The long days of summer continue to bathe Te Arawhata in sun and provide opportunities for visitors to see Le Quesnoy at its most beautiful. July has again been a busy month for us here at the New Zealand Liberation Museum, with visitors from eight different countries passing through our doors.
As we move into the second half of the year, July has been a chance to reflect on some of the key moments of 2025 so far. For me, Anzac Day, the Nuit des Musées and our first two public talks of the year, focused on women during wartime and the role of sport in WW1, stand out as real highlights of the Te Arawhata event calendar.
We can also look back on dozens of group and school visits across the last few months – all of which have been very special, but none more so than this month’s visit from Craighead Diocesan, the Timaru girls’ school where Te Arawhata’s late Project Manager Rosaria Campbell attended high school. We were honoured to hear their moving waiata echo through Te Arawhata – a place so deeply important to Rosaria and to now to the Museum team.
This month, we have also taken the opportunity to mark a very significant date in the commemorative calendar – the 109th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme. 1 July will forever be associated with this terrible battle, which remains the deadliest in history. We were honoured to attend memorial services to the British at Thiepval and the Newfoundlanders at Beaumont-Hamel, and we remain committed to the memory not only of New Zealanders in the Great War, but of our Allies.
July has also been a month full of sport, with the Tour de France departing from Lille and an All Blacks-France rugby series taking place on the other side of the world, in Aotearoa. You can read more about our screening of the third and final match of the series here (link to rugby story).
There is a lot more to come in the second half of 2025 – our new temporary exhibition, Ça Roule – Remembering the New Zealand Cyclist Corps, has just opened; further public talks about our Allies’ war stories are coming soon; and, of course, we look forward to meeting and greeting visitors, from near and afar.
A bientôt au Quesnoy !