The place is buzzing, humming and crackling. The sounds of electricity – tiny, charged electrons creating a vital force of energy. Driving the world. Driving the knowledge and understanding for visitors to Katikati’s Western Bay Museum.

It’s the story of electricity, local electricity.

“We don’t appreciate electricity until we don’t have it,” said Paula Gaelic, manager of the museum. “Until there’s a power cut.” Then the lights go out, there’s no TV, no internet, no dinner, no shower – all things we take for granted. “And we’re scrambling. Where’s the torch? Where’s the candle?”

That’s why the museum’s latest exhibition, “Power to the People”, is a tribute to the Kaimai Range.

Kaimai means food source, but the giving doesn’t stop there. The lakes, rivers and watercourses on the brooding mountain range also drive the turbines at four hydro-electricity installations.

“Electricity which keeps lights burning in 23,000 homes in the region,” said Gaelic. “And we are grateful.”

It’s an exhibition as much about hair tongs, toasters and typewriters and the like from the museum’s trove of relics and artefacts as it is about the science of hydroelectricity. The 40-plus exhibits give context.

The exhibition also points to the contribution of one Lloyd Graham Mandeno OBE – late Tauranga Borough Council electrical engineer, passionate electricity advocate, inventor. The man who electrified the Bay of Plenty.

“Handsome, and he had brains,” said Gaelic. “A genius.”

‘Mandeno clothesline’

A large image of the power pioneer with the piercing eyes presides over the museum exhibition’s maps, diagrams, photos and factoids that trace the development of the Kaimai hydro scheme.

Lloyd Graham Mandeno, the ‘handsome and brainy’ man who electrified Bay of Plenty. Photo / Brydie Thompson

He once wandered the range with his trusted sidearm – a pocket aneroid barometer – recording the water levels of the waterways that are now linked through a network of tunnels and lakes that form the hydro power scheme.

And when he was done he had significantly grown New Zealand’s first underground hydroelectricity station at Omanawa Falls, had overseen the designed and construction of the McLaren Falls hydro scheme, and he’d hung his washing on “the Mandeno Clothesline” – an analogy for his globally feted invention, the single-wire, earth return system of electricity reticulation invention which enabled power to be distributed cheaply over long distances. At home, it carried power down Tauranga’s Cameron Rd to pub kitchens on The Strand.

“Chefs were thrilled,” said Gaelic. “Immediate, controlled heat in the kitchen.”

Although the public was suspicious of this new-fangled energy alternative energy, this black magic, that fired the fluted street lamps.

The relics

“Being used to gas lights, they had to be educated to not try to light the electric street lamps.”

So when climbing into the shower tonight give thanks to Mandeno, who invented the first electric hot water storage heater. He was a man “prone to seek a path not readily trodden by others”. His words. And the world was a better place for it.

One of the fluted street lamps is on display at the exhibition – one of more than 40 common household relics and artefacts invented because of, or improved by, the advent of electricity. And the Kaimai Power Scheme.

There’s an “antediluvian” washing machine – it doesn’t tumble or spin, it oscillates, rocks back and forth. How did that get rid of stubborn stains? The exposed ringer would nowadays be a health and safety issue.

From another time – Western Bay Museum volunteer Jenny Gawith gets in the spirit with the circa 1915 oscillating washing machine. Photo / Brydie Thompson

There’s curling tongs that were heated on the woodstove – users would need to get the heat right or the hair singes and the scalp burns.

Odd house

See the hand-cranked food mixer out of the 1950s. See it and be grateful to Mandeno, Kenwood and Breville. There’s the Remington I learned to type on 60 years ago, and an original electric Brother for touch typing. I still get called out by the kids for thumping my computer keyboard.

There’s a “good God!” invention – the Torka typewriting metronome, a time and speed mechanism that was sufficiently loud to be heard in a typing classroom.

There’s the sinister “Sweeney Todd”-type cut-throat razor from Solingen, “The City of Blades” in Germany. Sunbeam removed the likelihood of veins being accidentally opened when it introduced the Shavemaster Model R – the company’s first electric razor, in 1937.

A counter-top store display of the 1937 Sunbeam electric razor, which took the hassle and danger out of shaving. Photo / Brydie Thompson

Once upon a time there was a house down Devonport Rd that looked odd. Was odd. It didn’t have a chimney. That’s because it had been touched with Mandeno magic. It was the first house in New Zealand to be totally electrified. Mandeno’s doing. The handsome man with brains.

The Western Bay Museum’s “Power to the People” exhibition will hum through until January next year.