Creating Nelson’s past

A blast from Nelson's past is being created bit-by-bit by two men with imagination and innovation, as Adrienne Matthews finds out.

Tessa Jaine

Tucked away between the two expansive showrooms that make up the Nelson Classic Car Museum is a shed where two of what must be the most creative souls alive beaver away to create multi-award-winning stage sets which both show off the cars to their best advantage but also paint a picture of life through the years. Alex Burnett, a signwriter with decades of experience, including three years in the Los Angeles film industry in the 1980s, is the driving force behind the displays. He lives and breathes the brief to take the customer experience of visiting an already world-class collection to a whole new level. Ideas flow out of him continually and his enthusiasm and joy in the process can be seen everywhere you look. Although a number of outstanding replica buildings are already complete, Alex is constantly exercising his imagination to plan the next one. He is quick to admit that he couldn’t achieve what has been done without his sidekick Antoni Neal, well-known in Nelson for his musical talents as a solo artist and his work with students at Waimea Intermediate. Alex says he met Antoni through mutual friends, “for the last fifteen years I have been trying to get him to work with me because I knew how incredibly talented a builder he is. When this project came along, I finally managed to persuade him to hang up his guitar and join me for the ride.” The result is a perfect working partnership. While Alex dreams up the ideas, Antoni turns them into reality. “We work really well together,” says Alex. “We don’t have to have an engineer, architect or any designers. The two of us can complete the whole process from start to finish.” “We have what we call a tool-box meeting where we work on what we’re going to come up with next.” Antoni then creates the buildings which are decorated and finished off by Alex and his wife Sparky, who travels up from the couple’s home base in Hokitika, to add her contribution of special effects when required. Alex said when they first arrived the museum’s manager didn’t want it to look like a shed full of cars. “We started by removing the barriers around them so that petrol-heads could get right up close and personal with them. It has worked really well and we are the only gallery in the country like that. What we’ve tried to do is theme every set that we’ve built to match the cars, the era of the cars and the type of car, keeping Nelson’s history alive as much as we can at the same time.” The whole process is clearly a labour of love. The pair are known at every second-hand and antique shop in town as they specialize in repurposing “treasures” they find to help create the displays. With over one hundred and fifty cars from many countries and eras on display, there is endless opportunity for their creative brains to flourish.

It is apt that the museum sits where Nelson’s Motor Vehicle Assembly Plant did between 1966 and 1998. Within a replica of the factory with a backdrop of workers building cars when the plant was running, in the same place where the final car came off the rank before the business closed down, sits the last 1980 Austin Princess to be manufactured on site. “We’ve been really fortunate with the stuff people have brought in; books, history items, great things we can work with,” says Alex. “It all helps us to keep history alive and keep it as local as we can.” Assisting part-time is retiree Mark Nolte. “He’s our researcher and, unlike us, great on the computer. Anything we want to know; he goes and finds it for us. Take, for example, the big picture of the Queen at the entrance. Mark found the most popular photo of her ever taken and while I drew it up live, Antoni made the large frame which I decorated with loads of silver leaf. The limousine that the Queen Mother toured in throughout New Zealand in 1953 is in the collection.” “It’s a huge advantage having a carpenter/joiner/ builder on the team. Nothing’s a problem. We don’t have to out-source anything. We’ve been fortunate to have been given a workshop to work out of. We’ll try anything. We’re officially called the display department,” he says with a huge grin. The Lickety Split Milk Bar has replaced the original American Diner and is a hark back to the glory days of the ice-cream parlour. Sparky has excelled herself with the finishing, even creating ice-cream sundaes that look like the real thing, while Antoni has built window boxes, painted by Alex to resemble Snifter and Jaffa packets. In order to encourage visitors to make their way from the front gallery to the rear, the pair have constructed a glamorous 1950s/60s movie theatre entrance, complete with ticket lady, Mavis. The pressed tin ceiling of the era demonstrates the meticulous attention to detail that is a feature of their work.

Very popular with locals is the Caltex Bay View service station, a replica of the one that existed in Tahuna. It is exactly the same size and has all the

The Caltex Bay View service station is a replica of the one that existed in Tahuna.

same signage as the original. Antoni had relations who used to own it and they provided photos. With one genuine petrol pump at hand, Antoni constructed its companion using timber, parts of an insinkerator and an upturned electric frypan. Also in this gallery is an impressive Italian restaurant set, fifteen metres long by five metres high. It’s a backdrop to the Italian cars such as Ferraris and Fiats on display and also a nod to the Italians who were early settlers in Nelson. “Antoni made the doors, windows and all the structural stuff,” says Alex, "then Sparky and I did the decoration which included painting hundreds of faux bricks. All the menus are in Italian. Antoni made the sophisticated wrought iron balcony out of $25 worth of pool fencing and some pagoda poles.” In a rear corner is a Four Square, stocked with shelves of groceries. “It’s a window into the past,” says Alex. “We get the jars from the recycle centre and reprint all the labels”. Alongside it sits a replica of the traditional red phone box. “We couldn’t find an original,” he says. “We got the phone but Antoni built the rest.” The next set the pair are building is going behind the English car collection. It is an exact copy of the Rover’s Return. “We’re having a TV inside with a loop running so you can see Coronation Street programmes when you look through the window,” says Alex. The work the pair are doing is paying off with more than the joy it brings to visitors to the museum. A year after starting on the job they entered the New Zealand sign awards and did so again this year. “We pretty much cleaned up both times,” laughs Alex. Their eight awards including four golds, three silvers and a bronze, a remarkable achievement considering the corporations and design studios they were up against. There are still many walls of the museum to be filled with sets and the pair are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to keep on creating. “When we are done with these galleries, we will just have to ask the owner to buy more cars and put up more galleries so we can just keep on going,” laughs Alex.