There Is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand
- Thread starter Tsar of New Zealand
- Start date
Hahaha - sadly the POD predates the rise of amazing Melbourne cafe culture!
What was the city like in the early 80s? My impression of say Inner City Sydney in the 80s is that it was a bit rough - from rural NZ it seemed like the kind of place people went to try heroin and prostitution. Although to be fair to Sydney King's Cross is only one small part.
I can only offer second hand knowledge as this POD also predates me but my understanding is that during the 80's Melbourne was way behind Sydney, and to be sure from what I have seen even a decade ago Melbourne was no where near what it is. 'A great place to film a movie about the end of the world'.
I was a small child myself and only made it to both cities in the late 1990s.
I sort of get the impression that the inner cities of the coastal capitals were rather dire in the 1980s - lots of inner city decline, high unemployment, hard drugs etc. Although suburban areas were probably quite nice.
NZ wasn't a lot better in the late 80s - Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were a bit dire too although with less drugs and perhaps more gangs.
XVII. Ha-Ha, Charade You Are
XVII. Ha-Ha, Charade You Are
Yeah, you’re getting older, you’re getting older
And you don’t know why, you don’t know what to do…
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Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand
May 3, 1984
The weather had been miraculously good for the last couple months, with only the increasingly frequent sou’easterlies carrying dark hints of the winter lying in wait on the other side of the horizon. It was still nice today, sunlight drenching the towering edifice of the BNZ building (which, with international finance somewhat reduced in stature, had found sufficient room to act as Parliament’s current home) and the bureaucrats within. There were fewer hands available to work the tiller these days, an unfortunate number of that grey and functional race having met their makers on February 22nd, and the shortfall had been made up by asking anyone with relevant knowledge in the required fields to come and help coordinate efforts from here. The results had been…well, less bad than they could have been.
Which didn’t overcome the issues still present with communication. Telephone links with the North were still patchy at best, as the rotating crews on at Makara did their level best to get the Cook Strait cable patched up without getting too fatally doused in radiation from the unnervingly close-by skeleton of Wellington. They’d apparently had to start screening those workmen who’d come from the city; two had gone AWOL and presumably made their way across the blackened hills of the south coast on some sort of suicidal pilgrimage back home.
Thank God for Think Big! Geoffrey had never thought he’d think it but here he was. As it transpired, having several kilometres of copper wire and 220kV cable ready and waiting for completion of the final stage of the Ohau scheme had been one of the better moves Muldoon had made (even if it had been considered perhaps surplus to requirements, back when such things had mattered, to spend tens of millions of dollars the country didn’t have on a third immense dam) before the shit hit the fan. They’d already been able to lay an initial cable across the hills behind Karori as far as Johnsonville; with luck, he thought aloud at the Minister for Energy, he thought they might have some power from Benmore going back north before winter hit.
“You’re joking, right?” Bill Birch responded with an incredulous look, elaborating before the awkward pause became too excruciating with “Yes, we might be getting some juice across the Strait again, sir, but with the current line we’ve got out at Johnsonville it’s like running an entire house’s appliances off of one socket – oh, you can do it, but if you don’t watch yourself it’ll short out. If you’re lucky.”
Duly chastised, and unsure whether to commend the Minister for his sense of honesty or make a note of him in the mental filing cabinet under “Second-Priority Revenge”, Palmer made a quiet admission of his ignorance and moved on.
“Well, then, I believe we’ll just have to hope the winter doesn’t come on us too quickly or hard until it’s reconnected. I can’t be the only one waiting for nuclear winter, though I shan’t miss its absence.”
“True, and we’re still predicting less demand than usual. For a start, the resettlement centres use nothing close to the amount of a house in Auckland or Wellington, and there are more people per household in any case. And, if we can cut back on the amount even further through an information campaign or something, we oughta be away laughing.”
Palmer found himself nodding along and his thoughts vocalising themselves again. “At any rate, I suppose the industrial concerns aren’t exactly overtaxing the electricity supply at present, either, and as long as the lights stay on at all the freezing works, I suppose we can rob Peter to keep a bar heater going in Paul’s house – there won’t be much demand for new cars put together in the Hutt, will there? Or to send a great whacking amount of exports processed in our factories abroad…”
He tailed off as he noticed Birch’s involuntary wince: the PM was still used, even after two months in the hot seat, to thinking of discussions with Cabinet ministers as chats with fellow Labour members, not with the former enemy. Think Big had been Birch’s baby, after all, so to hear the industrial boom it had been created to service casually tossed aside…well, it probably hadn’t raised the Prime Minister in his esteem. As if I bloody care, Geoffrey thought rancorously. I’m just here to sign the papers and keep out of Cabinet’s way. Surprising how little a compromise candidate is called upon to get involved in the negotiations; I’m the red-headed stepchild of the Emergency Government.
