Vintage Photography Archive. New Zealand-1950-60s.

[hairnet]

love it

funnily enuff in the other window im looking at beemers and suzukis for sale west of invercargill on trade me

love the pic where she looks away down the hill

[Rab]

Listen mate..whilst your reading the newspaper in the shed..etc...the Worldwide Brotherhood of Young Commonwealth obedient badge sewers and stick rubbers exhibiting their spiritual welfare...and a young girl with a pram not noticing that wicked Ford Anglia as shes too busy saving the life of her doll.

[Rab]

Massey Ferguson powered space rocket..we have the technology...Royal New Zealand airforce exhibits their latest prototype jet fighter..the local Vet finally discovers the SKA scene but forgot his pork pie hat..and a bit of animal exploitation making that red setter pull that truck.

[somewhatfoolish]

This is Christchurch cathedral facing southeast-ish; the big bank tower is gone, although it's not clear if the earthquake nobbled it or just the march of the bulldozers.

.

A similar angle from 1976(reddit)

[Asimo]

These are wonderful, thanks ever so much.

How do you scan slides, with some sort of adapter on a camera? However it's done, the results are really good.

 

[Rab]

8 minutes ago, Asimo said:

These are wonderful, thanks ever so much.

How do you scan slides, with some sort of adapter on a camera? However it's done, the results are really good.

 

Naw its was some proper neg scanner by Canon that at the time costa fortune in NZ..it was like $1200...it had a slide adaptor...

[STUNO]

Rab me lad,   The Hillman on the ferry crane is a Vauxhall, And the Japanese ladies mountain climbers are driving a Toyopet registered as a light truck hence the L on the plate.

The photo with the Holden in front of a stone plaque thing is taken on the then newly opened Haast pass road.

Photos of my photos taken about the same time.

 

 

 

[hairnet]

2 hours ago, Rab said:

Listen mate..whilst your reading the newspaper in the shed..etc...the Worldwide Brotherhood of Young Commonwealth obedient badge sewers and stick rubbers exhibiting their spiritual welfare...and a young girl with a pram not noticing that wicked Ford Anglia as shes too busy saving the life of her doll.

 

 

whats
@320touring doing there @320touring

[hairnet]

52 minutes ago, STUNO said:

 

 

 

 

theres something very similar that marks a road border between laois and offaly in ireland @Largactil might know about that

[TooManyPeopleMovers]

7 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

This is Christchurch cathedral facing southeast-ish; the big bank tower is gone, although it's not clear if the earthquake nobbled it or just the march of the bulldozers.

.

A similar angle from 1976(reddit)

I was just there in early March a few weeks ago.

BNZ House was demolished as a result of the earthquakes sadly. Now occupied by a modern glass box that was freshly opened this year as offices for Spark, a telecommunications company. 

How different that scene looks now..I have other photos from around the Square, but not from that angle. It will be good to see the Cathedral rebuilt at some stage!

[Rab]

Some bloody big planes

[STUNO]

On ‎4‎/‎1‎/‎2020 at 6:34 AM, Rab said:

South to North island holiday.Middle shot is the Hillman Minx being lowered onto the ferry going to Wellington. No ramps in those days.

Elfin bay lake Wakatipu Queenstown. There used to be a house at the top of the hill

 

[strangeangel]

Just found this thread! Fantastic stuff; please keep 'em coming Rab ?

 

[somewhatfoolish]

8 hours ago, Rab said:

Some bloody big planes

The first pic is of Fokker F27 Friendships of NZ national airways corp, the other two are of Bristol Britannias.

[somewhatfoolish]

On 3/31/2020 at 6:54 PM, Rab said:

Picton to Wellington ferry...actually..the return ticket on that!

The ferry in the first pic is the GMV Aramoana, which probably means the one the photographer is on is the GMV Aranui. The catering seems to have rivaled the nadir of British Rail sandwiches;

Quote

The cafeteria stayed closed for the early part of the voyage and when the grubby doors finally opened, the party staggered to the counter to be greeted by an array of awful pies stolen from the tomb of long dead Pharoahs, yellow, curly bits of parchment spread with ptomaine paste and, a cardboard sausage roll surmounted by a fly which seemed the freshest thing on display.

 

[Rab]

Plane distraction.

[somewhatfoolish]

ZK-BKD. Perhaps @STUNO can identify the busshite?

[NorfolkNWeigh]

These are amazing and it’s interesting that apart from one VW van and a Chevrolet , I didn’t notice anything other than British cars in the 50’s shots.

Which all makes me sound very churlish in pointing out that that “ Hillman Minx” is actually a Vauxhall Velox, or possibly Wyvern but the chrome bumpers and overrides point to the posher version.  This could explain his move to Holdens too, maybe the same dealer sold both.

