The show of the century
The 1940 Centennial Exhibition attracted 2.6 million visitors – at a time when the entire population was about 1.6m, writes Tina White.
It was grand, it was glorious. The biggest public event anyone could imagine, it had taken years to plan and build. Now, on Thursday, January 25, 1940, the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition had been up and running in Wellington for sixplus weeks with, as advertised, all the fun of the fair.
The Evening Post that day featured a slightly bemused boy, Robbie Marchant, the 1,100,000th visitor to the exhibition. Described as ‘‘a lad from the Northland excursion party’’, he was photographed receiving a £5 prize from Wellington mayor Thomas Hislop.
Elsewhere, the newspaper noted a message from the Navy Office to the Wellington Harbour Board, congratulating the officers and crew of HMS Achilles in its ‘‘action against the German pocket-battleship Graf Spee’’ in the first major sea battle of World War II.
The outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, had initially put a dampener on plans for the pleasurable occasion the centennial was meant to be, especially since this planning had stretched, off and on, for almost a decade, with recurring monetary anxiety.
The booked-in stars of the show, the Welsh Guards Band, cancelled. The exhibition directors held an emergency meeting. Costs were cut, and the Bank of New Zealand stepped in, giving the directors a welcome, one-time expenses boost of £750,000.
Oddly, November 8, 1939, the day the exhibition opened, was the same day that, in Germany, Adolf Hitler missed an assassin’s bomb by just 12 minutes.
Meanwhile, every day, rain, wind or shine, local and visiting crowds flocked to the 55-acre (22.2-hectare) exhibition at Rongotai, west of the airport, intent on having fun.
There was plenty of that. Architect Edmund Anscombe, designer of Dunedin’s own earlier centennial display, had created for Wellington a wide-open layout, with an impressive ‘‘1940 tower’’ rising above the grounds, and an avenue of pillars with reflecting pool, statues, trees and a fountain leading to the official courts and exhibits, including a Ma¯ ori Court and a Government Court.
Beyond that, refreshment booths and performance venues led on to Playland. This was the carnival corner – a giant pleasure ground of joyrides, the Cyclone rollercoaster, a cabaret theatre and other amusements guaranteed to suck shillings out of the most obstinate pockets.
Jokey, brightly coloured posters of Playland’s attractions showed tiny cartoon characters mouthing exclamations as they ran around the fairground.
Souvenir catalogues were sold inside the grounds; later, an official history of the centennial exhibition would be produced by author N.B. (Nigel Bartellot) Palethorpe.
Some time during the event’s six-month run, Anscombe pulled out his cine camera and filmed a snippet of the festivities. In barely a minute of time, he recorded: crowds in the central concourse; a tram taking passengers around the layout; people boarding ‘‘scoota-boats;’’ a light aircraft flying overhead; and, at the head of the reflecting pool, William Trethewey’s soaring group statue featuring explorer Kupe.
Earlier, Trethewey had explained: ‘‘There’s been a lot of talk about the Pa¯ keha¯ pioneers, and it just occurred to me that a group to the Ma¯ ori, the original pioneers of New Zealand, would be appropriate.’’
The film clip ended with the site’s miniature railway train running around the circuit, chased by a forever-immortalised small white dog. Unusually for the time, the film clip was in colour. (Today, it can be seen online, still capturing the feeling of that sunny afternoon.)
By the exhibition’s end, records would show there had been 2.6 million visitors – at a time when the entire population of New Zealand was about 1.6m.
Although the weather had been often wet, and mostly windy because of the venue’s exposed location, there had been 20 full days of sunshine.
Underpinning the frivolity was a more serious and selfcongratulatory meaning to the centennial year. It marked 100 years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and commemorated the settlement of the country by Europeans still firmly tied to the British Empire.
This emphasis didn’t sit entirely well with everyone. The normally conciliatory MP Sir A¯ pirana Ngata stated: ‘‘I do not know of any year the Ma¯ ori people have approached with so much misgiving as this centennial year . . . in retrospect, what does the Ma¯ ori see? Lands gone, the power of chiefs humbled in the dust, Ma¯ ori culture scattered and broken.’’
But Prime Minister Peter Fraser declared: ‘‘Now is not the time for brooding on ancient wrongs. It is more sensible and efficient to try to put them right, and endeavours are repeatedly made to that end. At the close of 100 years, we see signs of great progress.’’
The grand Centennial Exhibition ended on May 4, 1940.
With World War II heating up, it was time for the entire nation to pull together, as never before.