It was mid-November 1962. My parents, Peter Cape and his wife Barbara and their children Stephanie and Christopher had completed six months travelling 5000-6000 miles through the British Isles in a 1948 Ford Anglia from Lands End to John O Groats, spending 10 days by way of Boulogne on a rapid tour of northern France, Western Germany, and Belgium, travelling to Paris, Strasbourg, the Schwartzwald, Heidelberg, Mainz, up the Rhine to Bonn and Cologne, and then across by Bruxelles to Oostende.
This left us with six days in which to pack and catch our passage back to New Zealand on board the MS Oranje from Southampton.
My father sold the car to buyers in London, where we were living while he trained with the BBC. Heading back to New Zealand, retracing our path, circumstances took on the slightly tarnished patina of the familiar, which in some ways was comforting but in others was a deadly bore.
The BCNZ somewhat unimaginatively wanted to play it safe so we avoided the unsettled Suez arena, the yellow fleet and the Middle East opting instead for Florida, Cuban waters where the Cuban Missile crisis had reached its zenith in the preceding months, and Panama where the bridge we saw under construction months earlier now stood completed, looking identical to the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
The cold war was not over. Barely three weeks before leaving England nuclear war had been averted when the Russian submarine b59 had held back on launching a nuclear torpedo at US navy vessels in the waters between Cuba and Florida.
We'd left behind the onset of a severe smog-bound English winter that would be the coldest since 1895. It was named "the Big Freeze of 63". The Tropics were a welcome break.
Time out in the tropics aboard MS Oranje, November 1962. Photo / Peter Cape
My parents knew the Oranje's stewards from our northbound passage in April. There was the usual round of shipboard parties and activities but I don't recall any really notable events.
My parents bought a stuffed baby crocodile in Florida. In Tahiti they purchased shell necklaces, a dried parrotfish and a miniature Tahitian hut made of native timbers, all of which would probably now be confiscated by NZ Customs – but this was 1962.
When we docked in Wellington and made our way through Customs on Queens Wharf, my mother, when asked if there was anything to declare, waved the crocodile in the face of the customers official who, suitably startled, let us through. That's the family myth anyway.
I still have the parrotfish and the Tahitian hut, and a lump of peat from the Isle of Skye on my bookshelf.
We arrived home in Stokes Valley to an unkempt jungle of lawn and shrubbery and a shabby house. Our golden spaniel Pippa was overweight and our silver tabby had succumbed to cat flu in our absence.
My father returned to WNTV1 and his role as senior producer and I returned to Stokes Valley Primary School where I found myself in something of a time warp.
I'd been away for half a year but I seemed to have gained at least three years on my classmates and peers. My horizons were wider and deeper. While they seemed content with the ordinary and routine I had stories to tell and a knowledge of far-flung lands. I felt separated somehow.
My sister settled back into school too, and my mother eventually became head of the art departments at St Orans College in Lower Hutt and then Wellington Girls College.
My father passed his BBC training on to the fledgling New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and penned a report to the Imperial Relations Trust which had supported our tour of the British Isles. The report noted his observations of the culture and arts in England, Scotland and Wales.
He went on to write books on the New Zealand Arts scene (such as Artists and Craftsmen in New Zealand, New Zealand Painting Since 1960, and Please Touch).
The flame of fame can be tricky to handle in the spotlight and broadcasting is an egocentric place to work. When my father had an affair with his secretary he lost his job in New Zealand television. Consequently, my parents' marriage fell apart around 1972, when I was at Massey University. Over subsequent years my mother remarried.
My father cohabited with his defacto partner. My sister married an accountant and raised two sons (an army chaplain, and a financial consultant who is a world-class croquet champion).
As for me, well, I haven't finished yet. I'm a freelance journalist and columnist (you're reading this). I now have a home and property of my own and some money in the bank. Thankfully, I'm out of the rental arena.
I have two cats. That's a start. I'd love to find a compatible female companion to share life with, and a dog. When and where that will happen in these pandemic days is uncertain.
I still have a thirst for fresh horizons, interesting people and places. I'd like to pursue those if this wily pandemic is dealt with and if we haven't blown ourselves up with a nuclear war.
If Putin, Ukraine and the other global warlords would just put down the guns and hear each other, there might be a new pathway revealed, but that is an unlikely prospect. There's money to be made in dealing arms – ask Tony Blair or Viktor Bout. I have an acute awareness that the news media love blood on the carpet.
I also have an increasing dislike of presentation styles of news content in this country. In broadcasting my father was originally a news compiler (so I reckon it's in my blood). He progressed to being head of Talks and a senior television producer. I actually prefer Al Jazeera and ABC Australia. I am Australian by birth after all.
What would happen if the politicians and the power merchants put down the guns and concentrated on medical science, restoring nature, clean water, food, shelter and sustainable ecologically balanced stewardship of the planet?
We all saw how the planet revived in the global lockdown in 2020 so let it be recognised that we humans are not the only inhabitants of planet Earth.
Unfortunately, as I wrote at the outbreak of this pandemic, quoting script from the film The Day The Earth Stood Still, "It's only on the brink that people find the will to change."
It appears, as is evidenced by current events, that procrastination is the bane of progress.
