Wellington: Forgotten treasure

The Treaty of Waitangi looms large in our country's history and contemporary politics.

Yet fewer than 100 people a week wander in off the street to view the nine original copies of the Treaty, and most of those are foreign tourists, staff at the National Archives in Wellington told me.

That's because most Kiwis don't know where to find the original Treaty. Only a third of Wellingtonians I asked knew where it was. Aucklanders like me rarely have a clue.

Surprisingly, it's possible to walk in off the street into the open vault housing the Treaty without going through security or passing a single guard - although the nine original copies of the Treaty are held securely in cases under toughened glass.

The room is climatically controlled and the light kept low to preserve the paper and parchment.

It was eerily silent. With so few visitors each week, I was totally alone with just the faint sound of the air conditioning. It felt like visiting the Crown Jewels, without the hordes.

This most historic of documents has not always been as well-treated, I learned. Some paper copies were water-damaged and two parchment copies were munched by rodents in a basement at Parliament some time between 1870 and 1908.

Subsequent attempts to "restore" them had to be undone by conservators before the Treaty reached its current home in 1990.

Another surprise is the signatures. They are mostly marks - such as Xs, circles and spirals, drawn by people who had clearly never or rarely held pens in their lives.

Also housed in the 8m by 8m vault are a small number of other important historic documents. The one that really captured my imagination was the 1893 Women's Suffrage Petition, featuring 30,000 signatures - a quarter of all adult women in the country at the time - which led to New Zealand becoming the world's first independent nation to grant women the right to vote.

Like many Wellington buildings, the National Archives foyer has a remarkably good cafe. Or, for a moment of peace and quiet, there's an adjacent "Living Room", where I lounged on a sofa listening to taped recordings of former employees and leafed through a sample archives file from the Maori Affairs Department, which reflected the divergent attitudes of the 1960s.

FACT FILE

Where: National Archive is located at 10 Mulgrave St, Thorndon
Open: Mon-Friday 9am-5pm, Saturday 9am-1pm; entry is free; tour groups by arrangement.