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Dunedin is a city with a sense of history. It is also a city where a lot of very interesting things have happened to a lot of very interesting people. These events are commemorated in a many ways across the city.

Street names, plaques, street furniture, monuments, cairns and statues, fountains, lookouts, buildings, even a memorial horse trough, all have stories attached to them.

Many of these memorials (and public art) are in our care, and the responsibility to keep them safe, clean and functional, with legible inscriptions, can be a challenge.

Constant maintenance 

All monuments are subject to gradual wear and tear through standing out in all weathers.

Both metal and porous stone are subject to corrosion and erosion, and stone to chipping, wood rots and needs regular repainting and ropes on flagpoles don't last forever.

Structures near the sea, and anything involving water or moveable parts needs special care. Older memorials near the railway line have endured years of acid rain caused through soot in the air in the days of steam trains.

Vandalism also takes its toll.

Over time, some memorials need more serious restoration or even reconstruction, such as the treatment given to the Wolf Harris fountain in the Botanic Garden and the Queen Victoria statue in the Queens Gardens.

They are treated with agents that prevent or at least slow down the weathering process. Queen Victoria has had a major makeover, (her nose was remoulded in November 1999).

These projects involve detailed investigation of the original work, consultation with conservationists, and painstaking care in the restoration process.