Copyright © All rights reserved. St Bathans Gallery

The St Bathans Post Office was built in 1909, replacing an earlier post office on the site.  The Post office was closed in 1937.   From then it has had a varied life including being used temporarily as a school and private residence.

It is a grand two-storied timber building that dominates the streetscape of the once booming gold mining town of St Bathans. One of the four heritage buildings managed by DOC in the village, the post office is important to both the local and wider Central Otago community. St Bathans is a key side trip for tourists including those from the Central Otago Rail Trail.

St Bathans Gallery is owned and operated by Lesley and John Ecksmann.  We specialise in designing and producing our own laser engraved souvenirs and gift lines.

After falling in love with New Zealand on many holidays, we arrived in New Zealand May 2012 with the aim of traveling around this beautiful land for 18 months to find something new to do and somewhere new to do it, while indulging our passion for photography.  We had owned and operated our successful sign and graphic art business in Australia for over  20 years and were looking forward to making some big changes.

The travel and exploration bug has always been with us having traveled Australia when we were younger for 3 years, only stopping when we fell pregnant with our first child.  We often joked that as soon as the kids moved out of home so would we.  Well that is exactly what happened!  We sold our business and home and off we went.

What we didn’t plan on was finding a place like St Bathans after only 4 months of our journey beginning. We fell in love instantly, the locals were so friendly and welcoming, the history of the area is so interesting and is something you can really feel still, and the scenery of Central Otago is a photographers dream....  We were home!  We spent the next year using St Bathans as our base to explore and photograph the South Island.

We were looking at a smaller building in the village to set up as a gallery for our photography when it was suggested that the Post Office needed to be utilized.  As it was a much bigger space than originally planned and we needed a way to fill it.  Purchasing a Laser Engraving machine was the answer for us, combining our graphic art skills and photography we designed and produced some unique Central Otago themed souvenirs and gift lines.

Our products took off that well we decided to close the Gift Shop so we could focus on selling our product wholesale to many large outlets through out New Zealand,  We also sell at the Queenstown and Dunedin Markets,    Why not come down and see us there!