An Albert Town resident whose family has lived in the area for generations is leading a community association project to create and install historical plaques around the township.

Bruce Hebbard plans to soon install three new plaques, one near the Alison Avenue-Gunn Road intersection for Dean’s Bank and another two which will be located at the sites where punts were once the only way for people to cross the Clutha River. 

“The punts started in about 1860 and the one near the bridge closed when the bridge opened in May 1930,” Bruce said. 

“Then the lower punt closed when the Camphill Bridge was completed later in 1930.”

The next plaques will mark the sites where punts used to cross the Clutha River, pictured here in 1907, featuring Bruce’s grandmother Ivy Morris and grandfather Chas Templeton. PHOTO: Supplied

Bruce’s mother’s family are the Templetons, who have been in the area since 1870.

“There’s a well-known photo of schoolchildren in the punt,” Bruce said. “It’s from 1907 and my grandmother and grandfather are both in it.”

Bruce’s great grandfather, who emigrated from Scotland at a young age, was one of the puntmen.

The punt plaques will be installed this summer, the second, third and fourth of what it is hoped will be a series that marks various places of historical significance.

The Albert Town Community Association is adding the plaques slowly due to the time and cost, but Bruce, with his extensive knowledge of the area’s history through his family and keen interest, is full of ideas for new spots.

There is the Templeton Workshops; the oldest business in the Queenstown Lakes District, which began as a blacksmith and still operates as an engineering works.

The old ferryman’s cottage in Arklow Street is another, or the pair of sections (now built on) on Lagoon Avenue once owned by Sir Edmund Hillary, Bruce said.

There’s also the little cottage on Alison Avenue once owned by the Gunn family, who divided the lower part of their farm - the area around Dale Street, Alison Avenue and Lagoon Avenue - into sections and put them up for sale for the princely sum of  £200 each.

Another site Bruce plans to investigate for a plaque is the old cemetery within the Department of Conservation camping ground - a vestige from the era when the Albert Town township was located on the other side of the river.

The first plaque in the project was installed last year at the site of the old Wānaka School off SH6.

Bruce says he recalls being “quickly corrected” by older relatives if he ever referred to the former school as ‘Albert Town School’.

“The school in Wānaka was Pembroke School, because Wānaka used to be called Pembroke,” he explained. “Pembroke changed to Wānaka in the 1940s and it was sometime after that Pembroke School was renamed Wānaka School.”

“The school in Albert Town, Wānaka School, closed around that time.”

Each of the plaques feature a small amount of historical information, but Bruce said a project is underway to add a QR codes which will lead to more detailed information.

“Once we’ve got all of them in, we’ll make a map too, so people can follow them round and read it all,” he said.