Memories of Tauranga in the 1940s and 1950s

HOW AN OLD 1943 AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH REINFORCED MANY OLD MEMORIES OF GROWING UP

Contributed by Guest Author Ken Morris of Brisbane

Recently I was trying to source old land titles data in Tauranga. I was born in 1941 and was trying to find the history of the property where we initially lived in town and later, on a farm out of town. My research is ongoing but one of the first sources was from the Tauranga City website and reference to aerial photos taken from 1943 onwards, unfortunately there was a big gap from 1943 till 1959, but the system overlaid the current land boundaries over the photo, and even though there were subsequent subdivisions one could see the original properties features. So for those that may want to follow up by checking photos and memories of their own part of New Zealand, I’ve referenced some of the things the photos reinforced of my memories of the later 1940s and early 1950s.

No 4 Arundel St

No 4 Arundel St

1. The House
2. A garage and I used to cut the lead of the ridge capping to make sinkers for fishing. In the early years there was an outside toilet next to the garage and there was a ‘night soil’ collection service
3. Orange and grapefruit trees, and there was an air raid shelter made of galv iron and timber under the trees
4. A plum tree with great fruit
5. A laundry with a ‘copper’ - I can remember the joy when we got a washing machine
   

Tauranga Primary School

Tauranga Primary School

1. Primer School
2. Dental Clinic – I got into trouble because I was going to burn it town after dental nurse (all in white with a red cardigan) hurt me while drilling with an old treadle drill
3. Building where girls learnt cooking and boys did carpentry, I can remember making a folding stepladder as a Std 6 project
4. Miss Lancashire’s classroom, Primer 4 I think
5. Two classrooms and where ’the best’ teacher Peter Densem taught me in 1953 & 54 (Std 5 & 6), Peter only died last year and was ~ 104.
6. This was a gigantic tree with roots like the legs of an octopus, great for games, it was an exotic and did have a nameplate
7. Covered bicycle racks and firewood storage for the pot-bellied stoves we had in classrooms
8. We used to play marble under these trees
9. The ‘milk shed’ where some of us were rostered to get the crates with little bottles with cardboard caps ready for distribution
10. At time of photograph this big building was still the High School, but a new college was built after WWII
11. This was site for our swimming pool built in early 50’s. A group of boys rostered to clean the pool (no filtration plant, just emptied, cleaned & refilled) were dobbed in by the owner of adjacent house for doing the job naked & we were reprimanded
12. The house where I lived – No 4 Arundel St
13. Site for a demountable built after the war and used as an Art Room, but many a time we were without paper and supplies for classes

Municipal Pool, 1st Avenue

Municipal Pool 1st Avenue
This is the 1st time I’ve been able to find a photo of the pool located not far upstream of the railway bridge to Matapihi

1. Towards Devonport Road
2. Slipways for launch & yacht repairs
3. Towards the bridge, yacht club and town wharf
4. The Pool. The pool was constructed of lengths or railway iron driven to form a safe enclosure, over time some of the rails had rusted and we used to dive down swim out thru the holes into the harbour and back. The rails were covered with barnacles so hard on the feet, for swimming carnivals they used to have big timber boards fixed to rails so the contestants could touch, turn & push off. A big issue was the timing of carnivals and the tides as laps would be a mixture of with & against the tides.

Ken Morris - Tauranga Primary School 1946 to 1954

And am lucky to be still in contact with some friends who went thru the primary school and college together. I hope some of the older readers will revive some of their childhood memories by looking at old aerial photos of the areas where they grew up