Brian Duggan : Hawke's Bay NZ : 1950s

The State House suburbs

In the early 1950s, Marewa was a new suburb in Napier, built by government to a nationwide plan for solving a housing shortage and homelessness in New Zealand. This massive shortage of housing was a byproduct of World War II which had left us, like many countries, short of all basic essentials to life at a time when the post-war 'baby boom' was at its crescendo.

Typical New Zealand Goverment State house. These ones are in Lower Hutt. [Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image. Reference number: MNZ-2154-1/2-F]

The government housing estate at Marewa developed 'enclaves' based on nationalities and religious factions in a local version of the well-known-at-the-time New York city gangs (remember West Side Story?) and enclaves like the Latin Quarter, Little Italy, Chinatown, etc. Marewa, too, housed many large families. I remember Irish, Italian, English, German, Jews, Dutch, Scots, etc.

These families had apparently arrived mostly as refugees from Hitler's war in Europe and often had heroic stories of survival when relating how they came to be in New Zealand. They were all clannish but no gangs evolved as life was peaceful.

But there was a strong pride in always remembering one's origins. Others like my family were New Zealanders who found themselves in dire situations after the Great Depression of the 1930s and the war that followed. The experience took a heavy toll on these families who had to restart, often with few or nil resources, to begin a new life.

Teen Years

The best years in Marewa for me were my early teens from about 14 to 17 years. It should be remembered that teenagers were then a 'new' species only recently identified as different from the rest of the human race. Psychology, too, was becoming widely accepted as a new science at the time and teenager analysis was released into the public domain as if it were a formula on how to make your own atomic bomb.

Teenagers were discussed and argued about by all professionals, authorities, governments and eventually the conclusions were given to parents who tried to understand them.

When the baby boomers had become teenagers, a new market segment was discovered. There were movies about teenagers and songs about teenagers and clothing for teens and 13-year-old Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers sang smash hits like I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent. [Feeling nostalgic for some Frankie? ]

Teens were reputed to be very 'moody', they were 'mixed-up', teens were 'confused', 'not understood' and might take radical views contrary to their parents' tradition.

As for us who were the subject of all the attention, we concurred with the analysis. We had our own world view and it would not sit comfortably with the older generation's vision. We were unimpressed as to Greek or Polish or whatever was one's origin, or even one's religious persuasion. We teens all agreed the 'old ways' of our parents were not traditions we would practice or something we would be imitating. Anyway, they were too controlling and old-fashioned. So many of us stopped doing traditional dancing and learned to rock'n'roll instead.

Our parents shook their heads in disbelief and warned us we were on a pathway to hell.

The Census

In these same years, a '1984' Orwellian big-brother instrument of government was introduced which shook the older generation to their foundations. This new scare was the household survey. My parents found government now wanted to know all sorts of facts previously our family's secret information and our pride.

Such personal private particulars as how many children were there? What is your level of income? Do you own a motor vehicle? What religion are you? And most embarrassing of all, the survey talked about the 'normal' New Zealand household.

Normal? We were shaken by this intrusion into our world and firmly believed government had no business asking such private, personal, even secret information. And who can say what is normal? We were as normal as anybody else and we didn't need to know what non-Irish families' values were anyhow. This line of questioning was quite a big concern. The underlying fear being that the survey might decide we were, after all, not normal. That would be too embarrassing for words.

My family decided psychology was rubbish and surveys proved nothing. This then was our solution to the dilemma of being or not being, a normal average New Zealand family.

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