Hastings 50 Year Celebrations Souvenir Publication September 2006

Hastings 50 Year Celebrations

50 YEARS
HASTINGS CITY

Hawke’s Bay Today

Souvenir Publication September 2006
A Hawke’s Bay Today Publication

Hastings City
PLAY WORK VISIT LIVE

Page 2

PLAY WORK VISIT LIVE

Hastings City Celebrates its history and looks forward to its future. Hastings City is the ideal place to shop and do business. With one of the longest and most attractive boulevards in the country our central city is the ultimate shopper’s paradise! Hastings City has a superb blend of historic Spanish Mission architecture, and wonderful street art and sculpture adorning the expansive piazzas. There’s always something to do in Hastings – SHOP, RELAX, ENJOY.

Hastings City

For more information on what is happening in Hastings City visit [www].hastingscity.co.nz

HAWKE’S BAY
WINE COUNTRY

Page 3

A message from the Mayor

I would like to offer my congratulations to Hastings as it celebrates 50 years of being a city.

There’s been a lot of change in 50 years, some of it positive and some more challenging.

I grew up in the country with Hastings as my home town and even in my lifetime I have seen things change, go through cycles, come around again.

As a child I remember fondly coming into town for the annual A&P show, visiting the Hawke’s Bay Farmers Tea Rooms and, best of all, going to the Municipal Theatre to see Fiddler on the Roof. Now, years later, the Theatre is setting out on a new journey as the Hawke’s Bay Opera House. Thanks to immense support from the local community and from central government we have been able begin the process of returning the Theatre to its former glory.

The Blossom Festival too is experiencing a revival. When I was a child we would come in from the farm every spring to see the Blossom Parade, which was a very big event. Interest in the parade waned during the seventies and eighties, but now it’s back and it’s just as big, bright and beautiful as it ever was. Creative New Zealand recently presented the Hastings District Council with a Creative Places award for the 2005 Blossom Parade and this year we would like to repeat our success.

Fifty years a city: fifty years full of successes, challenges, celebrations and growth. It has been my pleasure to be part of it.

Congratulations Hastings!

Lawrence Yule
Mayor

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Page 4

Hastings reaches city status

On 8 September 1956, Governor General Willoughby Norrie announced the long-awaited words – Hastings was a city. The town had reached maturity and its citizens and leaders looked forward to a proud new identity.

But Hastings nearly failed the grade. There was an eleventh hour panic when government statisticians omitted counting citizens in hospital and various other institutions and it seemed the population didn’t reach the 20,000 needed for cityhood.

The error corrected, celebrations began with a parade of vehicles, a massed band and marching teams. All assembled at Nelson Park for a kapahaka display before the official ceremony attended by a line-up of dignitaries including the United Kingdom high commissioner representing the Mayor of Hastings, England.

The announcement of city status ended with a roaring flypast by four de Havilland Vampires and that night 257 invited guests attended a civic dinner while the ‘ordinary’ populace enjoyed pipe bands and entertainment at the Municipal Theatre.

Celebrations – exhibitions, church services, parades and concerts – lasted all week leading to blossom festival day on Saturday 15 September. Special trains and buses packed with tourists came from Wellington and Gisborne and the two-hour parade was followed by a carnival at Windsor Park and a dance at the Assembly Hall.

Driven by western world prosperity and boosted by organizations such as Greater Hastings, the post-war golden age continued. Demand for meat, wool and other primary produce soared, new technologies including top dressing increased production, industry and housing expanded and growing national public works expenditure brought better roads, electricity supplies and other improvements.

The new city and inaugural mayor Sir Edwin Bate were not without challenges though. Longstanding rivalry with Napier continued with heated debate over the siting of a new airport, and within Hastings controversy raged for years over the proposal to fluoridate the water supply.

The 1960s brought a mixture of tragedy – a fire at Wattie’s cannery at the peak of the 1962 season for one of the city’s largest employers – and progress.