Birch mistook Palmer’s faux pas for a calculated insult, which considering his last leader’s lack of subtlety wasn’t too surprising. That stopped the conversation rather dead, and they skirted around each other for another five minutes or so before Palmer came up with some frivolous technical point or another to fob Birch off with and he could, mercifully, leave.
What he wouldn’t have given to be able to follow him. But that Cabinet agenda for Monday’s meeting wasn’t going to itemise itself, he supposed, and nor would the authorisation forms for Black Crucible (he suspected the hand of David in coming up with these operational names) sign themselves.
At least he was back up to six hours sleep a night. He even got to see his wife sometimes.
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And you don’t know what
You’ve got yourself into…
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Napier, Hawke’s Bay
May 12, 1984
“Whaddaya reckon, she about time?” asked one of the two uncles who’d been drafted into lookout duty.
“Yep, figure they’ll be here any minute now,” responded the other, “‘s not as if there’ll be much traffic on the way, eh?”
The car seemed to have taken that as a cue to materialise around the corner at that instant, the grey paint of the Rolls shining and silver in the early afternoon sun. A little drizzle had fallen that morning, the tail end of a patch of on-and-off wet weather that had been pestering the Bay since Wednesday, but it had eased off for the event. Nice of Mother Nature, thought the first usher, the tempestuous old bitch.
The father of the bride had been driving the rented car, and after pulling up at the kerb let one of the uncles fuss over the bride and bridesmaids (say what you will for Gay Gordon, the fella knows how to make sure they look good, he thought while checking his own tie and cuffs in the wing mirror) as the second uncle jogged inside to give the organist the signal.
A turn and a gentle fatherly smile at Holly.
“Showtime, my girl,” he said as they lined up.
The rumble of feet and fabric as the guests stood in their pews (emptier than they should have been; absent cousins and grandparents and dear friends from Auckland and Wellington were more than a few, but you couldn't tell unless you looked) and turned to face the door as the strains of the Wedding March began echoing through the church and three bridesmaids made their way down the aisle in dresses which, if not of the same cut, were at least all the same colour (dressmakers being few and far between nowadays, one had to forage as best one could). Their lovely creamy yellow complemented rather than spoke over the crisp whiteness which came around the corner as they lined up on their side of the altar (you can’t hardly tell, the groom’s mum told herself, that it’s being reused from Aunt Noelene’s do thirty years ago. Thank God she’s such a slender girl, imagine finding the silk for a new dress these days!). And it was true; she cut an elegant figure, gliding on like a swan across a lake of worn carpet towards her husband-to-be, looking sharp in a new suit (the image of which was only slightly marred, in her father’s opinion, by the mane of hair cascading down to the back of his collar) as his three groomsmen stood back and to the side in their own simple grey three-pieces.
The usual rigmarole of back-and-forth and reading and hymn took place as the pressure built up until, as the tension crescendoed, the priest – a stout Englishman with a gleam of most unchristian mischief in his eye at the best of times – uttering the well-worn-if-a-wee-bit-secular phrases from the New Zealand Prayer Book.
“Holly Rose Greer, do you take Jonathan Hamish Maclean to be your husband? Will you share his joys and ease his burdens? Will you be honest with him, and be faithful to him always, as long as you both live?”
“I do.”
A nod, with just the faintest hint of a smile giving lie to the priest’s solemn facade as he turned to the groom.
“Jonathan Hamish Maclean, do you take Holly Rose Greer to be your wife? Will you share her joys and ease her burdens? Will you be honest with her, and be faithful to her always, as long as you both live?”
“I do.”
“I now ask the parents of the bride and groom: do you pledge to strengthen this marriage by upholding both Jonathan and Holly with your love and concern?”
The response came back fourfold: “We do.”
“May you find a rich and full life together.” The priest lifted his shaggy head to the congregation. “And will you, their friends and family, do all in your power to support this couple now, and in the years ahead, whatever they may bring?”
“We will.”
The parents sat throughout this in parallel, both mothers holding back their tears as the couple went through their vows and both fathers maintaining their stolid composure as the rings were exchanged and the priest turned once more to the congregation.
