1953: Prize-Giving Speech
By
Prize-Giving Speech was recorded on LP for Barney Flanagan and Other Poems (1973) but dates, I think, from poet J.K.Baxter’s The Fallen House (1953.) Baxter wrote many powerful poems to deliberately provoke and enliven New Zealand culture. Such attempts needed to be frustrated by being re-framed as a friendly Kiwiana icon. Like the song Born in the […]
Read more..February 15, 2019
1925: Labour 0.0
By AHNZ
Looks like McBride found this old unidentified clip, they have kindly shared it. No information comes with it so we have to estimate… c.1925 Summer’s morning, post WW1, a crowd draws around the band rotunda in Greymouth. Our cameraman captures a shot from beyond the fringe of the gathering masses. Parade lines form up and […]
Read more..September 17, 2018
1932: Tai Tapu Library
By AHNZ
Tai Tapu Library, South Canterbury. Without government who would build the libraries? This one was opened on 12 August 1932 and paid for with the proceeds of prize-winning daffodils grown on the property¹. And, the subscriptions of those desiring to be members. The public library itself is even older than this building. However, it was […]
Read more..April 11, 2024
1995: The Travesty of Waitangi
By AHNZ
Stuart Campbell Scott (1920-1997) was one of the last of New Zealand’s Expeditionary Generation: the adulthood generation during WW2. His contemporaries were the American “Greatest Generation,” Edmund Hillary, Robert Muldoon, Norman Kirk, Brian Gerald Barratt-Boyes, Ruth Ross, Bill Pearson, Keith Sinclair, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Their talent, intelligence, hard work, and attitudes built […]
Read more..April 4, 2024
1975: New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation Extinguished
By AHNZ
Today in New Zealand history, 1 April, 1975, Labour 3.0 abolished the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. When a new Government takes power its primary job is to capture or destroy all the State institutions controlled by the prior Government. Television no exception. The NZBC was split into Radio NZ, TV1 and TV2 with TV1 broadcasting […]
Read more..April 1, 2024
1971: Foxton Courthouse Closure
By AHNZ
Foxton Courthouse was shut down on January 28, 1971. It was part of a wider trend to cull the country courthouse that was just warming up. National 3.0’s Minister of Justice, Dan Riddiford, was the figurehead behind this one but at the end of the decade that government dropped the axe on 24 of New […]
Read more..March 31, 2024
1848: The Canterbury Association
By AHNZ
Today in history, 28 March, 1848 The Canterbury Association met for the first time. This was at 41 Charing Cross, London, and the local time was 27 March which is how most sources record the time but AHNZ prefers to record dates using New Zealand’s calendar. To us, especially Cantabrians, names like Cavendish, Charterius, Coleridge, […]
Read more..March 28, 2024
1936: Single Source of Truth
By AHNZ
Today in history, 25 March, 1936, Labour 1.0 started radio broadcast transmissions from the Debating Chamber. Michael Savage’s new Government scared some New Zealanders. Had we elected a bunch of open Communists to run our country? Yes. Would they run it that way? Kind of, yes! One thing Labour had to do was circumventing the […]
Read more..March 25, 2024
1921: Christchurch Electric Car Fleet
By AHNZ
By 1921 Christchurch had a fleet of 48 private and council electric vehicles. Every one of them paraded for this photo that year. A good city for electric cars because Canterbury is flat and had a good power supply. The local MED offered discount rates for charging batteries overnight and this encouraged more users. This […]
Read more..March 24, 2024
1848: New Edinburgh
By AHNZ
Today in New Zealand history, 23 March, 1848, the first colony ship for the Otago Association landed and for this it has been Otago Anniversary ever since¹. This was a sub-project of the New Zealand Company facilitated by the Wakefield family and designed to be a Scottish intentional community. The New Edinburgh project had been […]
Read more..March 23, 2024
1861: The Invasion of Otago
By AHNZ
Gabriel Read was done with gold in March 1861 but it wasn’t to be for the first or last time. Now aged 36, Reed made his way in March to Cust in North Canterbury for the farm hospitality of his 21yo cousin, Terry Murphy. The family connection between these Australian men was that Read’s sister […]
Read more..March 21, 2024