In 1964 the first sections at Flaxmere were sold. Providing new space for a growing population, Flaxmere was conceived as a revolutionary stand-alone community with its own commercial, recreational and educational amenities.

Fantasyland, a Greater Hastings initiative, opened in 1968 following a massive community effort by service groups, businesses, the council and general public. The initial boating pond, castle and railway drew nationwide visitors and were added to until the late ’80s.

By then Hastings had another curiosity – the ring road. In 1972 it seemed the answer to increasing traffic densities and parking shortages, and for a time worked. Later criticised as a speed track and an obstacle strangling city businesses, it was modified and finally abandoned in the 1990s.

Hastings was in the throws of a depression fuelled by government economic reforms, high unemployment, plummeting farm incomes and climatic catastrophes. Whakatu freezing works’ closed in 1986, then Tomoana and a series of early frosts and hailstorms hit orchards and vineyards.

Helped by the wider vision symbolised by expansion in 1989’s local government reforms to become a district, Hastings emerged from gloom to take on new regionally significant roles in areas such as health, the arts and tourism, while at heart remaining the important rural service centre it has been since soon after the first European settlement.

Photo captions –
Stockyards – Stortford Lodge
Tomoana Freezing Works

Page 5

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Mick Thomson   1st Generation
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Page 6

A story of progress

Witnesses to 150 years of settlement, Hastings landmarks tell the story of progress, triumphs and tragedies.

In 1992, the most recent of a series of fires plaguing Hastings since an 1893 blaze destroyed many of its fledgling businesses, cost the modern city one of its oldest landmarks. Sacred Heart Catholic Church, a wooden, gothic-style building topped by a 110-foot bell tower and spire, was just three years short of its 100th anniversary. But by 1996 Hastings had a new notable landmark in the modern church designed by Paris Magdalinos.

Another old wooden church disappeared earlier still – St Andrew’s Presbyterian, a 1906 Charles Natusch design with a distinctive upper gallery, had already lost its 105-foot tower in the 1931 earthquake and was replaced by the current building in 1980.

The earthquake was kinder to the Cape Dutch building constructed for Hastings’ new high school in 1926, but the central post office was also denuded of its tower – a domed 52-foot clocktower with flagstaff. Later it survived the loss of its original function to become Hastings Health Centre in 2002. Renovated and repainted its neo-classical façade is part of a parade of similarly revitalised buildings eastwards along Queen Street to the Public Trust building and the brick, corner offices built for Hawke’s Bay Herald in 1907.

Other old identities have gone or assumed new purpose; the Hastings Club’s 1906 wooden Market Street building went in 1996, the Carlton Club and Hastings hotels disappeared, leaving the Albert as the last colonial hostelry. In 1975 Westerman’s 1921 art nouveau-inspired store was sold and eventually became Hastings’ visitor information office. Hastings firefighters moved to Stortford Lodge, their 1930s Hastings Street station underwent various transformations and is now central feature of a current office development.

The year Hastings became a city, the foundation stone for the library was laid, ending 11 years’ debate on a memorial for the area’s world war service people. War artist Peter McIntyre was commissioned to paint murals for the hall of memories and the £82,000 building funded partly by public effort, opened in 1959. And as Hastings matured into its city role other landmarks appeared; Hastings Cultural Centre, now Hawke’s Bay Exhibition Centre was finished in 1975 providing for growing public interest in the arts, and in 1977 councillors and the 75 council staff moved into a space age-looking hexagonal administration building.

Parks have been intrinsic to Hastings’ character since early days. The land for Queen’s Square and Beatson Park, now Windsor Park commemorating George V’s silver jubilee, was set aside in 1885 when Thomas Tanner subdivided his Riverslea estate. George, formerly Duke of Cornwall, was also responsible for Cornwall Park’s name; gifted to the town by James Nelson Williams in 1901, it marked that year’s royal visit to New Zealand. Williams’ legacy continued, with his descendents gifting his Frimley estate after the homestead burnt down in 1951.

