New Zealand Listener – August 10, 2019

44 LISTENER AUGUST 10 2019

80 YEARS

was being drunk in a public

place, which reflected social

attitudes, not widespread

behaviour.

It is true that in 1939, about

57% of the population lived

in cities or boroughs. But

only Auckland had reached

200,000, with the other main

centres under 150,000. New

Zealanders were determined

to keep the rural mythology

alive. City dwellers lived on

quarter-acre sections in the

suburbs, with grass, chooks

and vege gardens, and at the

weekends, it was physical

sports or off to the beach and

the hills. In the central city at

the weekend, once the Friday

night shops closed and the

pubs shut their doors, a British

immigrant claimed “you could

have shot a rifle in the street

and you wouldn’t have hit

anybody”.

Over the next 80 years

all this changed. As service

industries became an increas-

ing part of the economy, urban

June 1, 1960. Only a quarter of a

century after the first broadcasts

in the US and Britain, at 7.30pm on

a Wednesday, our first official pro-

gramme beamed to viewers from

Auckland’s Shortland St studios. As

the Listener’s first TV listing shows, it

began with Robin Hood. Ian Watkins

interviewed British ballerina Beryl

Grey. The Howard Morrison Quartet

sang. We were entranced. Then,

after just two hours, it shut down for

the night. In 1981, after the removal

of import restrictions, New Zea-

landers were allowed to buy video

cassette recorders. With the new

technology came freedom from

network schedulers – if you could

figure out how to operate the thing.

October 1961. More babies were

born this month than in any other

in the country’s history. There were

5338 registered births, out of a

record 65,476 that year. It was the

peak of the postwar baby boom; a

last hurrah before fertility rates fell

away. And it was huge – our family

sizes increased more in the 20 years

after the war than in any other

Western country. By sheer weight

of numbers, the boomers have

dominated this country’s political

and social life ever since, moulding

the destinies of generations either

side of them.

The arrival

of television

Baby boom

peaks

In the 1960s and

70s, people such as

Barry Crump and

John Clarke began

treating our rural

mythology as a

butt of humour.