Toss Woollaston lived and worked in the Nelson district for more than four of the seven decades between his arrival to the region as a teenager in 1928 and his death in 1998. These years were spent principally in the Riwaka and Upper Moutere areas where the rhythms of the surrounding hills, light, and weather shaped his daily life and his art. At his Upper Moutere home Toss had a stand-alone studio which he bequeathed to his son, Paul. Paul relocated it to his home in the Motueka Valley. Preserved almost as a time capsule, it was reclad and given a new roof, yet inside everything remained as Toss had left it.
In the early hours of 27th of June 2025, torrential rain began to fall in the Motueka Valley and continued in torrents for the following hours. By morning, five inches had fallen and the river kept rising — twenty feet of moving brown water threatening the stop bank and everything nearby. What followed would save decades of creation.
With Paul away moving stock and unable to return, the danger became apparent. As the river crept higher and closer, Paul’s wife Nola, and daughter Michelle, waded to the studio and moved artworks onto higher shelves. That decision proved critical. Much of the collection stored inside Toss Woollaston’s studio had been stored in museum‑grade archival boxes during cataloguing work undertaken by Te Manawa Gallery & Museum in the 1970s. At the time, this archiving was simply careful stewardship; in the flood, when combined with the fast actions of Woollaston’s family to move them, it became the lifeline that saved Toss’ archives.
By mid‑afternoon, floodwater surrounded the property. A neighbour arrived on a tractor, and Nola and Michelle clung to the machine as they were carried through waist‑deep water moving with the force of a river rather than a flood. Only later did they realise how near it had come to disaster. That night, the stop bank collapsed, and water tore through the valley, lifting the studio clean off its piles. Miraculously, it stayed upright. Caught in a backwash it floated slightly upstream, and was set down gently in a paddock a hundred metres away.
When daylight came, the studio was gone—yet not lost. Two days passed before conditions allowed a rescue. Toss’ sons Paul and Philip, and grandson Durham gathered everything that could be located and moved the works to private storage, dehumidifiers were brought in, and over several days the protective packaging surrounding the artworks began to dry.
Against all odds, very little was lost. The archival packaging created a barrier to the moisture and shielded the fragile works on paper, preserving nearly all of the collection. While a few items bear marks of the ordeal, their survival speaks to the value of that long‑term archival packing.
Toss’ art books were the greatest loss. These had been photographed and catalogued but only two volumes survived the flood.
The artworks shown in Woollaston Watercolours 1960-1990 come directly from those rescued and stabilised in that moment. Their survival is a story of courage and quick action by the Woollaston family.