Paths well travelled for Auckland Heritage Festival

Postcard depicting crowds walking over Grafton Bridge in 1910. Photo / Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.

Auckland Heritage Festival starts today, themed on journeys, so Ruth Spencer took a trip down memory lane and unearthed some remarkable photographs.

Grafton Bridge, 1910

In March of 1910 Grafton Bridge had not yet been officially opened but here we see a crowd of Aucklanders returning towards Symonds St from a cadet display in the Domain. Being part of a walking crowd leaving an event is part of life in Auckland – the rugby at Eden Park, Christmas in the Park or a concert at Mt Smart, a cohort still buzzing from a shared experience. It can inspire a warm feeling of community. Or it can stir up justified anxiety about getting out of the car park.
The bridge has piles of debris waiting to be cleaned up for the official opening and the electric lamps had not yet been fitted, so the photographer has painted them in - which feels very Auckland somehow: always looking forward, under construction, never quite finished because it's always changing. And there's always someone willing to paint you a picture of how it could be. Change is good though, the previous cable-stay bridge was unstable and, after big events police had to be stationed at each end to prevent exuberant crowds just like this jumping on it for the thrill of the wobble.

Men walking on steel framing during the construction of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Photo / Les Downey 1959

Auckland Harbour Bridge, 1959

As a photo of men going for walk, this image has it all. Silhouetted against a clear sky they step out jauntily, the one in front swinging his arms with careless abandon, the one at the back even more casual with his hands in his pockets. You could almost forget they're on a girder dozens of metres above the harbour, meaning any misstep on this short stroll would turn it into an unexpectedly long journey, straight down.
The men are walking on the steel framing of the harbour bridge during its construction. The bridge, of course, is now a crucial artery for Aucklanders. It's the first step in millions of journeys north or south and it's an admired feature from the west, where from one particular point on the causeway (where the road bends inexorably away from Te Atatu), the bridge lines up perfectly with Rangitoto behind it, the same size and shape. These days you can be equipped with hard hats and overalls and walk to the top on a guided tour but these men did the Bridge Climb before it was cool. You can now also jump off, attached to a bungy, a tamer version of what could have happened had one of these men taken a long walk off a short bridge.

Roadside Picnic Showing the Clark family's fully laden Humber Hawk parked on a side road while Muriel, Carolyn and Pamela Clark enjoy a picnic. Photo / Ron Clark Auckland Libraries Heritage Collection

Roadside Picnic, 1950-69

Ron Clark took this photo of his family enjoying a roadside picnic and captured something intrinsic to New Zealand's collective memory. If you spent summers on back roads, heading for baches and camping adventures in hot, overstuffed cars, you'll be able to smell the dust that rose in clouds behind the car and settled like flour in the window corners. You'll feel your shorts-clad thighs sticking to burning vinyl seats and taste the thin, tinny taste of thermos tea, sulkily stewing since you left home. At least it washed away the dust. You'll remember (some of) the words of songs that you sang to pass the time: Show Me The Way To Go Home, Molly Malone, or Row Row Row your Boat - sung in great solemnity as a four-part round. Mixed with the tedium of a long drive is the excitement of what's to come: swims in crisp rivers, the scent of a canvas tent in the sun, sausages burnt and raw, usually at the same time. Kids having their first go at driving the Humber around a dry paddock, bumping over the ruts. One family's roadside picnic takes us on our own trip back to idyllic summers past.

Government Tourist Overseas shop window, Auckland. Ref: WA-57976-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

Government Tourist Overseas shop window, 1962

Where would you like to go today? Have you considered sunny Beirut? There are so many fascinating destinations possible when you fly with BOAC and TEAL in 1962. Come into the Government Tourist Overseas shop to book your adventure, or simply stare longingly at the window display and daydream about a fascinating Lebanon getaway.

If all that standing in the fresh air gives you a certain craving, it's not you, it's the parking meter, which is advertising Rothmans cigarettes. You can light one on board a BOAC 707 on your way to Hong Kong, sitting considerately in the smoking section. Although let's face it, if someone's smoking on a 150-seat 707, everywhere's the smoking section.

In 1962 when this photo was taken you could travel the world from New Zealand in short hops. A year later the first long-haul flights to London were introduced and then the newly renamed Air New Zealand began flying to LA in 1965. Suddenly New Zealanders could travel more easily around the world - and the world could travel here, if they weren't already eagerly en route to Beirut.

New Zealand at War: two women look at the new ration book. 14 April 1942. Photo / New Zealand Herald

New Zealand at War, 1942

A walk to the shops with a friend in 1942 begins a different kind of journey: a journey into hardship and ingenuity. World War II had already brought rationing to petrol, curtailing car trips and suggesting the reason these two are on foot - but that was only the start.

On the day the new grocery ration books came into use, these women bend over them, ready to navigate the intricacies of their coupon-controlled future.

These first books rationed the purchase of sugar and stockings. Stockings were limited to one new pair every three months, as the raw materials went to make tents and parachutes for the war effort. Walking wore out stockings but you couldn't take the car. And if you couldn't take the car, you couldn't carry as much, so you had to walk to the shops more often. Probably more women would have adopted trousers but those were rationed a month later.

While their brothers or husbands travelled a longer, riskier path to the theatre of war, those left to keep the home fires burning had to do it with less fuel for those fires and less food to cook on them. We heard about Dad's Army, but this was the army of mums.

Auckland Heritage Festival starts today with more than 200 events across the region until Monday, October 28. heritagefestival.co.nz