Tea, technology and the perfection of the Thermette.
It’s the first day of spring and a sharp chill slices the air, hazing the grass at Trotters Gorge with ice. Gregor places more beech twigs into the mouth of the Thermette and warms his hands on its side, the hot gas catching to flame in the air before disappearing into smoke. A few kilometres away, in Wānaka, a red mailvan sits uninhabited at the side of the road as Jack takes a break to pour a milky mid-shift brew from his Thermette.
It’s the mid-1940s, and the Thermette portable stove is at the height of its popularity. More than 8000 units have been sold since its invention by the electrical engineer John Hart in 1929. Light, portable and easy to use, the Thermette can be fuelled with anything from dry sticks to oily rags and promises to boil enough water for twelve cups of tea in five minutes.
Its design is straightforward. A metal cylinder sits on top of a small stand above the open fire. Inside the stove, a water chamber surrounds a cone-shaped chimney like a jacket. Wider at the bottom, the chimney draws up hot air, which heats the water and fans the flames below. As the slogan went, “the stronger the wind, the better the boil.”
It’s both simple and clever, but not unique. The water jacket design is similar to samovar tea urns from Eastern Europe and Irish “volcano” kettles. Yet for many New Zealanders, the Thermette has a near-sacred status. It’s a cultural icon. Historian Jock Phillips included the Thermette in last year’s A History of New Zealand in 100 Objects, and it featured in Jon Bridges and David Downs’ No. 8 Re-wired: 202 New Zealand Inventions That Changed the World alongside bungy jumping and human flight.
The Thermette was one of thirty-two inventions John Hart patented during his life, and the one that has endured the most. Born in London in 1887, Hart moved to New Zealand as a teenager in 1902 and settled with his family in Auckland. Twenty-seven years later, he would drive around the city with billboards advertising his invention strapped to the roof of his car. The Thermette is “indispensable to the farmer, camper, picknicker and motorist” proclaimed one advertisement. “A wonderful Xmas present for Dad!” sang another.
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But it was war in Europe that created an urgent demand for the Thermette. At the request of the New Zealand Army, Hart waived the patent for the stove when World War II broke out, and it became standard army gear for troops in North Africa. German troops puzzled over the black rings they found marked in the ground on the streets of Benghazi in Libya, and the Thermette acquired a new nickname. The ‘Benghazi Boiler’ became a symbol of New Zealanders on the move.
I talk with Brendon, whose grandfather was one such soldier. A plumber from Wānaka, he was the designated tea-maker in his crew. It became a cherished ritual to gather around the Thermette as the night drew in, to fill its open mouth with petrol and see the fire roar, the promise of a hot cuppa only minutes away. With New Zealand 18,000 kilometres away, the stove provided a hearth away from home, a warm glow to gather around as the fear eased and the night settled in.
Fires have always served as meeting spaces or centring grounds, somewhere to share secrets and stories. For the Marlborough Thermette Society, it is this social bonding that holds power. Bill McEwan, the society’s chair, says the group is really about the community that gathers around the Thermette, rather than the object itself. Setting out on fishing and camping trips together offers those “burdened by what we’re doing to our planet” the chance to access the world of “basic things” and return home smelling of woodsmoke and earth.
From the mountains to the front lines to the shelves of our homes, the Thermette has, for almost 100 years, been a part of the cultural consciousness of these islands. But today there is more competition than ever for portable stoves and natural gas boilers, “coffee culture” has lessened the allure of the roadside cuppa, and increasingly hot summers may prove the Thermette’s open flame too high a risk.
Nonetheless, the Thermette remains a cherished, and cherish-able, object. The more I look, the more people I find who know this. Wayne’s just had his re-painted, and the smell of burning wood and coffee from the Thermette Rachel inherited from her late mother still brings her joy in the early hours of each camping trip. They’re being rediscovered, too. Josh hadn’t heard of a Thermette before a chance find in his parent’s garage last month. He plans to bring it into work to share with colleagues, soon.
Words and artwork: Meg Elliot