Perhaps though nothing characterises Hastings quite as much as its clock tower and theatre. The clock tower, built 1934 and costing £1126, was Hastings architect SG Chaplin’s competition-winning replacement for the tower toppled in 1931. Rising symbolically hopeful above earthquake-safe-low other new buildings; it incorporated a Gents Electric striking clock and chimes salvaged from the old post office tower.

More fortunate, the Municipal Theatre survived the earthquake. Among the first of Hastings’ later-iconic Spanish-revival buildings and designed by Wellingtonian HE White, it was adventurously-proportioned with 1300-plus seats and stage space and equipment suitable for big companies. It opened in 1915 with Hastings Operatic Society performing the musical comedy, ‘San Toy’.

The next-door Municipal Building came two years later after another competition won by Albert Garnett and provided a new borough council chamber and offices, an Assembly Hall and supper room, all with moulded plaster features and a balcony. Below were eight ground-floor shops.

Photo captions –
Sacred Heart Church
Hastings Post Office Opening

Page 7

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Page 8

Roles in the region

Progressing from city to district Hastings has developed a broad outlook and taken on a variety of important regional roles.

Some revolve around new rural enterprises that have developed alongside traditional pastoral and horticultural industries, and a chief among these is wine. With 89 per cent of Hawke’s Bay’s 3700-plus-hectare vineyards, Hastings is the centre of New Zealand’s second-largest wine producing region. Its diverse terrain spanning stony coastland, inland gravel, alluvial plains and terraces, benefits from a warm maritime climate, low rainfall and long sunshine, making Hastings a key contributor to Hawke’s Bay status as producer of New Zealand’s largest variety of wines.

This is the modern face of an industry whose first vines planted on Te Mata Peak foothills in the 1890s led to the development of the acclaimed Te Mata Estate, New Zealand’s oldest winery and in the heart of the city, another long-player Vidal. Since these beginnings, the district’s reputation nationally and internationally has prompted developments ranging from boutique producers to multi-million dollar operations involving outside investment.

The focus for a booming tourism industry, wineries with their tastings, tours and restaurants, are showcases for the district. Along with events such as the annual Winemakers’ Charity Auction and Harvest Hawke’s Bay, they draw thousands of visitors annually and put Hastings on the national and international map.

The productive landscape makes Hastings the location for other visitor attractions, notably Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Market, and the district is also a remarkable adventure and outdoor playground, offering everything from water sports, hunting and tramping to superb golf courses, among them the international-class Cape Kidnappers course. Visitors tour the region by bike, hot air balloon, bus or limo and have a choice of accommodation ranging from camping grounds to boutique lodges.

More pragmatically, Hastings is the centre of Hawke’s Bay’s health services. Hastings Memorial Hospital’s redevelopment (now Hawke’s Bay Hospital) into the provider of acute in – and outpatient services for the area from Central Hawke’s Bay to Mahia, saw a massive rebuilding including new operating theatres, extended accident and emergency capacity, modernised wards and equipment, a Maori health unit and specialist consultancy rooms.

Opened in 1999, the regional hospital was paralleled by redevelopment of Royston, a private hospital established in 1921. With new operating theatres, consultants’ rooms, radiology and lab facilities, it is now Hawke’s Bay’s largest private hospital. Together the two hospitals attract other health professionals covering both mainstream and complementary medicines.

Education, another longstanding role, has likewise blossomed. In addition to good state schools, primary to secondary, and highly-regarded, private institutions, which have served the surrounding rural population since early days, Hastings offers students, local and international, numerous specialist opportunities.

These include a Rudolph Steiner school, Te Reo Maori education and church schools, tertiary-level employment courses and Maori visual and performing arts.

This year’s relaunch of Hastings Municipal Theatre as Hawke’s Bay Opera House is part of an $8.5-million project that sees Hastings embark towards becoming a major arts centre. While the refurbished theatre becomes the pivot of a complex of cafes, shops and conference-function facilities, nearby Hawke’s Bay Exhibition Centre will be redeveloped to include a Ngati Kahungunu cultural centre. Together with Hastings’ award-winning downtown transformation into an outdoor ‘art gallery’ and street performance venue, the arts festivals, private galleries, artists, and an active amateur arts sector, these big projects signal Hastings’ artistic and cultural ‘coming of age’.

