Chunky old phones with their circular dials may evoke a sense of nostalgia for many visitors to Western Bay Museum’s Echoes of Exchange exhibition.

For others, it will be the first time they’ve seen a phone that can’t fit in their back pocket.

Dialling back the clock even further, some may recall the experience of sharing a phone system with neighbours.

“Can you imagine the days when you had to pick up and say “working” or “party line?” said private collector Geoff Willacy.

Geoff, who has a passion for Tauranga history, loaned a number of Post Office artifacts to the Echoes of Exchange exhibition which is on at Western Bay Museum until the end of the year.

Technology evolution

The exhibition features items which shaped communications in the 20th century and illustrates the evolution of its technology throughout the years. The exhibition is also a homage to the now defunct Post Office of New Zealand.

“I recognised in the 1980s that the Post Office was in [a] serious state of demise so I just quietly started collecting a lot of things and it might have got a little out of hand. From the 1990s I started being asked to talk to small groups about Post Office history ... the older generation have a real rapport with it.”

The old ways of communicating surprise visiting school groups. Photo / Rebecca Mauger

The Post Office was the centre of every town, said Willacy, it was more than just a savings bank and mail collection.

More than letters

“There was so many things the Post Office did that people don’t realise such as gun licences, hunting licences, gold mining licences and home loans.”

Other services included paying bills and it was the place for birth, death, and marriage registration. It was also quite the social hub for small towns.

Willacy said if you get 20-30 seniors together “you’ll find at least one of them used to work at the Post Office”.

Carly Vevers, from Tauranga, is working on her museum masters degree and curated Echoes of Exchanges. She connected with Willacy to include the Post Office element.

“Geoff loaned us a lot of the objects that we would never have been able to access and it just broadens the ability to tell a story really well,” she said.

Communication artefacts

Carly often hosts school tours at the exhibition. It’s a first time for many of them viewing some of the communication artefacts and equipment from Post Office days, Vevers said.

Students love hearing stories from the past, she says, especially as to how people connected in the 20th century.

“It just seems outrageous to them that at one stage your neighbours could listen in to your calls,” she says regarding party lines.

Geoff and Carly in front of the telephone exchange. Photo / Rebecca Mauger

The communication relics include various telephone styles. There’s a working telephone exchange and children can pick up and be transferred to another line. One of the switchboards has all the names of the women who use to work on it carved into the back of it, Vevers said.

Museum manager Paula Gaelic said Echoes of Exchange has been an excellent exhibition in terms of targeting and capturing the interest of all ages.