The Wanaka Programme. Consists of narration and excerpts from interviews made by the Broadcasting Service Mobile Unit in Wanaka and Cardrona in 1948.
Opens and closes with music. The main narrator is Selwyn Toogood.
Features several lengthy excerpts from the Mobile Unit's interview with Mrs C.M. King of Makarora. [Nee Pipson, she was born in 1868 at Albertown near Wanaka. Her mother was the first white woman to go to Makarora.] She recalls the isolation her mother experienced, when rowing down the lake was the only way of reaching the outside world and getting supplies. Her father was felling timber, which would then be pit-sawn and rafted down the lake. She describes the process for pit-sawing timber.
[A disc appears to be missing from the programme at this point.]
An excerpt from the recordings made by the Mobile Unit at the Cardrona Hotel is then featured, including an interview [by Leo Fowler] with Mr [James] Paterson, the proprietor. He talks about dances held at the hotel during the 1880s. Across from the hotel is the site of one of the richest gold claims in the region, the Gin and Raspberry. He claims there is still plenty of gold in the district. ['Jimmie" Paterson was the well-known proprietor of the Cardrona Hotel from 1926 until his death in 1961 at the age of 91.]
Mr John F. McDougall, whose family have run the Cardrona Post Office since around the 1870s, is interviewed about his family's connection with the Post Office. The school teacher Miss Dunn is also interviewed, although the school is soon due to close.