THE BOOKMAN VISITS HIS OLD HOME TOWN
An Easter diary extract

When I left as a young man in 1960, Gisborne was a small city of 20,000 famous for its surf beaches and summer sunshine, with a daily railcar service to Napier and on to Wellington, it had busy port tending to a thriving coast shipping trade and NAC provided once daily flights to Auckland and Wellington with their DC3’s.The economy was built on farming and Watties Canneries.
Today the population has doubled to over 40,000, the rail service and coastal shipping has gone, Air NZ fly more frequent services, the sunshine and surf are as constant as ever while the economy is now largely based on forestry, the wine industry, along with maize, citrus, kiwifruit and subtropical fruits..
Gisborne is, as one is often reminded here, the first city in the world to see the sun each day.

I am back all these years later to attend the centennial celebrations of Gisborne High School and each morning over the Easter weekend I have been walking the streets of the city centre and nearby suburbs. Much has changed. The city seems more prosperous, cleaner, and with more parks and reserves. The shopping district is most appealing with Gladstone Road lined with palm trees, roundabouts on every corner to slow traffic, and wide footpaths paved with very appealing square stone tiles, the latter I understand being part of the city millennium project.

Few stores remain from my days here, not surprising after 40 years (!), but I did notice Grants Men’s Hairdressers, Muir’s Bookshop, and Arthur Toye’s fabric store are still here. The chains have all arrived of course – The Warehouse, Briscoes, and Farmers,even Les Mills is here, plus the food chains, Pizza Hut, KFC, Subway etc
The former Te Rau Press is now Te Rau Design & Print and has shifted away from Peel Street into the light industrial area between the town centre and Waikanae Beach.
I noticed four bookshops – Muirs (an old established firm and one of the best provincial bookstores in the country), Poppies, (the latest arrival, now in temporary premises while their building is strengthened for earthquakes), along with Paper Plus and Whitcoulls.

The cinema situation is much changed with the old King’s Theatre now Fred’s Place, (for affordable furniture), I could find no trace of The Regent, (which was the smartest cinema in my day), while The Majestic has been changed into the Odeon Complex with four cinemas within.

Pettie's departent store (long gone) is now the police station, the site of the former Post Office is now Endeavour Park but perhaps the biggest shock for me was the old St.Mary’s Catholic Church on the corner of Lowe Street and Childers Road which is now The Equippers Church with their website painted in bold along the Childers Road wall! From conservative Catholics to conservative Pentecostalists!

The sun shone all weekend, my old friend from school days, Peter Grayson, (we met in 1952 at Gisborne Intermediate in Miss Fisher’s class and have stayed in touch ever since), spent a few hours on Sunday,(after excellent coffee and breakfast at the Wharf Café), enjoying a nostalgic tour of the district, up the coast as far as Tatapouri, all around the very appealing beach suburb of Wainui, then up Kaiti Hill of course, all the way along Ormond Road past the hospital,(“new” location), out to Waimata Valley to look at the city from the opposite view. In between we enjoyed coffee and scones at Café Villagio in the Ballance Street Village.

We drove down to Gisborne via Tauranga, Whakatane, (where I visited my Beattie grandparents’ graves), Ohope and the Waioeka Gorge, (a superb road these days, a far cry from when I made my schoolboy NZR bus trips to Whakatane), Matawai and down onto the fertile Poverty Bay Plains.
We returned to Auckland on Easter Monday via beautiful Lake Rotoiti where we visited Peter’s niece Sally who has a holiday home there.

It was a wonderful, nostalgia-laden weekend and, putting aside catching up with school mates from half a century ago, the highlights for me were the Centennial Dinner held at the Events Centre at the Show Grounds and the superb performances by the 23 strong school choir and the school Kapa Haka Group. Both were quite astonishing and hugely impressive in their performance skills.
I also greatly enjoyed standing on the sideline watching the Gisborne Boys High l First Fifteen defeat old rival Napier Boys High in a most entertaining, running game of rugby.

Now back in Auckland with a host of happy memories, back to a somewhat daunting pile of books all calling for review, and of course to my blog. Normal service has resumed.
In Auckland only briefly though as I am about to cross the Tasman for a few days so will be blogging from there this coming week. Stand by.