During a visit to the museum in Napier (mtg Hawkes Bay) I came across an exquisite item featured in the exhibition “Silver, Heirlooms from the Collection”. It captured my eye because, having an...
This began as an account about fire alarms in New Zealand. But it soon became a story about the surprising number of New Zealanders who invented fire alarm systems, manufactured them and marketed...
“Go and Take Over the News…” Early Days of TV in Fiji I had been to Fiji several times in the late 1980s as a trainer, teaching radio and TV news reporters from various South Pacific Islands...
I recently visited the Epsom Community Centre in Gillies Avenue, and I found the place very different to recollections of my youth in the 1950s. Back then it was the Auckland City Council’s Epsom...
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, where there’s fire there better be water… This is story of Auckland’s first dependable water supply… one that firefighters could rely on to confront the flames...
“The toll rang out its alarm of fire, a ruddy glare upon the sky… the bell on the New Zealand Insurance Company’s Building then took up the cry, swelling to a chorus as other bells across the...
Serious fires which swept through two of Auckland’s brothels in the early 1880s whetted my interest in those establishments and the women who occupied them. This resulted in the story of “Madame...
Auckland had a flourishing prostitution business in the 1870s and 1880s, much to the dismay of respectable citizens, the police and civic authorities. Several brothel-keepers became prominent but...
We take little notice of fire hydrants… until, that is, they are urgently required when there is a fire. They’re seldom spoken-of yet they are found along the footpaths of every street in...
The centenary of the first radio transmission in New Zealand (Professor Robert Jack in 1921) and the first broadcast by a licensed radio station (1YA Auckland in 1923) prompted a look at those...