Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Memories of the news

izogi

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 07:57:05 +1300

1981 Springbok tour for me, but I was under 3 at the time so I could just be remembering coverage from a few years later. I definitely recall the Rainbow Warrior bombing and Challenger exploding. I think I remember stuff around the 1984 election and Muldoon stepping down.

Will they…

Stupid

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 03:29:09 +1300

JFK assassination. I was 6, my school buddies & I felt it quite intensely through the way our parents reacted, but we didn’t understand.

Russell Brown

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 18:10:19 +1300

Another early TV memory is being transfixed by Alister Riddell’s Space Waltz on whatever the talent show was at the time.

Oh, hell yes. 'Out on the Street' was the first record I ever bought with my own money.

Brent Jackson

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 15:34:30 +1300

I guess I have an earlier memory of being part of a news event, namely standing on the side of Grafton Road as the Queen was driven by in her Rolls Royce. I guess that was March 1970, aged 5.

nzlemming

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 13:19:51 +1300

Wahine, I think, followed by the moon landing, then Kirk taking office according to my recollections. I remember being very sad when Big Norm died. Another early TV memory is being transfixed by Alister Riddell's Space Waltz on whatever the talent show was at the time. I remember my brother…

Joe Wylie

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 10:05:37 +1300

Being taken on a past my bedtime drive to see public buildings lit up for "The Coronation". This jaunty slab of pomposity on the radio – "Now you've done it, reached the summit, won it for the red white and blue": https://youtu.be/hV9BOAMY9bc

Rochelle Wilson

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 18:38:25 +1300

How young you all are!.My first memory that made sense was the light, happy feeling around at home and in the neighbourhood when WW 2 ended and there was a celebration party at the local school and I ate bread and dripping for the first time and thought it delicious…

poffa

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 14:32:45 +1300

The escape and hunt for George Wilder. The moon landing was Intermediate. The disappointment as teachers returned early from listening to the first round knock out of a Cassius Clay fight.

Julian Melville

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 14:15:06 +1300

It's interesting how the same events keep coming up for people of similar ages, I wonder if that reflects what the media were talking about at the time. For me the earliest story I remember hearing about was Dad coming home and saying "Big Norm" had died. The earliest one…

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 13:16:33 +1300

the little light traversing the sky
a sadder light of love...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH2EgYq_NCY

wasabicube

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 12:55:21 +1300

Nixon's resignation. We were driving from North Wales to Yorkshire to stay with my Grandpa during the summer holidays. I can visualise us rounding a roundabout as the news came on the car radio.

Alfie

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:08:59 +1300

Sputnik. My Dad took me outside to look at it, then JFK's assassination.

Snap, Euan. I can clearly remember my Dad pointing to the little light traversing the sky and telling me that there was a dog inside the capsule. Then the shock my Mum and grandmother exhibited the day…

Hilary Stace

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:53:24 +1300

I remember the opening of Wellington airport. My father drove us to one of the roads overlooking it and we watched the plane displays. I was a pre-schooler but it must have made a big impression on me. (I also remember seeing the flying boats in Evans Bay which preceded…

Euan Mason

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:13:11 +1300

Sputnik. My Dad took me outside to look at it, then JFK's assassination.

Russell Brown

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 08:32:19 +1300

At Kowhai Intermediate School they played Nixon’s resignation over the loud speaker system….. then turned it off half way through because they thought no-one was interested. I ran straight up to the school office to listen to the rest of it!

Nerd!

But yes, they played it over the intercom…

Paul Brown

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 00:34:38 +1300

JFK's assassination was the first news story rhat had a big impression on me. I was at high school. Since then the strongest memories have been tied to the places where I heard the news. Camping at a Coromandel Beach during the Wahine storm. Listening on sw RNZ to the…

John Farrell

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 21:47:51 +1300

I have a vague memory of news about the Hungarian revolution, and a picture of a tank, in 1954. I was 4.

Kumara Republic

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 21:32:07 +1300

PS. Towards the end of the 1980s I watched the Berlin Wall coming down, the Tianamen Square protests, and David Lange resigning as PM. I just as vividly remember the benefit cuts just a couple of years later. A cat showed up at our doorstep that time – which my…

Kumara Republic

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 21:11:18 +1300

As a kid, it was the Rainbow Warrior bombing and the subsequent investigations, the ANZUS split, and the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. The first sports story I remember well was when Ben Johnson made doping infamous at the Seoul Olympics.

