Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

                                        THE AUCKLAND I USED TO KNOW

I am an Aucklander born and bred. I grew up in the suburb called Panmure, part of the east side of Auckland on the Tamaki Estuary (often mis-called the Tamaki River). That’s where I lived for the first 21 years of my life – interrupted only when I was about eleven and my parents took three of my siblings and me to England for half a year and then another half of the year travelling around Europe. When I was 21 I married a wonderful woman who lived on the North Shore. So I decamped to the North Shore and we have lived there ever since… apart from many rambles around New Zealand and a number of trips to Australia and Europe. I am not parochial. I do not criticise or belittle other New Zealand cities or towns, most of which are good places to live and have their own charm and sights to see… including the negative stuff as well. ... Yet for all that, I am an Aucklander first and foremost.

Which brings me to the core of the matter. Cities are not static. They grow, they change, they expand [or in some places gradually die], and if you live in any one city for long, you will see that there is change all the time. How different Auckland was before the harbour bridge was built in 1959. Then, the North Shore was mainly farming land with some small suburbs, apart from Devonport where there were ferries that took commuters over to the city. Now the North Shore is an integral part of Auckland and nearly all of the farming land has gone. Auckland no longer has mayors for every suburb. Now there is one mayor for all of Auckland… and the suburbs have grown and grown.  Auckland had for many long years Maori, Pakeha and Pasifika as the dominant ethnicities. Now there are as well large communities of Chinese, Indians, Filipinos and others in Auckland. And central Auckland – New Zealand’s largest city – has changed radically since I was a child and teenager.

Item – when I was a child and teenager, in the late 1950s and the 1960s, there were about eleven picture theatres (or cinemas or movie-houses if you prefer) down Queen Street, Auckland’s main street. This particularly interests me, because for 30 years I was a film reviewer and (a-hem) knew quite a bit about films. In my teenager years, I could name all the picture-theatres. Right down the bottom of Queen Street, near the docks, there was the sleazy-ist theatre, a flea-house showing B-movies, horror movies and much general trash, ideal place for sailors to get drunk and pick up willing women. It was the first movie theatre to shut down. Moving further up the street were the respectable theatres… but bit by bit the theatres disappeared under the challenge of television and [sometime later] multiple television stations and [much later] home computers. Going to the movies was no longer the dominant form of entertainment. In the 60s the Kerridge people built three theatres side-by-side. It is now derelict and on the way to being demolished. I have fond memories of the old Embassy theatre. It was just across the road from the Auckland Public Library; and next to the library was the Art Gallery. Then the Embassy was demolished. The Library, much expanded and in a modern building, was moved to where the Embassy used to be…. and the Art Gallery added new galleries, taking all the space where the library had been. When I wandered around the city last week, the Art Gallery was again at work, modifying its galleries. I think that now the great Civic Theatre   - a large, garish theatre built in the 1920s - is now one of the very few picture theatres that remain in central Auckland, very busy especially when there are Film Festivals, but also offering live performances as often as showing films.

There are other things that have changed in my time. I used to haunt central Auckland looking for second-hand book-shops. Now there are very few, apart from one which specialises in first-editions for the very wealthy, and a very-well stocked one near the church of St.Benedict, which is way up from Queen Street. 

And what of the architecture of the city?  Last week, with my little camera, I walked down Queen Street taking photos of buildings built in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The best of them still look stately, though I suspect the time will come for them to be pulled down. That is the fate of most cities. I’m not damning all the new, mainly high-rise buildings which now take up most of the city. Some of them are daring. Some are almost inspiring. Some are average. Some are too dull for words. And if you go near the waterfront of the city you can see modern apartment-buildings that can only be called eye-sores . There are also some modern buildings that try to pretend older buildings are still there. One bank demolished an old building but kept its façade to preserve a whiff of old times.

 

At the time I’m writing this, some parts of central Auckland look like a bomb site. Not only are there underground works  (tunnels, laying of cables, sewers etc.) but some streets are half blocked-off, or in a few cases completely blocked-off. Especially when I go walking down past the old Civic theatre, I am deafened by the sound of jackhammers [or whatever they’re called now], screeching brakes, foremen shouting out orders and directions – and then having to navigate my way around temporary wire-mesh fences to get past the parts of roads that are being dug-up.

 

Okay. I’m a boomer and an old fart, but I’m fully aware that cities as big as Auckland always have to be renewed, modernised and rebuilt, road-works are inevitable and necessary and more people have to be accommodated. Non-stopping change is taken as the norm in cities world-wide. Even so, even if I’m only talking about Auckland thirty, forty or fifty years ago, I still get a bit nostalgic about the about the city when I was younger. Sentimental old bloke aren’t I?