Old Acquaintance Not Forgot
Photography legend Peter Bush catches up with some long-time accomplices during his holiday break
By the time this column appears in print the year 2015 will be well under way, so my delayed greetings to all present and new readers. For myself the past year was one of the roughest of my life, with major surgery and restricted mobility cramping my style somewhat, but the last week of 2014 is one I will remember as being very special.
The red-letter day came about when I had an annual medical check-up with my long-time specialist surgeon who, after hearing my lament about still living on a diet a church mouse would be proud of, asked to see the diet sheet that I have dutifully adhered to for eight months. After I handed over the creased and crumpled sheet the good surgeon gave a snort of laughter and gleefully tore it up, giving me the green light to resume a normal diet immediately.
He told me salad greens, pickled onions, and the spicy condiments that I have always enjoyed are once again back on the menu and, best of all, alcohol was now okay to indulge in — in moderation, of course. The timing could not have been better, with Christmas fare waiting in the kitchen to be sampled.
To celebrate my new-found food freedom I flew to Auckland to spend time with my daughters and their families, and to catch up with some old friends. One particularly special old friend is Freddy Freeman. We were both cadets in the photographic department of the NewZealandHerald and the old WeeklyNews way back in the mid-1940s. Fred was a couple of years my senior and took me under his wing. We went on to become lifelong friends.
Back in those days the NZ Herald was a broadsheet, and rated editorially among the first three newspapers in the British Commonwealth, a great newspaper at which most employees were addressed as Mister or Miss, and all heads of department as Sir.
Fred made sure I knew how to mix chemicals for the developer and fix for the seven staff photographers, how to help the photographic printer, John Dennis, with the photo print orders, and most especially how to collect the lunch orders from the Burlington Cake shop across in Shortland Street.
In between the darkroom chores I started to accompany senior photographers on assignments, my favourites were the countrywide ones for the pink-covered Weekly News. These far-flung jobs meant I was quite often away from the Auckland office for weeks at a time.
The Herald prided itself on all matters relating to viceregal/royal activities, always covering any visiting dignitaries and the awarding of medals, knighthoods, etc. The male dress code for editorial staff in those days was a collar, tie, and jacket — even in the middle of summer.
On one occasion Fred was assigned to cover a late-afternoon event at Government House. At the time Fred, always a smart dresser, was wearing a tweed jacket made by his mother, and modelled along the same lines as an army battledress jacket, which suited his neat figure. But before he could even shoulder his camera bag the order came down that he was definitely not suitably dressed to cover an assignment at Government House.
In desperation Fred borrowed my lumpy sports coat. It was a couple of sizes too big for him, and he was forced to roll up the sleeves so he could operate the quarter-plate Graflex camera. I can’t remember whether the coat helped him take a better picture.
He later joined the AucklandStar in time to help with the coverage of the Tangiwai train disaster of December 1953, and the long royal tour. Fred went on to become illustrations editor of the Star and, before putting his Canon camera in the equipment cupboard for good, he won a Qantas Award for his best four pictures. His winning news shot was of Arthur Allan Thomas being greeted by his family on the day of his release from life imprisonment.
While we chatted in his comfortable flat at Hillsborough Heights a close neighbour of Fred’s, Jack ‘Bullet’ Maskery, dropped in to say hello. The last time I had seen Jack was when were both with the NZ Army in Malaya back in the 1950s. Jack, a good jungle soldier, had been a star flanker in the Battalion rugby team and later, on his return to New Zealand, played for Counties.
It was a highly enjoyable morning with very old mates.
A couple of days later I went with my younger daughter, Rachel, and her family for a day touring around Waiheke Island, still one of my favourite Auckland locales. After our arrival at the island everyone enjoyed a swim at Palm Beach, then we visited good friends Bruce and Sally Ansley, who I had last visited at their Christchurch home on the heights above Sumner Beach.
When they shifted to Auckland I thought they could never enjoy a view like they had in Sumner, overlooking both the ocean on one side, and on the other the vast sweep of the Canterbury plains as they drifted back into the snow-covered Southern Alps. But at Onetangi the mixture of bush-clad hills dropping down to the deep blue seas of the Hauraki Gulf and the faint blue haze settling over Little Barrier Island on the horizon had me agreeing they had made a good decision to move north.
We sat on the wide balcony enjoying the view, and savouring a light lunch served by Sally. Bruce, who I enjoyed working with on our Mesopotamia Station book [ AFabledLand], said he was working on a new book covering some of the remote roads and other seldomvisited parts of New Zealand.
The project has its hazards, though. He said that a few week earlier, while negotiating a night drive through the Haast Pass, he ran into some wandering cattle and his hired van came out by far the worse for wear, with hardly a mark on the stray beasts.
So to a new year: time to catch up with old friends, reflect on times past and look forward to the yet unknown pleasures and challenges of the year ahead.