The first current affairs school assignment I recall having to…

Thrash Cardiom

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 19:51:39 +1300

Sometime in the 60s I recall standing in a shop in Waikanae and looking at a photo series of some soldiers who had been caught by the enemy. It was, I think, around three photos and it showed them pleading for their lives and then being bayoneted.

It may have…

Jason Kemp

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 18:54:33 +1300

As a child of the 60’s the radio was the main medium for most of that decade. I do recall the Peter Snell Gold Medal and the Wahine disaster. Later on the Apollo landing on the moon on 10 July 1969 was it? (Looked it up was 20th of July…

jeff constable

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 18:41:31 +1300

The executions on the beach in Liberia following the April 1980 coup.

I'm sure there were other events I had paid attention to before that but the visual memory of that has stuck with me. Had to look it up just now to find out the details – the date…

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 18:34:53 +1300

September 1972: I’m in a Youth Hostel at Te Anau and hearing on a portable transistor radio that Israeli athletes had been shot and more taken hostage in Munich at the Olympics – then the batteries died and there were no shops open to get new ones!
... I think…

LeighKennaway

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 18:21:19 +1300

At Kowhai Intermediate School they played Nixon's resignation over the loud speaker system..... then turned it off half way through because they thought no-one was interested. I ran straight up to the school office to listen to the rest of it!

stephen walker

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 18:10:46 +1300

NZ winning the rowing eight gold medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics
The election of the Norm Kirk government and the song "Big Norm"
The first oil crisis / 1973 Arab-Israeli war
Nixon's resignation
Norm Kirk's death
End of the Vietnam war

Hugh Wilson

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 16:47:16 +1300

For me its the 1984 Olympics due to school projects and the USSR boycott (I would have been 8), and the Rainbow Warrior bombing the following year which – given we lived in St George's Bay road- was literally at the bottom of the street

Bruce Thorpe

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 16:14:30 +1300

The headmaster telling the school that Roosevelt had died and making more of it than my family had over breakfast.
Very clear memories of the NZHerald front page on VE Day had the royal family pic, first time page one was not solid classifieds.

theheadmasterT

Carol Stewart

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 16:02:07 +1300

My mother says that she remembers exactly where she was and what she was doing when she heard the news about JFK.

Trevor Nicholls

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:52:49 +1300

I was 5, living in Edinburgh, and JFK was shot. I remember reading the front page of the newspaper – my parents never bought the newspaper but they did that day.

Carol Stewart

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:35:04 +1300

The Wellington Museum down here has a terrific little visual exhibition with actual footage that is so poignant

Gaylene Preston's film renders our family to tears every single time. Even hearing the music (Albinoni's Adagio) has the same effect.

Northshoreguynz

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:30:14 +1300

Dad had just put money into The Sunday News. Kennedy's assassination broke on a Saturday night, so the paper had a real scoop on the Sunday morning. My first real international memory.

st ephen

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:13:12 +1300

It's fascinating how this exercise provides a demographic picture that wasn't apparent before.
Yep, because while there's not much difference between a 51 year-old and a 59 year-old now, there's a huge difference between a 1 year-old and a 9 year-old then. It's funny how time compresses and you catch…

James Littlewood*

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:10:45 +1300

Although, I also recall hearing the end of the American war in Vietnam announced on the radio. I'm sure it wasn't the only time a kid ever asked "what will be in the news, now?"

James Littlewood*

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:09:18 +1300

I've told this one before.

August, 1973. The lady who worked in the Remuera Primary office went home with a teacher, loaded her TV into the car and set it up on the school stage. It was a handsome thing: black, with swirly gold trim.

All 600 of us sat…

mpledger

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:02:22 +1300

The earliest – Norman Kirk's funeral but not from the news but because we could see his entourage going to airport.

1976: John Walker winning gold in Montreal and watching it with my mother as we both jumped up and down with excitement. Mum had been a teacher and had…

Ben McNicoll

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:50:28 +1300

Earliest specific memory of a news story: 1982 Israel-Lebanon war, through pictures of tanks firing, on the 6 o'clock news at Grandpa's.

