A month or so back I spent a delightful weekend in my home town of Napier, New Zealand, surrounded by around 15,000 tourists and 400 vintage cars from the 1930s. I have to confess: I went a bit shutter-happy. Today I thought I’d share another picture or four from my collection. These are not staged. They’re pictures I took while just wandering around. It really was like this.
Some art deco street theatre – a ‘movie’ being shot on location. Fun stuff. I took this with an 18mm lens (see the distortions along the top of the memorial arch in the background) which meant I was bang in the middle of the action.
Car: 1930. Building: 1932. Photo: 2012.
This is the ‘Sun Bay’ – the memorial to the 258 who died in the Hawke’s Bay quake of 1931. Beyond is the Soundshell and town centre. In the Second World War this was a roller skating rink; German sailors cruising past on a U-boat in January 1945 apparently mistook them for dancers.
Suddenly it was 1940… (which is when the arch behind the car waa completed).
It was a magical experience – a fantasy rendition of what we all hoped Hollywood was like seventy five years ago. And with all the cars rumbling back and forth, the hundreds of people dressed up in 1930s costumes for the occasion, the period bands with their ‘tea-for-two’ jazz rhythms, a live improv street theatre re-enacting a movie shoot, it really was like stepping back in time.
I know, of course, that it wasn’t real history. I have a long standing interest in the history of the place – my work on that district includes the longest book I’ve ever written, all 250,000 words and 750+ pages of Town and Country, a history of Hastings and its surrounding district.
My most recent book on the area is Historic Hawke’s Bay and East Coast, which is a coffee-table picture history of the district. Lots of pictures, not too much text – the aim was to capture the magic of the past through some of the best available historical photos. The cover pic, curiously, was of the one-time skating rink seen above – it’s behind the car - but as it was originally in 1938, looking down from the stage of the Sound Shell. The real thing. Publishers David Bateman did a really great job of the production. It’s available online via Fishpond, New Zealand’s online bookshop. You can get it here, if you want.
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012
It is incredible to think that the Germans sent U-boats to the Indian and Pacific Oceans so late in the war, and even more incredible to imagine them lurking off Napier like that. That story always captured my imagination when I was young, there seemed to be something very ‘Adventurous Four’ about it.
Great photos and what a fantastic idea for street theatre! I hope the Napier City Council are paying for the free advertising you give their city, after seeing this post I’m seriously thinking about making the effort to visit their next 30′s festival!
There was an awful lot of mythology about Kapitan Timm and U-862, including stuff in Wikipedia which is flat wrong. Timm’s men never landed and milked cows, or get into Napier harbour (which wasn’t deep enough) – but they did come by, they did get very jealous about the town lights and night life, and they did attack shipping in Hawke Bay. I spoke to someone whose father was on board a ship that was attacked. He saw the torpedo track and reported it, but it was so late in the war nobody believed him! I might post on it.
I’ve heard about the cow milking myth but haven’t heard about the attack on shipping. Would love to hear more one day! As a teenager I was fascinated by the activities of the German Navy in NZ waters in WW2. I was fortunate enough to meet and interview several survivors from the Holmwood and Rangitane. Amazing stories from our own backyard!
[...] were looking at the Joylands cabaret at Westshore. The Napier waterfront Soundshell was a popular roller-skating venue — but there was nothing scheduled that evening, though the swimming baths, on the waterfront a few [...]