Role models of the past in Taranaki

Models of a shopkeeper and customer at the Tawhiti Museum.

South Taranaki Museum in Patea is a wonderful place to rummage through, somewhere like your grandmother's house perhaps, where you stumble across some odd piece of technology or uncover a forgotten childhood treasure.

It was a welcome dry spot on one of those days that help to produce the lush green grass for the region's dairy industry. It also led me to the fascinating Tawhiti Museum near Hawera. Between the two, a dismal day suddenly became a lot of fun.

It was the sight of the Aotea Canoe floating in the rain above the main street of Patea which first attracted my attention. As kids back in the 50s and 60s we made our own fun on those weekend visits to the museum and this turned out to be just as intriguing.

After a quick intro by museum volunteer and local councillor, Warwick Fry, I wandered through the rooms, marvelling at the stuff our Maori and European forebears used in their daily lives. Gramophones with trumpets, early typewriters, and antique telephones crowded the shelves, all within touching distance.

The no-glass case displays continued through the Agricultural and Machinery room, where early separators and churns mixed it with horse-drawn gigs and fire trucks.

Women didn't feature much in the displays so their minor presence was all the more conspicuous in the Trade and Industry room, where an antique mannequin stuck her head out of an iron lung used to help polio victims breathe at Patea Hospital in the 1950s.

A harassed looking woman glared over the monthly washing in 1890. She was surrounded by instruments such as mangles, evidence of the intensely manual work of the times.

Women's lives were a bit on the margins in this museum but their role was certainly clear in the court devoted to domesticity.

Maori history is also a little thinner than you might expect. Maori arrived in Patea in the 14th century after navigators Turi and Rongo-Rongo found their way following directions from Kupe to look for "the river flowing towards the setting sun".

In the Maori court, an unadorned fishing canoe that had been dug out of a swamp looked battered, yet solid, beneath paintings of Oriwa Haddon, the first Maori painter to show work at a Fine Arts exhibition in the capital city. Valuable cloaks, tools, and piu piu are housed behind glass in this room.

But the dairy industry is certainly not forgotten. In the 1940s Patea Port was the world's largest cheese exporter and the life of the port unfolded as I strolled through a wood-panelled corridor in a simulated ship's hold accompanied by the cries of seagulls and wash of waves. Twelve portholes offered evocative glimpses into scenes from the past of a tribal settlement and once-thriving sea town.

"Ooh, that one's creepy," cried a child to her mother, backing away from one porthole, where a life-size model of Skipper Barnes was busy transmitting from a ship's radio.

I discovered local artist Nigel Ogle created these gems and his wonderful museum at the old Tawhiti cheese factory was the next, unexpected visit that afternoon.

"You mustn't miss it," urged Warwick, so, spurred on by this fellow museum vote of confidence, I set off to Hawera and Taranaki's answer to Madame Tussauds.

Tawhiti Museum was slick after Patea's olde curiosity shoppe style. A vast number of figures, made by Nigel, played out the dramas of local history in scenes of war, work and family life. The scenes are illustrated in a range of different-sized scenes, from life-size proportions to miniatures.

The figures are modelled on real people and look amazingly alive. A frazzled mother in curlers holding a baby in one arm and stirring a pot with another while a toddler screamed at her apron strings brought back memories, while a chap leaping up from a long drop when the door was opened caught everyone by surprise.

In other scenes, men were busy fixing cars, shearing and slaughtering sheep while women served behind counters, cooked and sewed.

The Brock family rooms take visitors close up to early middle-class life at home. A kid smears her face with lipstick as the parents prepare to go out, a drawing room scene sings when you push a button and toffee spills from a child's pot in the kitchen.

Maori life in the region and Kimble Bent's escape from the British Army in 1865 to live with the Hauhau tribe are also illustrated with imagination and Nigel's meticulous attention to detail in a series of dioramas. This former art teacher has turned a hobby and talent into a full-time business and has produced a hugely informative work of art that continues to grow.

In Badger's Cafe next door a series of models from The Wind in the Willows illustrate scenes from the book. Musing over a cuppa and a delicious home-baked cake, I realised I should have allowed more time for Tawhiti, but that is what happens when you just follow your nose.