A boomer looks back
As the years pass, what it means to be a baby boomer changes. In a seven-part series that begins today with parts one and two, Press senior writer MIKECREAN(A boomer) takes a personal look at the events that helped shape the outlook of the generation.
ornate coaches, guards in silver helmets on gleaming black horses, stiff attendants in colourful halfcoats, a silver-haired bishop in burnished robes, trumpets blaring to the vaulted roof, and the dignity of the monarch on a golden throne.
These pictures were not gleaned from television (NZ did not yet have TV) or women’s magazines (although many New Zealanders subscribed to the English Women’s Weekly), or a souvenir supplement in The Press. My images were gained from the movie of the Coronation.
A special train was put on to take schools in the Hurunui and Amuri areas to Christchurch for the movie. It was a full-length feature film in glorious technicolour. No passenger trains had run through Hawarden since the war and this was my first train ride.
Our contingent of school kids was marched from the old Gothic station to a cinema in the city. We must have stopped the traffic – there were no traffic lights – and caused tram drivers palpitations.
Later that year, the Queen and Prince Phillip arrived in New Zealand. The country went crazy over the first visit by a reigning monarch. The royal tour reached Canterbury in early 1954. We armed ourselves with Union Jack flags and joined the hordes to greet Her Gracious Majesty.
Dad decided we would get the best view at Darfield. Thousands of people cheered and waved when the royal train pulled in there, bringing the Queen from Greymouth to Christchurch. She emerged smiling from a carriage and returned our waves.
Royalist fever gripped the populace. Shops stocked souvenirs – cake tins and silver teaspoons bearing the royal couple’s photographs. I badly wanted one of the new T-shirts with E II R printed on the front, although I had no idea what the letters meant.
Our Britishness persisted for years. I joined that bulwark of empire, the Boy Scouts, briefly. I stood for the playing of God Save the Queen before the movies, as pictures of her riding side-saddle from Buckingham Palace flashed across the screen. I was nurtured by Enid Blyton’s books before moving on to imperial classics The Coral Island and Prester John. I devoured war comics and films in which gallant Tommies gave Jerry a walloping.
A wave of English immigrants swept into New Zealand. Dutch immigrants came, too – even they adopted Britishness. We sold nearly all our wool, meat and butter to England and bought Vauxhall cars, Cumberland pencils and Royal Doulton china. TV arrived and Coronation Street became compulsory viewing. We really were a Little Britain in the South Seas.
It couldn’t last. New Zealand was forced to seek new markets and diversify production from the 1970s. Our defence planning became increasingly dominated by the United States and focused on the Pacific and South-east Asia. Toyota and Sony overcame our anti- Japanese prejudice.
The 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch was a farewell to Empire. We emerged blinking into global sunlight, but we never quite closed the door on Britain. Affection remained. Our fastest-growing export was the next generation of youth. Influenced by us, they headed for England on ‘‘The Big OE’’.
Gerard Neilson was a good guy. As sergeant of our mortar platoon, he let us raid orchards and lie in the long grass munching apples. No lugging base-plates and barrels around, assembling them and messing about with sights, this was school cadets and we didn’t take it seriously.
Some did, however – twerps who sought elevation in rank to gain power over others. These barking martinets deterred me from considering a military career.
My cadet experience started just 15 years after World War II ended. My brother Pat had completed his Compulsory Military Training at Burnham. All 18-year-old males had to do it. As a fit farm worker and rugby player, he loved it. But he said it was hell for the soft townies.
When I reached 18, baby boomer numbers had made it necessary to limit compulsory training to those (un)lucky enough to have their birthdates drawn in a ballot. I missed out.
Why did remote, little New Zealand, with no known enemies, insist on training teenagers to fight and kill? The answer is communism. This doctrine spread like a supervirus from the Soviet Union, through China and into Southeast Asia, on a bee-line for New Zealand. Politicians talked about the domino theory, the belief that state after state would fall to communist invaders and insurgent rebels. Our troops fought alongside United Nations forces in Korea from 1950 to 1953 to prevent the dominoes toppling.
New Zealand was still shaken by Britain’s inability to defend this part of the globe from the Japanese advance in World War II. Americans had been our saviours then, and we hitched our star to nuclear-powered Uncle Sam again, through membership of the Anzus alliance (with Australia).
We stuck with the British in repelling communist guerrilla activity in Malayan jungles and opposing Indonesian attempts to annex parts of newly formed Malaysia. Britain still packed a military punch.
I thrilled at the sight of the Royal Air Force Canberra jet bomber sweeping in to land at Harewood and win the world’s last big international air race, from London. I joined my schoolmates on the domain to see the RAF’s delta-winged Vulcan bomber make a low pass during a moraleboosting flight over New Zealand. These were warming moments in the Cold War of the 1950s.
The ‘‘space race’’ underlined our growing closeness to the US. Russia put Sputnik-1 into Earth orbit in 1957.
Thousands of New Zealanders stood outside in the middle of the night to see the spacecraft’s flashing light passing 577 kilometres above their heads. We were in awe.
Then American John Glenn became the first human to orbit the Earth, in 1962. We were in awe again, but this time we cheered.
The arrival of US Air Force Globemasters at Harewood to supply America’s Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica was a demonstration of power. These were the largest planes we had ever seen.
We got used to seeing snappilydressed Americans around town in the summer. We felt sorry for them having to live in the old barrack huts (since demolished) that had housed trainee air force crews at Harewood in World War II. Sympathy faded when we heard the Yanks were snapping up the best-looking ‘‘dames’’ at local dances.
When the Vietnam War broke out, pompous-voiced Prime Minister Keith Holyoake brayed about the democratic government of South Vietnam inviting New Zealand to send troops against the Chinesebacked communists. I could have volunteered to serve in Vietnam. I didn’t, though not because of fiery anti-war protests of the US ‘‘flowerpower’’ generation that spilled into New Zealand.
American popular culture invaded New Zealand. Warner Brothers andMGMwere shunting Pinewood Studios aside.
And, lying in the grass to avoid mortar drill, I could hear someone whistling Oh What a Beautiful Morning, from Broadway show Oklahoma.
The series continues next Saturday.