NEW ZEALAND DURING THE ’60S — PART TWO
LIFE IN THE GARDEN CITY DURING THIS DECADE AND BEYOND
In the latter half of the 1960s, we had entertainment from a man who was to become a New Zealand icon of the times in the form of ‘Fred Dagg’ (alias John Clarke), the gumboot-throwing Taihape farmer. “Ah, yeah, g’day,” was his usual opening line. I think the best song he recorded was We Don’t Know How Lucky We Are, and how right he was — he was decades ahead of his time with that statement!
Shops during the ’60s
Apart from the aforementioned Hay’s department store, there was Beaths, DIC, Whitcombe and Tombs (now Whitcoulls), Mckenzie’s, Minson and Co. (crockery), Millers (haberdashery), AJ White (furniture), Armstrongs, Munns Menswear, Casbolts (Honda motorcycle agent), Woolworths, Ballantynes, Four Square, Farmers (the Farmers rooftop was formerly Hay’s Rooftop with Aunt Haysel), Mckenzie and Willis, Hubbers, The Dainty Inn, Sedley Wells (music store), The Milky Way (milk bar), Bells Music Store, and Cats Pyjamas — selling fast food in Cathedral Square.
My favourite place to visit on a Friday night during the period ’55 to ’57 was Runwells, in Gloucester Street, a few doors down from Casbolts and the great Theatre Royal, which I still attend. Runwells was motor vehicle related and a specialist in extras, and I loved the place. My best friend Max Merritt and I would look forward to visiting it again all week. I would always buy something for my 1928 Essex, then later my 1935 Ford V8 coupé. Max later formed a band, The Meteors, perhaps best known for its number Slipping Away, which was recorded in London.
Picture theatres
Very few of the originals still exist. There were many of them back in the 1960s, mainly in Cathedral Square. An old saying was ‘spending Saturday arvo at the flicks’ — at the Grand (nicknamed the ‘Bug House’), The Tivoli, Plaza, Majestic, The Embassy, The Regent.
As far as I can recall, there were only two Christchurch suburban theatres, the Roxy in New Brighton and Hollywood in Sumner, which is still operating to this day. Isn’t that good! The North Canterbury towns of Kaiapoi, Kaikoura, and Rangiora had a theatre until the big earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, and Waiau had one until the quake beneath it in November of 2016. Rangiora has rebuilt its theatre since the big shakes, dividing it into three, one with 98 seats, and two with 22 seats each. Lorraine and I visit this complex, simply known as ‘ Town Hall Cinemas’, almost on a weekly basis.
Down at New Brighton, we had the dine-and- dance Shoreline Country Club, overlooking the ocean. It was a very popular place on a Saturday night. Unfortunately, it burned down in about 1980 and was never rebuilt. I have often thought that was a pity.
And while on the subject of New Brighton, in the pre-war days, most houses built from North Beach to South Brighton were weekend baches. The ‘ bach’, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is “a small hut or seaside house — live as a bachelor, unmarried man or woman etc. etc.”, so a common saying was, according to Dad, “Are you married, or do you live in Brighton?”
First car after four years
In 1962, I had been married for four years and had no car during this period. Then I bought my first car to do up, a 1936 Vauxhall DX 14/6. This was followed by several other Vauxhalls (models such as a J 14/6, LIP, EP, PA, PB, and PC Crester), a Morris Minor, a Riley Elf, a Morris 1100 and 1300, Austin and Morris 1800s, and progressively up the ranks over many years to many Falcon XRS, XT, XW, and a new XA Falcon Fairmont 302 V8. While I have owned 42 Fords to date, many Holdens saw the inside of my garage as well during the 1960s. They included EH, HD, HT, and HK models, as well as, in 1973, one HQ, a
In the latter half of the 1960s, we had entertainment from a man who was to become a New Zealand icon of the times in the form of ‘Fred Dagg’ (alias John Clarke), the gumboot-throwing Taihape farmer
fabulous (for the time) Statesman de Ville. I loved that car. So did the whole family. I wish General Motors had built a two-door hardtop Statesman — what a great-looking car that would have been. My present classic is a 1965 Falcon XP, first purchased in 1995 from the original lady owner, but that’s another story.
Christchurch and North Canterbury car dealers
Some of these included Hutchinson Motors (Ford), Federal Motors, Mclaren’s, South Island Motors, Tench Brothers, New Zealand Motor Corp (BMC/ Honda), Cooper Henderson, Parkers Car Sales, Crester Car Sales, Jacobsons Car Sales, Excelsior Motors, Barrie Walker Motors (commercials), Salisbury Motors, Autodrome, Lloyds Car Corner, Manchester Car Sales, Ray Mclean Motors, Cockram Car Sales Ltd, Gold Star Motors, Metro Auto Court, Riccarton Car Sales, Sydenham Park Car Sales, Auto Sales (where I worked), Seaview Motors ( New Brighton), Shoreline Motors ( New Brighton), Barry Brown’s Car Sales (Kaiapoi), and Geoff Allan Motors (Rangiora).
