The last time we went to the flicks in Russell was… well, a very long time ago. OK - about 30 years. We bought our tickets at the door of the Russell Town Hall and in the company of a curious dog or two, and amidst the chatter of little children, settled down on weary wooden chairs to see an Australian classic The Man From Snowy River. 

But very early into the film, the sound system developed a stutter and  if somebody on screen mentioned the man from snowy river it  came out as  ‘the-a-o-owy-iver’ . We chuckled as the sound system rationed letters from the script, but we got the picture...

• The war is over!
• Te Whiu hanged
• Auckland pedestrian ‘Barnes Dance’
• First ‘Farmer of the Year’
• Assisted immigration resumes
• Wellington steam tram
• Parker-Hulme murders
• Canterbury’s ‘Big Snow’
• Death of Norman Kirk

• Jack Lovelock
• Celebrity dog Paddy
• NZ’s first postage stamps
• Privy council rules on Samoan citizenship
• Riots at Mt Eden prison
• First Lotto goes on sale
• Yvette Williams
• Parliament moves to Wellington
• Pioneer aviator George Bolt dies
• Women’s Suffrage petition
• Carless days
• John Walker

Technology. How it controls us, absorbs us and - delights us? Well it can – though in my case rarely. We’re not talking rocket science here, just plain old everyday PC bits (no pun intended) and their related pieces. When the cellphone doesn’t baffle me the computer usually does the job at its outer boundaries. Instructions like ‘copy’ and ‘save’ are old hat, but terra incognita begins with other very avoidable drop downs like Table Autoformat.

KIWIOSITIES Babyboomer nostalgia baby boomer culture

An A-Z of  New Zealand traditions & Folklore by Gordon Ell                

(Published  by New Holland)

The practical Kiwi joker

This is not about practical jokes. Kiwi jokers can do anything. They are famous for coming up with a simple solution to a complex problem. Unlike Pommies and other useless jokers the Kiwi is able to cut through the bullswool and come up with a simple answer. The practical Kiwi joker can slap together most things if he has the raw materials; Number Eight wire, a length of Four by Two timber and perhaps a sheet of Corrugated Iron. (Lord Rutherford of Nelson, the man who split the atom, undertook his first experiments at Canterbury University using a battery he built during working holidays on his father’s Taranaki farm.) The practical Kiwi joker doesn’t have a string of letters after his name, though. He can sense an expert at 50 yards and not only show him up in front of his mates but live to tell the tale again and again in the pub.

Nor does he need flash tools. You can often tell a practical Kiwi joker by the pile of useful things lying round his section yard. The more pre-occupied practical Kiwi joker usually doesn’t worry much about keeping the garden up to scratch and  his wife’s probably been waiting eight years for him to fix the lock on the bathroom door or knock up a few shelves. On the other hand, practical Kiwi jokers have been known to use their ingenuity to lay concrete all over the yard to save mowing lawns, also creating noticeable gardens decorated with home-made gnomes or old cars. The tradition lives because of successful practical Kiwi jokers. They may be seen on television, occasionally, working on such things as better possum traps. Notable successes that prove the ingenuity of Kiwis are the aeroplane and engine built by Richard Pearse in South Canterbury between 1898 and 1902 using scraps from round the district. Less successful was the attempt by a wartime Minister of Works to convert his crawler bulldozers into fighting tanks by the addition of an iron shell.

Paul Smith

Nobody needs reminding that the Government and the supporters of the welfare state are ideological enemies. Created by the liberal left out of The Great Depression caused by the money men of the right -  different versions of the ones who continue to give the world its financial crises today - it’s being hammered again.

So when you stumble across a 1969 book by the late Labour Leader Norm Kirk who writes about the subject you realise how far we have travelled away from the reality of the egalitarian state...

Then out of the blue there came an invitation to address the Taihape division of the Country Women’s Institute on the implications of the new Act. My initial reaction was to decline it.

Apparently, they liked to invite someone from Massey University every year. Surely someone else could speak, albeit on a different topic.

‘Don’t be too hasty’, said a colleague. ‘They’re lovely ladies and you’ll come home with a boot full of food.’

Like “silly old Pooh Bear” my stomach won out and I accepted...

• Chinese gooseberry becomes kiwifruit
• Baby-farmer Daniel Cooper hanged
• All Blacks win the first World Cup
• The Beatles land in NZ
• Parker-Hulme murder in Christchurch
• World court condemns French nuclear tests
• New Zealand Truth hits the newstands
• HMNZS Otago sails for Mururoa test zone
• World's first female Anglican bishop appointed
• First issue of NZ Listener published