Now under discussion, a proposed district sports park accommodating clubs and unique new facilities including a velodrome would also make Hastings a significant regional sports venue.

Photo captions –
Original Hastings Municipal Theatre
Newly refurbished and extended Hawke’s Bay Opera House

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Page 10

Reflections

Hastings City 1950’s-60’s

Photo captions –
1962 12th Hastings Highland Games
1963 A&P Show judge Mr. H. Holmes with an Aberdeen Angus calf.
Sideshow rides at the 1960 A&P Show
1963 Blossom Parade

Page 11

Photo captions –
The Hastings Clock Tower
Hastings Library opened 1959
Hastings Railway Station
1961 Blossom Parade – Queen Colleen Tait with princesses Diane Francis and Norah Glew
The crowd at the 1962 Blossom Festival

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Page 12

Rural to retail

The Hastings that became a city in 1956 shared many characteristics with the small rural town from which it had grown over the previous 90 or so years.

Many of the old identity buildings, some of them already 60 or 70 years old were still there, the rail yards were near the centre of town, farm supply businesses and stock agents were part of the centre city and the main street was characterised by small, owner-operated stores serving people’s daily needs – greengrocers, groceries, butcheries among them.

But it wasn’t to remain that way for long. Businesses, which had struggled with shortages of goods and price and import controls in the immediate post-war period, were already on the up; between 1953 and 1958, the number of shops in Hastings increased by 99 and turnover almost doubled.

And from the 1960s national and international economic and social trends, together with energetic efforts by the city’s businesspeople and council wrought huge changes in the look of Hastings. National chains such as Woolworths, Farmers Trading Company and Whitcoulls moved in, often supplanting small local businesses and introducing Hastings to the concept of self-service. That was replicated by new food stores, like Self Help, Hastings’ first supermarket.

These trends continued through following decades, paralleled by other ‘revolutions’; increased car ownership, the introduction in 1980 of Saturday morning shopping, the emergence of shopping plazas and malls, changing eating habits…

One of the most obvious differences in Hastings retail was the move west. The historic division into two distinct areas – one the shopping area straddling the railway line, the other a cluster of small stores, a hotel and farm-related enterprises serving farmers attending weekly sales at Stortford Lodge stockyards – gradually disappeared.

Kentucky Fried Chicken, the first of the new fast food takeaways appeared and excited Hastings people joined long queues to get in. In the 1980’s Stortford Lodge corner got a new look with a post office, banks, shops and Tommo’s modern family restaurant, although the old hotel hung on for another decade.

Another new supermarket, Writeprice filled the gap left by Odlins timber yard on Heretaunga-Charles street corner, and the space between downtown and Stortford Lodge filled with businesses serving growing numbers of car owners.

Downtown was changing too. Old family businesses like Bon Marche disappeared, others went to national owners – Westerman’s for example to Haywrights, the nearly century-old Roach’s drapery-clothing business to Winter and Pointen [Pointon] which redeveloped the building as West Point Plaza in 1981. Diagonally opposite, the old Embassy Theatre also became an arcade and others followed as Hastings experimented with latest thing in shopping.

Retailers moved to adapt to change and boost the city’s appeal. Greater Hastings, which began in 1950, was the forerunner of a succession of promotional organizations such as Centre Point and Golden Heart. One of the hottest topics on the agenda for decades was pedestrian malls. The idea first mooted in 1960, eventually came to fruition in 1989, and over the next 15 years as debate raged on the effect of no-traffic zones on business fortunes, Hastings District Council responded with a series of revamps.

The ring road, opened in 1972 was similarly controversial, but perhaps nothing would have revitalised trade at this time. Hastings was suffering the effects of rural economy malaise, and had to wait until the mid-’90s before things improved.