Cockram Nissan, Metro Auto Court, Ray Mclean Motors, and Sydenham Park Car Sales are the only companies mentioned still trading in Christchurch. Also in North Canterbury we had Palmer and Doak, a Ford agent from 1925 to October 1989. Its headquarters were in Rangiora, and it later opened branches in Kaiapoi and Amberley. It gained a high profile when fitting 105E Ford Anglias with warmed 1500cc Cortina engines, the result being known as the ‘Palmer and Doak Anglia GT’. An amazing conversion (for the time) was the fitting of the Ford V8 302-cubic-inch (5.0-litre) motor to the mundane Ford V4 or V6 Transit van! There is one still operating here as a Mr Whippy cream-freeze van: you can’t miss that typical rumble from a modified V8 twin-exhaust system coming up the road at idle. I think the sound actually helps with the sales!
The infamous Bassett Road affair of 1963
Taking into consideration the average age of readers of this publication, there would be very few of us who don’t recall New Zealand’s most infamous murder, back in the early ’60s. It was at a time when only about three murders a year were recorded.
The 1963 Bassett Road machine-gun murders involved the murder of two men,
Frederick Walker and Kevin Speight, with a .45 calibre Reising submachine gun on December 7, 1963, at a private house at Bassett Road in the Auckland suburb of Remuera. The crime received considerable media attention and captured the public’s imagination for many years: word spread quickly of a ‘Chicago-style’ gang murder previously unheard of in New Zealand. The house was reportedly used as a ‘ beerhouse’. Until 1968, New Zealand pubs were forced to close for the night at six o’clock, and at the time the murders occurred, Walker and Speight were believed to be illegally trading liquor at their premises. These premises also served as early distribution points for cannabis in New Zealand — and other illegal recreational drugs — during the 1950s and ’60s.
John Gillies and Ronald Jorgensen were arrested on December 31, 1963, and their trial began on February 24, 1964. Jorgensen was easily caught, and Gillies evaded arrest for several days. Born in Kaikoura, Jorgensen had a history of assault and theft in Christchurch and had just finished a two-year stint in prison, although he had served time in a borstal beforehand. In 1951, as a young offender, he met John Gillies.
Gillies also originated from the South Island. In 1956, he had fled trial for a number of criminal offences in neighbouring Australia, until a further prison stretch in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison led to his deportation back to New Zealand in October 1963. Both men denied charges of murder, although Gillies admitted acquiring the machine gun for his own protection. Both men were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Jorgensen took up painting and sold a number of his works while serving his prison sentence. He was later paroled under strict conditions, and vanished in mysterious circumstances in 1984. His yellow MKIII Cortina was found wrecked after it went off SH1 into the sea along the Kaikoura coast line. Police initially suspected that he had faked his death but later declared him legally dead.
In 2010 an episode of TVNZ’S The Missing traced the life and disappearance of Jorgenson and uncovered several eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen him in Perth, Australia, in the late 1980s and early ’90s. The maker of the show concluded that there is strong evidence Jorgenson faked his own death and fled New Zealand.
As for Gillies, he was paroled in the late ’60s, but, although he had learned technical drawing in prison, he soon got into trouble with New Zealand’s criminal justice system once again and served further periods behind bars before his final release from prison in 1987.
Colin Meads: the toughest All Black of all time
Colin Meads was born on June 3, 1936, in the town of Cambridge in the Waikato.
Meads played club rugby for Waitete Rugby Football Club (RFC) and played his first game for King Country in 1955, at the age of 19, scoring a try and even a drop goal — an unusual feat for a lock. Meads impressed in his debut match.
In 1955, Meads was selected for the New Zealand under-21 side. From 1957 until 1971, Meads was effectively an automatic All Black selection. His strength and high threshold for pain became legendary: he emerged from a particularly vicious ruck with his arm dangling horribly, with an obvious fracture, yet he completed the match. When the doctor cut away his shirt and confirmed the break, Meads muttered, “At least we won the bloody game”.
Meads had the reputation of being an enforcer, and was involved in some controversial incidents. In 1967, he was sent off by an Irish referee for dangerous play against Scotland. Colin was only the second All Black suspended in a test match. He captained the All Blacks a number of times and now holds the record for the longest period of captaincy.
After retiring as a player in 1973, Meads became chairman of the King Country union. Despite his retirement from rugby, he remained a familiar face to many New Zealanders. He was a frequent
From 1957 until 1971, Meads was effectively an automatic All Black selection. His strength and high threshold for pain became legendary