The children could have been led by the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

For the most popular sight at the Brave Hearts exhibition among visiting children in Rotorua has been the average size of a rat's heart.

It is one part of an exhibition housed in two combined containers set on the grounds of Rotorua Public Library.

Encased behind thick perspex, the rat's heart is astonishingly big compared with those extracted from an elephant, sheep, deer and a human all of which add touches of realism.

For this display is but one segment of an exhibition to create heart awareness and how technology has advanced New Zealand's claim in cardiac studies.

Among the leaders are some of the most celebrated names in medical history including New Zealand's heart pioneer Brian Barrett Boyes and South African Christian Barnard, who won fame with the first heart transplant in 1967, along with Dr John Mayhew, better known as a doctor for the All Blacks.

In essence, New Zealand's largely unknown story in the evolution of heart surgery is now enunciated for wider public consumption.

Local businessman and Rotarian Brett Marvelly, using contact points in Auckland, arranged it for Rotorua on seeing it displayed at Henderson.

Opened on November 2, the exhibition will continue daily until March next year.

With support from his club, Rotary Rotorua West, the Rotorua Lakes Council and the Pukeroa Oruawhata Trust, the exhibition within the burnt orange-coloured containers, an incongruous sight in environment sensitive Jean Batten Square, has attracted steady patronage.

Prue des Forges, a Rotarian acting sentinel at the exhibition, said the two of five Rotorua folk with heart transplants had visited. 'One lady was told at 5 she would live until 10. She had a transplant, had three children and has had a full life,” Prue said, 'she said she is now feeling tired”.

Interactive themes have also held interest. 'Some visitors – and we've had them from overseas – took their time to go through,” Prue said. 'All were impressed.”

They were taken by the history of te examination of heart disease which stretches before Hippocrates and Aristotle to the modern times when a pail of hot water was used to keep blood at an even temperature during a transfusion. One cabinet displays pace makers, some which could be mistake for hip flasks. The exhibition infuses us into the modern era of micro-surgery.

Sadly, noted Kiwis have made the news along the way, among them the entertainer Billy T James. Two carefully kept scrapbooks of clippings from the NZ Herald and the Auckland Star convey the struggles for funding hospitals faced, yet they also published affecting news interest stories.

In one an item of several paragraphs of Baroness de Rothschild appears, an almost reluctant news snippet acknowledgement in these days of personality driven media.

Brett Marvelly said he hoped other districts could be enthused to make use of the exhibition created by the Auckland Medical Museum Trust, supported by Auckland University of Technology. He noted the exhibition had not previously left Auckland.

The exhibition is free, with a gold coin donation encouraged for charity.