New Zealand Memories Issue 171

Inside Our Latest Issue


Contents

Letters  6

Vistavision’s ‘White  Christmas’ screening  8

Theatre managers advertised ‘White Christmas’ as a new motion picture unlike any seen in  New Zealand before. 

The Humble Little Tree 12

Remembering Christmas’s of times gone by.

Dear Mother: letters from the Pacific 13

Signalman Kenneth Scott’s letters from the Solomon Islands during World War Two. 

Subterfuge at Waipapakauri airfield 18

The Public Works Department engineer who built top secret Northland defences in World War Two.

Life on the Goldfields 22

William Carthew arrived on the West Coast of New Zealand in 1866 and prospected for gold for about five years.

HMS Indefatigable in Picton 1945  27

HMS Indefatigable’s visit to Picton on it’s return from the Pacific fighting the Imperial Japanese at Okinawa and Japan.

Behind the fairy tale existence  30

A look at the private life of Lady Eliza and Sir George Grey.

Farmer Photographer  33

Leslie Adkin, a renaissance man of sorts used photography to bring to life the characters and their personalities in a way rarely seen in the 1900s. 

Past and presents  36

A look at one of the Eltham’s most distinctive features - it’s famous toy wall. 

Eleven pennies’ worth of memories  38

John Stackhouse shares memories of his grandmother and his beloved boston buns.

A life on the rails  43

Cleaner to fireman to driver was Peter O’Brien’s progress within the locomotive branch of the  New Zealand Railways.

The writing desk  47

Di Morris writes of the trials and tribulations of South Canterbury settlers.

‘Willowbank’: From Romneys to university students  50

Wayne Batchelar writes of the history of the ‘Willowbank’ farm – now the site of Massey University.

The Laufmaschine is born  52

Michael Toohey investigates the origins of cycling in New Zealand.

Clarke’s modern grocery store  54

Remembering the ‘most up-to-date retail grocery outlet’ in Tauranga in the years after World War Two.

Saturday night was bath night  56

Bathing was a different procedure in the 1940s for the Julian family compared to modern day conveniences.

My uranium hunt  58

John Grant recalls searching for uranium ore in New Zealand.

In Praise of the Ship’s Surgeon  60

Sue Bye details the vital role played by the ship’s surgeon on voyages to and around New Zealand.

Voyage to Te Kao  63

Gertrude Burgoyne’s journey from Dunedin to Te Kao in 1899.