Te Aroha Museum is celebrating 110 years of electricity in the region with an exhibition that will trigger powerful memories for older people.
Among the items on display, vintage vacuum cleaners and heaters.
Made with funding from NZ On Air.
By Hunter Calder.
"Funny heaters" and original electrical appliances will all be on display from this Saturday at Te Aroha Museum.
It's taken more than three weeks of preparation, ten volunteers and hours of research and cleaning to get the exhibition power exhibition ready.
President of the Aroha Museum JaniceParsell says it's all about showing people how far power has come over the years.
The spa resort town was the first place in the Thames Valley to have electricity - there was a need for power so lights could be put in the bathhouses.
"The power was important because our town was a tourist town and the tourists came to take the waters, that's what it was all about, you needed power for the big hotels, you needed power in the baths where they were taking the waters," Ms Parsell says.
Te Aroha was the first town in the district to have electricity - Ms Parsell says the flow of water from three creeks on Mt Te Aroha came down the hill through "penstocks" which then turned a rotor on a generator and created power.
Today Ms Parsell says electricity is taken for granted, but in 1906, it was a step forward for everyone, including women who often did the cleaning.
"Prior to a vacuum cleaner you had to take all you mats out and shake them, sweep your floors, some women did that every day. When the vacuum cleaner came along you just went swish swish with the vacuum cleaner."
She describes the original electrical appliances like something from "Noah's Ark".
That "vacuum cleaner, is a total nightmare."
Ms Parsell recalls the 1940's when her Mum having an electric washing machine and her aunty, who lived in Morrinsville, had a vacuum cleaner.
"Every Saturday my aunty would put the washing and the vacuum cleaner in my uncle's car" and visit Waihou "where Mum would do the vacuuming and Aunty Ellen would do the washing, then they'd all have lunch and then they'd go home."
The Te Aroha power exhibition gala opening is this Saturday at 1030am, and runs until April 2017.