A big council redevelopment project involving public art, a performance stage, dramatic street furniture, spacious pedestrian areas, and gardens, now provides an award-winning retail environment and has prompted the opening of new shops and cafes.

Other changes are underway as the city grows. While the downtown character rests on specialist, smaller stores, other areas are developing their own focus ranging from financial and commercial services to car sales and fast food. The future will bring a new entertainment/arts/hospitality zone around the redeveloped Hawke’s Bay Opera House plus an extended large format retail zone.

Photo captions –
Heretaunga Street,1960’s
Heretaunga Street Today

Page 13

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Page 14

So much to see and do

On Saturday 15 September 1956, even before the flower-covered floats began assembling, trains and buses rolled into Hastings bringing visitors from Wellington to Gisborne. By 11.30 an hour-long parade was underway to Windsor Park for an afternoon Blossom Carnival.

The displays and performances led up to an evening of city partying at the Grand Blossom Festival and City Celebration Dance at the Assembly Hall.

Hastings could have chosen no more appropriate way to mark the end of its week of cityhood celebrations. Although only in its sixth year, the Blossom Parade was well known nationally. The first in 1950, staged by the newly-formed Greater Hastings, grew from a suggestion by a returning war-service airman who had seen something similar in Canada. It was timed to coincide with the Agricultural and Pastoral Association’s annual Labour Weekend Show.

The whole town applauded the idea. The fruitgrowers’ and retailers’ associations pitched in, banners decked the streets, shops were festooned with blossoms, 41 floats lined up to compete for Baillie Motors’ silver cup, bands played and people danced in the street until 10.30pm.

The occasion’s success secured its place on the calendar and in following years it regularly attracted 40-50,000 people. Special trains from around the North Island were welcomed by pipers and dancers and each year the festival added some new feature, including the competition for a queen to ride in style on a float.

For 20 years the festival remained an annual highlight, but as social and economic circumstances changed, interest waned and the 1972 parade was the last for many years. Resurrected, the new festival bigger than ever, brings top New Zealand and local entertainers, and a parade once again attracting thousands.

Beginning a year after the parade, Hastings Easter Highland Games boasts an unbroken 55-year record. Intended originally to mirror the festivals of piping, dancing and sport held by the district’s early Scottish settlers, it grew with new attractions such as a Miss Highland Games contest. With names like Peter Snell and Precious Mackenzie competing in sports events, in their heyday the games were one of the largest of their kind in New Zealand.

Longer-running still, the A&P Show began in 1863, in a paddock near Havelock North, where 400 people turned out in Sunday best for a ‘gala’ day. Considering that even 15 years later the town district’s official population was only 391, this was the occasion of the time, as much a social affair as a showcase for livestock and farm skills.

In 1874, when the A&P Society acquired its own four-acre grounds between Lyndon Road and Eastbourne Street, the show attracted 1000 people and the following year brought displays of new farm machinery. Four years later the grounds were extended, part was leased to Hawke’s Bay Jockey Club for a racecourse, and a railway station was built at the entrance.

By 1912 the show, attracting 16,000-plus people, was outgrowing the town site and soon was the society developing new grounds at Tomoana. Gathering ideas from around the country, it built modern pavilions, provided for sideshows and a railway siding allowing stock to be delivered to the spot.

As Hawke’s Bay prospered so did the show – exhibits widened to include cars, homecrafts and schoolwork. On People’s Day, businesses closed and the road to the grounds teamed with vehicles as people dressed in new summer clothes arrived laden with picnic baskets.

Little did they know others would be doing the same almost 100 years later. Nor could they have imagined the huge variety of events their growing township would develop. Today the show, highland games and blossom festival are part of a year-round programme. Horses of the Year, Matariki, the Fiesta of Lights, Wine and Roses, Clive’s Waitangi Day carnival, Harvest Hawke’s Bay, big horse races, an Edible Fashion competition, food markets and flower festivals together they bring ever-increasing numbers of visitors to Hastings.