“We have witnessed the promises made by Jonathan and Holly, and now recognise them as husband and wife. Steady on there,” he interjected with good-humoured smile and raised hand as the two hovered closer together, “I’ll be out of your way shortly. Jonathan and Holly, you have committed yourselves to one another in love, joy, and tenderness. Become one; fulfil your promises. And may God’s grace be with you and keep you forever. Amen. Now,” he said with what might have been a wink, “you may kiss the bride.”
The rest went as all weddings do, register, applause, exit, and reunions and chatter over a cuppa in the hall afterwards as the newlyweds received their congratulations. Rationing had put a dent in the spread on offer, but there were always ways around. Cousin Phil had found a bag of sugar on the back of a truck, relatives from a farm had brought an immense amount of eggs and milk, and flour had been cribbed together by the eldritch organisation of the Aunties’ Guild so there was at least a cake to cut, and a well-made one at that. The same communal spirit applied to the reception later on; rations had been carefully husbanded for weeks to make sure there was enough for a memorable dinner. The illusion of peace and prosperity was upheld as the two went off to their honeymoon; a hotel in town for the night, and then a few days in Rotorua as they began building their future.
And life would go on.
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So don’t come out in the kitchen
Or any other place…
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From Is This It? A Look at the New Zealand Dream (Manukau: University of Auckland Press, 2012)
…autumn of 1984 passed with remarkable tranquillity. The initial shock of X-Day had dulled, like a burn which turns to scar tissue, and for most New Zealanders some sort of routine had returned to their lives.
…transferrable skills would be more valuable than anticipated as the Auckland reconstruction boom got into full swing and the scattered natural disasters of the 1980s – particularly those affecting the East Coast – allowed for increasingly seamless cooperation between the industry and government, through its Civil Defence arm…
…foundation stone was laid in 1989 for the New City by David Lange in what has become one of his more memorable photos, setting the trend of proactive government involvement in national reconstruction which also left room for private enterprise…
…has proved invaluable in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, with the Minister for Canterbury Recovery having become rather a point of pride for its holder…
Excerpt from ‘Building Up To…Something?’ in The New Zealand Listener (September 28, 2013).
…though it has become rather fashionable in recent years to attribute this rapid response to the catastrophes of the 80s, we also tend to overestimate the foresight of those making policy and laying the foundations for the future – the current system isn’t a beautifully planned design like Auckland’s New City, but rather an amalgam of stop-gap measures which have complemented one another and miraculously ended up working pretty well.
It is a pattern familiar to those in Wellington, where the fears over radiation in the initial few months of the rebuilding period led to a massive number of often contradictory plans guidelines set which have led to the agonisingly slow pace of recovery there compared to other centres…
…around the docks is impressive – the inter-island ferry terminal has functioned with only occasional hiccups since Geoff Palmer opened it in his last act as Prime Minister – it remains out of place next to the deserted former CBD and the Exclusion Zone, which give the impression of a well-kept graveyard and a poorly-kept back section, respectively. As for the suburbs of the area, the focus of their orbit has shifted to Petone and Lower Hutt, where the refugee administration and dockyards eventually allowed for a reasonably smooth transition back to prosperity.
But this is the problem. Wellington has never really reclaimed what it had prior to 1983. Even though it’s a moot point, the demolition of most of the historic CBD in a frenzy of building and investment had already ripped the metaphorical guts out of the structure; by the time the bombs fell, then, it was merely a matter of knocking down the rebar. And while the following thirty years tried to renovate (even if only haphazardly) the burnt-out shell, the fact of the matter is and remains that, with the bureaucracy which once sustained it now well-entrenched in Christchurch, and the headquarters of the companies which had been based there long since re-established or relocated to Auckland or Hamilton or New Plymouth, there seems little reason for anyone to actually live there, let alone return.
