This 1940s Whanganui photo has Stewart Gray thinking. Photo / Whanganui Regional Museum
On the corner of Victoria Ave and Ridgway St where the Whanganui Savings Bank used to be there’s a large-scale photograph of a 14-year-old girl about to board a tram on Victoria Avenue.
Over the years I have often wondered who that girl was and what became of her. But the picture also asks me, without any sense of nostalgia, to contemplate Whanganui as it was then — according to official records, 1947, the year of my birth, but just as probably, 1945.
Whanganui, just prior to that time, had endured years of being on a war footing. Before the war it had just come out of the worst aspects of the depression and in 1940 the effects of a major flood had to be dealt with. Air raid shelters were widespread, blackouts were mandatory, women were drafted into various factory jobs and men to the war. Some essential food items as well as petrol were rationed, and, if the army felt the need, it could commandeer private vehicles. And, horror of horrors, the rich were taxed at a significantly higher rate to accommodate the cost of the war.
Yet the photograph reveals an image of Victoria Ave that is reminiscent of the way I remember it as a child of the1950s and as a teenager in the ‘60s. The wide street, its peaceful ambience, the bicycles, the prevalence of women and, of course, the town clock outside Warnocks. I see no evidence of the austerity of the times.
And I’m not surprised.
Even with the relaxing of wartime restrictions, the ‘50s and ‘60s are now often referred to as periods of control and regulation. Yet it is also acknowledged as a period of prosperity.
It is my belief that, for a family such as mine, one that didn’t have the luxury of modern-day appliances, those regulatory factors enhanced freedom and opportunity; and were enabling. Compulsory unionism being just one example. A mechanism that enabled unions to effectively negotiate with employers, with or without rancour, on wage rates and conditions on a yearly basis ... but systems too. Especially systems — a railway network that allowed a young university student on the weekend to board a train in Palmerston North and disembark at the St Johns railway station in order to walk to his parents’ place in Liverpool St. And, as evidenced by the above photograph, rapid transit trams and bus systems that, once upon a time, the girl in the photograph (a young Beverley Brown and her aunt Molly Halbert) were able to use for just the cost of a penny.
But that was a time gone by. To paraphrase LP Hartley, “The past is a foreign country, they did things differently then.” The sheer convenience of car ownership and other lifestyle factors have provided freedoms that are far beyond the expectations of most of my parents’ generation; but it is now increasingly apparent, beyond that which was expedient.
It’s time for lifestyle and philosophical changes that drive practical solutions to the imperatives of climate change and economic inequality. Changes will be necessitated by events just as they always have been through periods of war and depression, which will be facilitated by government policies and local endeavours. And which can only be given full effect with a public acceptance that change is necessary.
In a recent edition of the Midweek both Lyneke Onderwater and Terry Sarten have made telling points in a couple of opinion pieces. Lyneke on the need for sociological behavioural change and Terry on the fiscal implications of not committing to necessary financial investment.
To take a narrower focus, it’s my contention that alternative transport options offer a process of adaptive change that is relatively simple, cost-effective and of benefit to both the environment and the wider community; and one that approximates those we once had.
Currently the local district council has accessed a governmental million-dollar “streets for people fund” which is part of the Government’s National Transport Plan. Its aims are to “reduce people’s reliance on cars and support active, healthy and shared transport choices”: and, “remove barriers, bring forward elements of long-term planning and partner with the community to get things done”. The overall intent of the scheme is to provide a “low-carbon, safe and healthy transport system that is sustainable and multimodal and where public transport and active modes are first choice for most daily transport needs”.
In the meantime, Council is organising consultation workshops to discuss means by which the intent of the scheme can be brought to fruition in an imaginative way that is relevant to the community’s wants and needs.
The district council has also, in conjunction with Horizons, developed the Ride the Tide Rapid Transit system which it is now asking the community to embrace.
My wish is for an electric shuttle bus service that would use those various council and private carpark areas that are situated behind Victoria Ave’s shop buildings as places for unostentatious bus stops. With each of those places having an alleyway that leads into the central area of each block it would enhance the concept of pedestrianisation: and I think that there might still be a government scheme that has criteria that would accommodate that idea. The service would be free, frequent and confined to the immediate central city area and would utilise small transit vehicles.
But that’s just a dream I have. Other people dream too.
There are voices within our region that call for a more comprehensive national passenger rail service. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but their call reminds me of a story my brother once told me about a time when he was holidaying at Piriaka. On a Saturday he boarded a train at Piriaka Station to watch a rugby match seven miles away at Taumarunui. Just a day in the life of a young teenager on holiday in a remote New Zealand country town.
The best things in life are not necessarily free, nor do dreams always come true, but our dreams and wishes are not so outlandish. If they were to come to fruition, they would be simply a modern iteration of workable systems we once had.
The girl is catching the Castlecliff tram to get to Gonville where her aunty lives. She turns to look back at the camera and her gaze is frozen in a moment of time. To a viewer such as myself, I too am caught in that moment. Intrigued by a casual but enigmatic stare of a young girl about to board a tram on the main street of my hometown. As she is looking at the camera, I look back at her, across, what Dylan once described as, “the sea of time”.