A trip to MOTAT

Our class visited MOTAT to learn how people used water in Auckland in the 1800s. We knew that Māori stored water collected from the streams and springs in gourds called tahā.

We went to an education session to find out how the early Pākehā settlers got water. We had to dress up in olden days clothes and had turns doing jobs which involved water. We pretended to fetch water from Waiateao Stream, scrub clothes on a washing board because there were no machines and empty the toilet into a bucket for the night soil man who collected it and dumped it near the waterways.

We did a role play, protesting to the Auckland City Council about the pollution of the stream water.

We learnt that this actually happened and that the ACC decided to stop the dumping and to dam the water in Waiorea to make a lake and then pump the clean water to people's houses.

Here is the original Pump Station they built in 1877 which used a steam-driven beam engine to pump the water.