That’s the view taken by many in the Hutt Valley, at least, and across the Strait in Nelson. Wellingtonians themselves number only seventy-five thousand today, almost all of those in the old eastern or southern suburbs where reconstruction has been more enthusiastic since the route through the old CBD became passable again and services were fully restored (functional sewerage being one of thsoe things necessary for a cosmopolitan lifestyle). While a further forty thousand or so remain in what was once the Northern Ward – the hill suburbs of Johnsonville, Khandallah, Tawa – their secession to form the Town of Ohariu hasn’t helped the former capital’s case. There’s no longer anything to commute to, after all; they too now orbit the sun of Petone’s docklands and Lower Hutt’s office blocks…
…cultural pull is still disproportionately strong, as old Cuba Street’s Bohemian dinginess has replicated itself along Jackson Street and the music scene of the country, finally removing itself from the long shadow of Dunedin and Flying Nun, is once more dominated by Wellingtonians (for those of you who disagree with this old fogey, wait and see – there are tens of thousands of young’uns fresh from Killjoy’s latest tour who can lecture you for hours on the merits of those four alumni of pre-war Wellington…
…comparison, Auckland’s sheer gravitational pull as a natural national centre of commerce and overseas-bound trade meant that, with the gingerly improving situation of the Nineties and Big Billy Birch’s intense focus on the national rebuild, the plans which Tizard and Co. had been drawing up for a decade got to see the light of day…
…broad, tree-lined boulevards of the area, while reminiscent of the cloying repetitiveness of the Hutt Valley’s post-World War Two suburbs, are a nice symbol of the regrowth of the area. Queen Street is no longer in the shadow of Queen’s Drive, and even the funereal atmosphere of the North Shore seems more well-cared-for than Wellington’s Exclusion Zone. The blank canvas the architects had to work with didn’t hurt, but it’s pleasantly surprising all the same that what could have turned into an exercise in utilitarian city planning visible in Perth or Sydney was averted in favour of something which managed – in this writer’s opinion, at least – to recapture some of the spirit of the old without being held hostage to it. Aucopolis, as the Governor-General declared a few years ago, resurgens indeed…
…CCA, ANZ, BNZ, TSB: all of the acronyms are returning to the area, possibly with a view to escaping the close quarters of Christchurch following the de-nationalisation of much of the financial sector, and this has led to a building boom second only to that of Christchurch…
…rapidly approaching a moment of truth where a choice must be made between two similar but distinct futures for Christchurch: one where it is handled as an ego project to reclaim old glories which harkens back to some idealised past and blinding itself to the future, or to pay tribute to the past but build for a future which can only ever be new and above all different.
Christchurch has a lot of tough choices to make. Let’s hope the new capital makes better ones than the old.
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And don’t go on being someone
That you’re never gonna recognise…
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State Highway 1, Waikato
May 10, 1984
The bus had driven them out of the camp at long last, fifty excited, chattering souls who were in better spirits than they had been for literally months. Grace had found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with Mel, who’d apparently been pegged for the same type of relocation as her, and they’d speculated on what might be ahead of them. Nothing glamorous, they’d agreed, but nothing worse than they’d had sitting in the mud in the camp.
About two-thirds of the people on this bus were female; there seemed to be a desire to get women away from the camps quicker than – or maybe on account of – men, though Mel figured they’d still be expected to do the same of whatever work the men got landed with.
“Stands to reason,” she said in the now-familiar tone, embittered and knowing and a little condescending, “after all, more productive to make us work for our keep. If they have us planting spuds all day it’ll mean we’re feeding ourselves. If we’re digging holes it’ll make us too tired to cause trouble. If we’re ploughing fields – okay, maybe the guys do that more, I don’t imagine your Farmer Brown’ll be too hot on the idea of women doing real work” the stress accompanied by a roll of the eyes “but shit, it saves on diesel. Pretty sure this bus is one of those LPG ones, less fuel used in this is more for a tractor somewhere out here in cow country.”
Grace honestly hadn’t considered the logistical side, and admitted she was just happy to be out from behind the damned wire.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, so am I,” responded Mel. “I just don’t think they’ve been doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. Let’s be honest, it’s probably just Muldoon putting more bloody dole bludgers to the wheel.”
At that a woman sitting across the way turned to stick her oar in.
“Nah, Muldoon’s long gone, girlie.”
“Who knifed him? Lange or Mc-Whozzisface?” asked a middle-aged housewife sort somewhere behind.
“I heard he quit.”
“Bullshit!”
“Eh! Not old Piggy, no bloody chance.”
“One of the soldiers said Palmer was behind it all.”
“Who?”
“Bloke who’s Prime Minister now; haven’t you been listening to the news since – Jesus, what was it, Cheryl? – March?”
“With what radio?”
“Yeah, let me pull up my copy of the Listener.”
“Hey, ask a cop once we get to the transit centre, it’s a unity government now.”
“So much for Bruce Bee, then.”
“Take more than a nuclear war to make the SoCred vote worth it.”
