Figure 82: The Cadman thermal bathhouse, Te Aroha Domain, circa 1920s. Photograph by Arnold. Reproduced courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (F-003354-1/2).

rival to Rotorua for tourists and health seekers.²⁹ In 1978, departmental control was handed over to a joint Piako County Council-Te Aroha Borough Council administration. Since 1989, the Te Aroha Domain has been administered by the Matamata Piako District Council.

The growth of Te Aroha through the 1880s and 1890s, after the gold rush faded, was directly related to the ‘medicinal and therapeutic properties’ of the mineral springs and in particular ‘the efficacy of the waters in skin diseases and in rheumatic ailments’. In 1887, the domain board published a booklet by a Dr Wright, ‘physician to the Thermal Springs Domain, which predicted a future for Te Aroha as ‘the sanatorium of the Southern Hemisphere’ (see fig 81).³⁰ Wright’s analysis of the mineral content of Te Aroha springs suggested similarities with the waters from several French, German, and Austrian spas. The completion of a railway connection to Te Aroha in 1886 meant visitors could travel directly by rail from Auckland. Various contemporary travel guides extolled the virtues of the spa, including Ingram’s 1892 Guide for Invalids which stated that ‘Te Aroha Hot Springs have, within a remarkably short period, gained for themselves, by their wonderful curative powers, a deservedly high reputation among the sanatoria of New Zealand, and their fame is

29.‘Powers Delegated under “The Public Domains Act, 1881” to the Minister in Charge of the Department of Tourist and Health Resorts’, 7 January 1903, New Zealand Gazette, 1903, no 4, p 97

30.Alfred Wright, Te Aroha, New Zealand, A Guide for Invalids and Visitors to the Thermal Springs and Baths (Te Aroha: Hot Springs Domain Board, 1887); see also Wells, pp 28-40