02/06/2026
The Waimate Historical Society is delighted to announce the Speaker for our 71st AGM on Sunday 14 June 2026. All are welcome to attend. The AGM begins at 2pm and Rauhina's talk will begin once it has concluded. We look forward to seeing you there!
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A bookshop, a bicycle, a bygone era: J.H. Beattie’s time and work in Waimate
What do a bookshop, a bicycle and thousands of pages of archives have in common? They were all once owned by one James Herries Beattie of Waimate: MBE, writer, collector, historian, speaker, stationer, bird enthusiast, member of the Waimate Historical Society, winner of the Percy Smith Prize for achievements in anthropology, and owner of a Canadian-made Massey-Harris bicycle.
Born in Gore in 1881, Herries Beattie was a resident of Waimate from the end of 1921 until his death in 1972. He operated a stationery and bookshop on Queen Street (“The Shop Next the Post Office”) for 17 years. Over his lifetime, he researched and collected screes of information on early New Zealand settlers, Southern Māori communities, and Otago and Southland history. He wrote more than 27 books and was awarded and the Percy Smith Prize for achievements in anthropology and an MBE for his work.
The Beattie papers held at Hocken were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World New Zealand register in 2018 and have been digitised as part of the Hocken’s Kāi Tahu digitisation programme.
Rauhina Kohuwai-Banks (Māori Archivist at the Hocken Collections) will share some of the fabulous treasures relating to Beattie’s time and work in the Waimate district from the digitised collection now available online on Hocken Digital Collections.
Image: Flyer, 8 September [1936], MS-582/R/11/008, Hocken Collections. URL: https://hocken.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/66281 [Accessed 2 June 2026]