“Well,” said Grace to Mel as the conversation whistled overhead “put like that it makes sense, though if they want people like you and me milking cows right off the bat…” Her shrug took in the new (well, second-hand, but clean) clothes she’d been allowed to pick out from a storeroom set up near the depot at the camp, stuff which if not stylish looked warm. If the clinging fog over the dewy, rolling hills was anything to go by, that had been a good choice.
They wound up in Te Aroha, one of those towns Grace had heard of but which could have been anywhere for all she knew, about four. South of the Bombays was a strange, alien landscape. The weird smallness of the street here – which was apparently the main drag – only reinforced the image. A local policeman (who looked far less run-down than the gaunt figures in blue back in Auckland) directed them all to their accommodations for the evening in a local motel politely enough, though, and they saw the place where they would sleep indoors for the first time in over two months. That was when the most shocking part came as Mel, upon seeing a bed, started crying and couldn’t stop. It was like being five and seeing your father vulnerable; disillusioning yet humanising.
War, Grace had established, was very strange.
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Yeah, why don't you do yourself in?
So you’re getting older, getting older,
And you don’t know why, you don’t know what to do…
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Last chapter was very moving, especially so because I've spent time in Te Aroha.
Also, Palmer would say Freezing Works or abattoir not Slaughter Works
Also, Palmer would say Freezing Works or abattoir not Slaughter Works
I thank you for your defence of my handwaving
No worries, I'm in the industry so to speak
Greg Bear's "Eon" and "Eternity" come to mind. Besides SF treatments I've seen a few "factual" scenarios wind up with NZ as a regional superpower, eg:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html
Cheers all, I did hope it wasn't too narmy. If history teaches us anything it's that people have a rather inspiring way of adapting to little things like nuclear wars.
No worries, I'm in the industry so to speak
It says a lot for how much of a student I am that the first job that comes to mind upon hearing of being in the pharmaceutical business "so to speak" is drug dealer
Ah-ha! I knew there was something off in Palmer's dialogue, just couldn't place it! I tend to conflate the terms; there's an old slaughterhouse on the family farm so I always heard the term a lot. Most un-Southern of me.
And bugger, looks like I'm going to actually have to research the small town I picked on a whim. Damn this country where everyone knows someone from anywhere!
It says a lot for how much of a student I am that the first job that comes to mind upon hearing of being in the pharmaceutical business "so to speak" is drug dealer
Try arriving back in the country at 1am having put "scientist" as occupation on your arrival card because your real job title won't fit and nobody outside the industry knows what it is anyway, and answering "pharmaceuticals" to the humorless customs officer when he asks what kind of science you do and you've left all your business cards at home. . .
I'm not a scientist (although my friends like to call me one), I just qualified and work in science and work with scientists.
Try arriving back in the country at 1am having put "scientist" as occupation on your arrival card because your real job title won't fit and nobody outside the industry knows what it is anyway, and answering "pharmaceuticals" to the humorless customs officer when he asks what kind of science you do and you've left all your business cards at home. . .
I'm not a scientist (although my friends like to call me one), I just qualified and work in science and work with scientists.
Customs quizzed you on this?
There was a pause and a raised eybrow
I think I fit a profile somewhere, as on that trip I was "randomly" pulled for a bag search both on leaving NZ and arriving in Aus.
There was a pause and a raised eybrow
I think I fit a profile somewhere, as on that trip I was "randomly" pulled for a bag search both on leaving NZ and arriving in Aus.
Ahh. I generally trigger HARMLESS and so never have any issues. Think the worst I had was when I carried some documents through for a friend and decided to declare that, so they took me to the special customs zone.
Errolwi
Monthly Donor
If you are carrying commercially produced food for a friend, don't tick the 'Am carrying items for someone else' box, it confuses the system. Bio-security don't care who it is for, and can't sign off as clearing that question, so you have to speak to a Customs person. Fortunately there is a Customs person stationed behind the bio-security people for dealing with this stuff.
You know, someone should nominate this timeline. I think it deserves a bit of appreciation.
Unfortunately, I can't nominate it personally, since I already have a different pick
Very good point. I never nominate anything as people always have done so for threads I like before I get around to doing so.
Anyway
Nominated, awaiting a second
Cold Chisel filmed a music video in Kings Cross in February 1984. I should have remembered this earlier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lelsyP9qL2I
Also features Split Enz "message to my girl" fading out on the radio at the start.