Fairlie Heritage Museum — Attraction in Canterbury

What a wonderful place to have a break on a road trip! The cafe is what you notice from the road and it's great too, with tasty, fresh, good value meals and snacks. The coffee is excellent! The museum's modest appearance from the road is very misleading as there are some enormous buildings behind with impressive collections of cars and machinery, plus some excellent military exhibits. There's a fascinating separate exhibition about jetboats and their creator, Bill Hamilton ( I hadn't known anything about him but he's a real NZ hero ). The collection of wagons and carriages from the colonial period is really great and the displays of early kitchens and household goods was a good reminder of how everyday life has changed. We were there for 2 hours and could have easily spent more time. Great value for the modest $10 admission charge, (it's run by volunteers )! Well worth a stop if...

Saw the signs for the museum when passing by and called in to have a look at the very well restored David Brown outside. Met Gary another gentleman and the lovely ladies who work in there and in the cafe too. I was very kindly offered to be shown around the museum and all the sheds with the collections in. It is an unbelievably brilliant collection of machinery from all periods of time that are all in perfect original condition or nicely restored to original spec. I would highly recommend visiting to anyone passing through. Can only say I wish I had had more time to look around. Will certainly come back if I ever...

We loved this place and wish that our small rural museum committee could come and see what could be achieved. Well worth the $8.00 entrance fee. Really friendly cafe/front of house people and useful map. There were so many buildings to look in and the displays were cohesive with great descriptors on the various exhibits. The information boards were detailed and the collections and displays were well set out. Definitely will be back and have already been...