Wanganui Cosmopolitan Club badge

This badge for the Wanganui Cosmopolitan Club depicts the Whanganui River’s famous taniwha, Tutaeporoporo, in the form of a tuatara clutching a flaming torch. The image of Tutaeporoporo is based on the city’s Coat of Arms, which was presented to the city in 1955 by Dr Morris Watt (1892–1973), a local medical doctor and an authority on heraldry. On the Coat of Arms, the shield is supported by a lion and a tuatara, the latter being described as recognising the city’s ‘strong links with local Māori’.

The Wanganui Cosmopolitan Club was founded in 1893 by Member of Parliament the Hon. John Ballance as a place ‘where men of all conditions of life might meet for mutual help and education’. Despite Ballance’s belief in ‘the absolute equality of the sexes’, women members were not admitted to the club until 1979, by which time most cosmopolitan and working men's clubs around the country had become places to socialise with a drink.

In 2018, the Wanganui Cosmopolitan club amalgamated with the local RSA under the umbrella Club Metro.