, underground canals for an immersive historical experience.
Outside, you can catch the narrow gauge Tawhiti Bush Railway, which runs through the bush on tracks reclaimed from Taranaki’s logging past, explore the extensive farm machinery exhibition and stay for a cuppa at Mr Badger’s Café.