Photo captions –
Blossom Parade 1962
Blossom Parade 2004

Page 15

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Page 16

Welcome to the fruit bowl

Aptly named the fruitbowl of New Zealand, Hastings could equally claim standing as the country’s wharekai, (food house) especially today as [a] new producers and processors flourish alongside the traditional orchards, crops and pastoral land uses.

The city nestles in the heart of a district favoured by long sunshine, fertile soils and a benevolent climate. The earliest settlers were quick to realise the potential, establishing the farms and later the orchards and market gardens which together have been the foundation of Hastings’ prosperity for nearly 150 years.

These land-based enterprises in turn sparked processing industries, manufacturing and transport industries providing employment for the town’s growing population.

The orchards which today characterise the district, first appeared in the 1890s when enterprising landowner James Nelson Williams began commercial fruitgrowing in Frimley area. Soon he had established Hastings’ earliest canning and jam-making factory. The forerunner several similar plants to blossom with the fledgling fruit industry, it proved a hint of the much larger operation founded later by James Wattie, which was to become so much part of Hastings identity.

By 1910 Hastings was sending fruit and berries to other towns, it was home to the newly-formed Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association and orchardists were making early forays into exporting.

But the real glory years coincided with the maturing of Hastings towards city status, as fruit exports to Britain resumed post-Second World War and new technology and varieties appeared. By 1958, two-years-old as a city, Hastings produced 30 per cent of New Zealand’s apples and seven years later, with more than a third of the apples and 20 per cent of pears heading overseas, the area in orchard was still expanding.

So were market gardens and cropping farms. Typifying the progress Wattie’s began vegetable freezing, established more orchards and gardens of its own, introduced new fruit varieties, mobile harvesters and helicopter spraying. New products were added, and by the 1960’s, overcoming the the effects of the devastating 1962 fire with scarcely a blink, Wattie’s was absorbing other processing companies nationwide.

The growth was matched in the meat industry where the Tomoana works, founded in 1881, and Whakatu (1912), modernised and became Hastings’ largest employers. Other smaller operations appeared, Dawn Meat, Pacific Freezing and Richmond among them. Although some like Whakatu and Tomoana, folded in the tough 1980s and ‘90s, they left a legacy of leaders, workers and technological experience that make the reformed industry still one of Hastings’ most important.

Less fortunate, the dairy farms and factories that served Hastings for 100 years, declined with widespread change in the industry, and Hastings Milk Treatment Station, the last survivor, closed in 1996.

Meanwhile, another identity Hastings Bacon Factory (now Holly), concentrated on quality, niche market products, providing a foretaste of the area’s modern food industry where artisan-like operations such as Limburg Brewery are establishing new standards of excellence.

Re-fashioned to meet changing global markets, the traditional industries remain important. Hastings is still the bay’s horticultural centre, with about 85 per cent of the regional 18,000 horticulture acres and most major fruit pack houses. It produces onions, squash and asparagus for export, and processing vegetables such as corn and tomatoes.

Sheep and beef farming dominate the foothills and although today joined by a growing forestry industry, still account for just over 71 per cent of Hastings’ agricultural land. The district boasts 3.9 million sheep, 21 per cent of the North Island flock, 17 per cent of the beef herd, and 23 per cent deer.

As global markets change traditional producers and processors are switching from bulk commodities to value-added, niche products. Organic production is becoming important and new crops are appearing, for example, Hastings accounts for 20 per cent of North Island olive plantations and producers like Village Press are making their mark exporting.

Photo captions –
Fruit packers 1900’s
Mr. Apple Fruit packers 2002

Page 17

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Or phone for an appointment with Mark, Phil, Megan or Tim
Ph: 876 3777
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Photo caption – Photo courtesy Hawke’s Bay Museum Dave Williams collection.

Page 18

Cultural life in Hastings

The emergence of Maori to play a key part in the political, economic, social and cultural life of Hastings, one of the dominant features of the district in recent years, is the modern face of a people already well established in Heretaunga when the first Europeans arrived little over 160 years ago.

