Everyone’s got a story to tell, but some of them are locked away, or hard to access. Our cadets have tracked down "the key" to some of their subjects’ most interesting yarns.
Within the halls of Dunedin’s Museum of Natural Mystery, time stands still.
Bruce Mahalski, the proprietor of the museum and its artefacts, stands just as still.
He is taking in the splendour of the vast collection of relics and rarities that dominate his Royal Tce home.
Dunedin’s own Indiana Jones, Mahalski has been preserving the past for close to five years.
The faint ticking of Heidi Wassner’s regulator clock, dating back to the 1830s, can be heard at the entrance to his abode.
Regulator clocks were used as the standard against which the accuracy of other clocks was measured, Mahalski says.
He holds a small brass key with a wooden handle, used to wind and adjust the clock when needed.
This particular clock was manufactured in Germany nearly two centuries ago, he says, and belonged to the Wassner family.
In 1945, when the Wassner home was commandeered by the invading Russian army, the family had a mere 10 minutes to rescue as many of their belongings as they could and pass them over the neighbour’s fence.
They chose the clock.
"It keeps perfect time", Mahalski marvels.
"It’s a relatively simple mechanism but it keeps very good time."
Before it came into his possession, the clock belonged to Adelheid "Heidi" Wassner, a head nurse at Otago Hospital.
She had lodged a claim with the German government for her family’s land, confiscated during World War 2, but died before the claim was resolved.
Three years later, as detailed in her will, Mahalski received a one-sixteenth share of the claim and the clock.
It now hangs comfortably in the museum’s hallway, at little risk of ever again having to be thrown over a neighbour’s fence.
While time’s arrow fires forward, Mahalski and his mysteries will remain a timeless repository of stories such as this.
— Tim Scott, PIJF reporter
