Newspaper Article 1988 – City Mayor says – Harry’s inspiration lives on

City mayor says

Harry’s inspiration lives on

With the death of Mr H.B. (Harry) Poppelwell, MBE, the city has lost a community identity whose name will remain in people’s minds for a long time as the founder of Fantasyland, and whose particular and outstanding contribution to Fantasyland, Greater Hastings, blossom parades and the Highland games, provides the inspiration for a renewed spirit of optimism, promotion and belief in the city.

During a visit with my family to the Teddy Bear’s picnic at Fantasyland, I took my first trip on the delightful paddle steamer (a tremendous project by Hastings Rotary, Rotaract and PEP workers), and whilst traversing the waterway into the holiday park, reflected on the outstanding facility and asset that Fantasyland is. Plans are in place for further Fantasyland developments and for greater promotion.

Although the heyday of the blossom parades and Highland Games has passed, a smaller-scale, two-day Highland Games will carry on courtesy of the Hawke’s Bay Piping and Dancing Association; and an exciting momentum from across-the-community is building for a totally new Spring Festival to launch in October, 1989.

Harry Poppelwell played a monumental part in showing Hastings just what could be done, and we need to continue in that vein.

The youngest of a family of six, Harry left school at 13 to learn the draper’s trade. He worked at Roach’s as parcel boy for 10 shillings a week which he took home to his mother who gave him one shilling to spend. He grew up in an atmosphere of music, dancing and entertainment and became a performing member of the Orphan’s Club and Amateur Operatic Society. He was chairman of the patriotic organisation’s entertainment committee.

After the Second World War was over and most returned men rehabilitated, people began to feel that Hastings was living rather smugly on its past reputation for progress and doing too little to push ahead with new projects. A small group of citizens who had been very active in raising funds for patriotic purposes, led by Harry Poppelwell, got together to consider what they should do about “the glorious inactivity” so evident in the town.

An organisation like the Napier Thirty Thousand Club was clearly needed to improve the town’s status. At a public meeting in 1950 of enthusiastic citizens presided over by Mr Poppelwell, Peter Gifford proposed it be formed and called Greater Hastings Inc.

The first Blossom Festival was held in 1950 on a Friday, then in 1951 the Blossom Festival grew in size and was held on a Saturday. Streets and shop windows were bedecked in paper blossom and 41 decorated floats were entered in the procession. The Blossom Festival survived until 1972.

A second, more lasting Greater Hastings venture was the Easter Highland Games. Many Scottish people had settled in the district and pipe band, dancing and sports days organised in bygone days by the Hawke’s Bay Caledonian Society were popular.

It was suggested to Harry Poppelwell that a Highland Games or gathering of the clans be organised and in Easter, 1951, Greater Hastings organised the first games in Nelson Park. Thereafter they became an annual event in Windsor Park sponsored by local firms, and attracted many participants who came year after year to compete.

A third Greater Hastings venture, Fantasyland, grew out of another Poppelwell proposal, though it did not develop quite the way he hoped.

In 1962 he and his wife visited the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, where the hanging garden caught his fancy, and also Disneyland where he was particularly impressed by “the atmosphere”.

In 1962 he led a deputation from Greater Hastings to the city council with a proposal to turn 20 acres in Windsor Park into a pleasure garden. However, at this time the city council did not agree.

Three years later, Mr Poppelwell, on behalf of Greater Hastings, produced a model of a five-acre, children’s playground for the town planning committee. He proposed that the council should undertake preliminary work, widening the stream and forming a boating lake and embankment on the west side, and Greater Hastings should raise finance and seek a subsidy from the Golden Kiwi lottery.

The city adopted the scheme in principal, a Hastings Development Trust, Inc. was formed to assist Greater Hastings with the project. During the next three years over $27,000 was raised by a Queen Carnival and another $8000 subsidy from the lottery.

JP Dwyer