Although the plains were largely unoccupied swamp and scrubland, Ngati Kahungunu had pa sites along strategic beaches and river mouths where there was good fishing, raupo and flax for clothing and building materials and pockets of rich soil for kumara gardens.

The plains were their territory and it was to paramount chiefs such as Te Hapuku and Karaitiana Takamoana that Europeans must look if they wanted a share. Although some Maori were keen sellers, the bargaining was not smooth. Maori required fair exchange for their valuable resource; differences arose among various chiefs, hapu and multiple landowners and government purchasing agents frequently disregarded the divided ownership structure.

However, preferring sale to the confiscation occurring in other parts of the country, a deal was struck and in 1870, Thomas Tanner and partners purchased the Heretaunga block. While they and successive settlers established farms and towns, Maori lived alongside and largely independently in settlements on the fringes, but there was active trade between the two groups and Maori provided vital labour for a growing settler economy.

Post Second World War, reflecting a nationwide trend, many moved into the city, where their labour continued to be essential to farms and factories. But, often divorced from whanau and culture, Maori fortunes, socially, economically, educationally and in health flagged.

By the 1990s that was changing. Strengthened by participation in Hawke’s Bay’s revitalised prosperity and awareness of the value of their own heritage, Maori began to assume active and wide-ranging roles in district life.

The formation of Te Taiwhenua O Heretaunga provided Heretaunga marae and hapu with collective representation within Ngati Kahungunu and as a political and economic force. Among its major achievements are those in health where it coordinates services ranging from primary care and dentistry through to mental health and health promotion.

Active in education, it oversees contracts covering areas from early childhood through to business courses, and its community development role involves it in issues of resource management and customary fisheries.

Other community and social needs have been met with establishment of Te Aranga O Heretaunga urban marae at Flaxmere.

On the cultural front, Takitimu Performing Arts School, opened mid-1980s as New Zealand’s first accredited specialist Maori performing arts institute, runs undergraduate and graduate courses. Its own USA-based professional performing company, Kahurangi New Zealand Maori Dance Theatre, tours regularly throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, attracting international acclaim.

More recently Te Wananga o Aotearoa established Toimairangi Maori Visual Arts Faculty. While studying for diplomas and degrees in contemporary Maori art, students also work participate in community initiatives such as carving restoration at marae.

The wider community has also been drawn into the celebration of Maori culture and art through the development of a big festival around Matariki, Maori new year, and one of New Zealand’s largest Waitangi Day carnivals, in Clive.

The establishment of kohanga reo, and bilingual and Maori immersion units at many schools ensures the future strength of te reo and in 2004 Te Kurakaupapa Maori O Ngati Kahungunu ki Heretaunga opened at Te Awa O Te Atua, Paki Paki, to provide tikanga-based education up to year 13.

Photo captions –
Waipatu Celebrations 1963
Waitangi Day Celebrations

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THE RUSH MUNRO’S
OCTOGENARIAN
VOL XVI. No 68 THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 14 1926
80 years of memories
Famous Rush Munro’s turns eighty and we would like you to share your stories. Throughout our 80 year history Famous Rush Munro’s Ice Cream has been a Hawke’s Bay icon. Many Hawke’s Bay residents and holidaymakers have fond memories of childhood visits to the Famous Rush Munro’s Ice Cream Gardens.
Rush Munro’s would love to capture your memories and photographs of our famous ice cream and your visits to our unique gardens.
Please post in your stories and photo’s by October 31 to:
Rush Munro’s
80 Years of Memories
PO Box 13093, Hastings
Or email to [email protected]
All photographs will be digitally copied and returned. Ice Cream prizes will be awarded and Hawke’s Bay Today has kindly offered to publish a selection of the stories and photographs.
Help us celebrate our 80th Anniversary by sharing your Rush Munro’s Memories.
Rush Munro’s
MADE IN NEW ZEALAND SINCE 1926
704w Heretaunga Street, Hastings
Ph 06 878 9634   [www].rushmunro.co.nz
100% NATURAL ICE CREAM
Photo caption – Frederick Charles Rush Munro and staff, 1931.

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