Newspaper Article 2006 – Bygone-era Hastings captured in photos

Bygone-era Hastings captured in photos

HINERANGI VAIMOSO

Memories of the Blossom Parades in Hastings 50 years ago can’t really get more vivid than Ian McCurrach’s.

While thousands of people packed into Heretaunga Street like a can of sardines for the best view of the famously decorated floats, Mr McCurrach was on rooftops looking for the best view.

Mr McCurrach was 23 when Hastings was proclaimed a city and thanks to becoming a professional photographer, Mr McCurrach can accurately describe what Hastings was like.

He’s been filing his mammoth collection of photographs since he inherited his first box brownie camera from his mum.

As the retired grandfather of five sat at his home in Waimarama, he recalled the day he left Hastings High School to enter the working world.

“Jobs were easy to find in those days. I wanted to do electrical work so I looked at the John Hill building, then I biked around to the Hector Jones building and stayed there because they had a nicer looking building with big glass walls.”

While his method of job selection may not have made him sound too dedicated, he stayed with the electrical company for 20 years.

Mr McCurrach was a hard worker and at the end of the day, he needed something to ease his troubles away – not a beer nor a girl, but a BSA and Matchless Twin G9 500cc motorcycle.

“You’re out in the breeze in the fresh air, we’d head away for trips on the weekends too,” he said.

Mr McCurrach remembered that Stanley’s Milkbar was the place to be back in the 50s, the boys on bikes would meet up at the front of the shop to catch up and have some fun before heading to the weekend dances.

That wasn’t all Mr McCurrach enjoyed though.

He still dreamt of being a photographer and managed to score an after-hours job with Bob Gardener, a professional photographer in Hastings in the 1950s.

“I used to do weddings and 21sts on the weekends and then I’d do the racing magazine photos for the Friday Flash weekly racing magazine,” he explained.

“I used to get all those photos with the horses crashing and falling on their noses.”

Some of Mr McCurrach favourite photographs were from the 1959 blossom parade.

Detailed photographs taken from the rooftops of Heretaunga Street showed every float that graced the streets that day as well as the thousands of people who turned out.

There was the Hawke’s Bay Farmers horse-drawn carriage float made out of crêpe paper blossoms, and the Pernel Orchards float that was made entirely of real blossoms.

By 1960, color photographs had come into play, much to the delight of Mr McCurrach, who set up his own dark room.

He had even made his own enlargers by then, one was made out of an old Tellus vacuum cleaner.

While he looks back with fond memories to the days of box brownie and other ancient cameras, Mr McCurrach now looks forward to heading off on a holiday to Australia with his new digital number.

Photos captions –

VIEW FROM THE TOP: Ian McCurrach climbed to the roof top for a shot of the thousands of people from as far as Wellington who turned out to see the Hastings city Blossom Parade in 1959.   PICTURE: IAN MCCURRACH

RELICS: Ian McCurrach still has his old cameras from as early as 1950, his homemade enlargers and hundreds of photographs from the old Hastings Blossom Parades. HBTODAY PICTURE: HINERANGI VAIMOSO