A history of Auckland is a rare thing. At least, a history mostly in words is unusual. A good number of histories mostly in photographs, derived from the newspaper archives and those of the city libraries, have been published. They say little, but show a lot. This new book, by Paul Moon, professor of history at Auckland University of Technology, shows nothing but says a lot. Rather than showing a photograph of bathers on Cheltenham Beach (with a caption noting they are wearing the Canadian bathing suit required by a bylaw of the borough council), the author will tell you of such events as the inaugural performance by the Dorian Choir on May 14, 1936, in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall, of Rossini’s Stabat Mater. He has collated many events, minor and major, to convey what was going on, what the city was like at any particular time during the last century.
But this book is not a history. It is a chronicle. It not shaped by an argument. Time passes and Auckland’s population increases 35 times over the course of the book, but no question is asked or answered. Professor Moon has compiled his book from the writing of others, from newspaper reports, magazines, memoirs and anything else that gives him a fact, or a flavour of the times. He also draws on the substantial library of academic works published about the 20th century in the 21st.
Fortunately for the reader, the author is not overly concerned with theory. Although his first reference cites, in time-honoured fashion, one of his own papers (on the subject of “prosthetic memory”), he is mostly concerned with the experience of others. He writes about riots, moral panics and the effects of distant wars. He writes about the lives of ordinary people and about the rich.
He records events: the foundation of the Auckland Peace Association, the opening of the Ferry Building, the split between conservatives and progressives in the Auckland Society of Arts, the coming of KFC. He describes social change with statistics – 2432 Aucklanders were charged with alcohol-related offences in 1913 – and anecdotes: a woman recalls making fondues and beef Wellington for her guests in the 1970s.
He writes about Ray Smith, who founded a firm called Goldcorp, and recalls 1987, when Smith owned a home on Takapuna beach worth $1.5 million, a Bentley, a Ferrari and a half-share in a helicopter. Smith commissioned Billy Apple to make him a golden apple, which he then sold. Other Aucklanders renovated villas in the inner suburbs, houses occupied in earlier decades by the poor, people who are not forgotten in this book. One Aucklander recalls a childhood with only one set of clothes and no bedding.
In places, the author’s reach exceeds his grasp. He finds an article published in the Wellington magazine Progress in 1919 which discusses a bungalow with Californian influences, from which he surmises that its “description of this new style of house published during the early period of bungalow construction in New Zealand gave readers a tempting hint of what to expect”. He seems unaware of the articles about bungalows in California published in Progress nearly a decade earlier, and does not reveal that his 1919 article is about a bungalow in New South Wales.
In other places, the reader might wish the author had left his office more frequently. Had he visited writer Frank Sargeson’s house on Esmonde Road, he would have seen it is more than a “hut”, rather a three-bedroomed bach designed and built by his friend George Haydn. He might have reported the words on the sign outside the house: “Here he wrote all his best-known short stories and novels, grew vegetables and entertained friends and fellow writers. Here a truly New Zealand literature was born.” Instead, Moon cites an academic paper titled “Queer chattels and fixtures”, about Sargeson and Patrick White.
In these times, one seldom sees a book like this: 360 pages, 1421 references, a bibliography and index, but no photographs, drawings or maps. And no journey: this is not a book in which the author tells us his story, describes the past through his experience. If one did not know the author, one might think this book had been written by someone who had learned a great deal about Auckland from the writing of others but had never visited the city. But at least the reader has been spared autobiography, and will learn a great deal.
Auckland: The twentieth-century story, by Paul Moon (Oratia, $45).