 

[barrett]

2 hours ago, NorfolkNWeigh said:

These are amazing and it’s interesting that apart from one VW van and a Chevrolet , I didn’t notice anything other than British cars in the 50’s shots.

 

There are several Fords (including a Shoebox and a couple of prewar V8s), some American GM products, a late 50s finny Chrysler, a Renault Fregate and several prewar American things I can't ID on the first page. How's that for churlish?

But yes, overwhelmingly Brit stuff, even vastly outnumbering Holdens. Absolutely love the pair of Singer SM1500s (near-mythical shit car) and the Armstrong 234/236 in the first post. I wonder if Down Under is the place to find one of those A-Ss? They are virtually extinct in this country (ditto SM1500s)

[martc]

16 hours ago, Rab said:

Some bloody big planes

 

I didn't know that Eddie Izzard was a 'plane spotter.

[Rab]

3 hours ago, martc said:

I didn't know that Eddie Izzard was a 'plane spotter.

Naw it was when he was politically campaigning for New Zealand to rejoin the New South Wales Company and thought the Dame Edna Everage spectacles would do the trick.

[STUNO]

13 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

ZK-BKD. Perhaps @STUNO can identify the busshite?

I'd recognise a Bedford anywhere. This was the body used on the vast majority of long distance buses in the mid-50's onwards.

The Mt Cook company later became a subsidiary of Air NZ as did NAC (National Air Corporation). This photo is taken at the MT cook airstrip

supplying guests for the Hermitage hotel

[Rab]

Gliders.

[STUNO]

12 hours ago, NorfolkNWeigh said:

These are amazing and it’s interesting that apart from one VW van and a Chevrolet , I didn’t notice anything other than British cars in the 50’s shots.

Which all makes me sound very churlish in pointing out that that “ Hillman Minx” is actually a Vauxhall Velox, or possibly Wyvern but the chrome bumpers and overrides point to the posher version.  This could explain his move to Holdens too, maybe the same dealer sold both.

 

The NZ car market was very American from early on, mostly because their cars were much better on very poor roads. By the 50's the Mother Country was supplying most cars, In the 60's  the Japanese entered the market with cars that started on cold wet mornings and had heaters and radios.

TO buy a Vauxhall you went to your local G.M. dealer who sold Vauxhall, Chevrolet and later Holden. My family sold Hillman, Humber and Chrysler cars.

 

[somewhatfoolish]

On 4/2/2020 at 10:24 PM, Rab said:

Gliders.

The biplane is a DH Tiger Moth, ZK-AZY was wrecked in 1967; seems a bit weedy to me for tugging gliders, perhaps they were launching from a winch or towing with a car to get up? The glider is a Schleicher Ka-4, ZK-GBO was bought by Southland Gliding Club in 1965 and flown from their Five Rivers airfield.

Chod content; the pale blue estate looks like a Rootes, whether a Singer, Sunbeam, Hillman or Humber I don't know as the antipodes had weird badge-engineering going on.

[carlo]

On 3/31/2020 at 10:15 PM, Asimo said:

These are wonderful, thanks ever so much.

How do you scan slides, with some sort of adapter on a camera? However it's done, the results are really good.

 

I use a Canon Canoscan 9000F flatbed scanner and get brilliant results, they weren't that dear either.

[St.Jude]

Just wondering, back to your original post, have you still got the slides that didn't get scanned? As it'd be a shame if they were discarded without being comitted to digital.

I know some guys "scan" their negatives using a DSLR camera, so you take a photo of the negative essentially. With slide film it should be an easier task? You just need a light source, a diffuser (like tracing paper for example) and take the photo of the slide.

These are fantastic though. Film photography can't be beaten. 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

On 3/31/2020 at 8:33 PM, Rab said:

Why go all the way to the Antarctic when u can simulate it on the back of a truck.......

 

That is a fantastic record - unmistakably 1950s. I can see the occasional glimpse of "tin lantern" traffic lights in the background of a couple of slides, and what appears to be Christchurch Cathedral - subsequently partially destroyed by the last earthquake.

 

[Rab]

More looking at planes..but no boarding passes.

[somewhatfoolish]

Douglas C54 Skymaster; 56528 participated in the Berlin airlift and later in Operation Deep Freeze for the International Geophysical Year 1957-58, which is probably why it was photographed in southern NZ.

 

Pohowhera is obvs a DC3; NAC acquired ZK-AYZ in 1951, renamed Hastings in 1963. It crashed in the Kaimai mountains later that year in what was at that point NZ's worst civil air disaster.