Tom Semmens

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:49:49 +1300

The six day war. We’d only just got a TV (so my parents told me) so the impact of Israeli artillery firing I saw must have been mightily awesome for a three year old.

After that, I don’t recall much of the Wahine storm. The moon landing was memorable because…

Dinah Dunavan

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:43:49 +1300

The Wahine storm, except in our town it was a day (or so) earlier and was the day the Primary school roof came off.

mark taslov

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:40:55 +1300

Springbok tour

Bart Janssen

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:34:49 +1300

It isn't the oldest memory of mine, but I vividly recall my confusion as I turned on the TV sleepily in the morning to watch the news and thinking for some reason we had left the TV on to some channel that was playing a stupid disaster movie about some…

Bart Janssen

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:25:26 +1300

Memory is a tricky thing, by now every one of my memories from then is a memory of a memory of a memory ...

The one I can picture and still feels real is the moon landing. We hadn't had the TV long and I "remember" sitting right up close…

Josie McNaught

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:17:07 +1300

Yes the Wahine! 3 years old and no playcentre that day for me – I had just started and was so disappointed. The noise of the wind up in Karori was incredible. I thought a plane had landed on our lawn. The Wellington Museum down here has a terrific little…

Geoff Lealand

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:15:38 +1300

Being woken by my mother, to be told that JFK had been assassinated.
In respect of upcoming events, I think I will need to hide away, far from the reach of any media, when the Queen dies.

sandra

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:47:34 +1300

Just asked my son, who is 21 ....

September 11, 2001. As a 5-year-old he would have seen the images on TV when his parents were watching in the morning.

Andy Fyfe

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:47:19 +1300

The death of Norman Kirk and Nixon's impeachment in the same month defined most of my politics.

Joe Boden

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:39:41 +1300

Watergate. I'm 50 (almost 51) and the story broke in late 1972.

sandra

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:37:58 +1300

1964: Peter Snell winning gold at the Tokyo Olympics (we can’t have had a TV for very long).

1968: Wahine storm and disaster. We didn’t go to school that day because of the storm and I remember my father tied down the boatshed roof (actually a lean-to on the side…

Jean Hughes

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:33:29 +1300

as I posted – on your twitter – am typing this with eyes wide open and slightly gulping –

Opo the dolphin summer – we went up North – and then his death – I was devastated – still so upset when I see references to it

the feeling never…

Brent Jackson

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:29:07 +1300

The first TV news story I can definitely remember is the Munich Olympics massacre, because my family rented a TV from the August School Holidays until Christmas, and I watched the Olympic Games coverage every day when I got home from school.

Andre

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:08:43 +1300

One of my first news memories was of my dad's cousin, NZ's Ron Holland designing the yacht Eygthene, and winning the 1973 Quarter Ton Cup. Since this was obviously a much-discussed win in our household, I can remember this from when I was 3 or 4 years-old. Wings releasing Band…

Francisco Blaha

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:49:15 +1300

man on the moon. I was 5! ( will ask my son that is 15 and let you know)

Heather Gaye

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:48:46 +1300

I was vaguely aware of Muldoon's Think Big projects; specifically Marsden Point.

Russell Brown

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:22:50 +1300

Responses to my original tweet are still rockin' on.

It's fascinating how this exercise provides a demographic picture that wasn't apparent before.

Mark Easterbrook

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:15:03 +1300

The launch of the space shuttle Columbia, in April 1981. I was 6. I was so excited I made my own version from Lego to take to school.

Emma Hart

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:54:57 +1300

As far as remembering something as a news story goes, it was Erebus. But I vividly remember the day Elvis died, because the woman from downstairs came up to see Mum in absolute floods of tears and I was very confused.

Matt Godfrey

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:52:08 +1300

On April 26th, 1986 as a 9-year-old, I had the day off school due to being sick or something. The midday news was all about Chernobyl.

Paul Campbell

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:38:10 +1300

In my case it might have been the arrival of TV, and the extreme unfairness that we didn’t have one when it started (not realising at 5 that we lived in a very working class suburb, and our parents probably couldn’t afford one …. but we owned our own house…

Bruce Ward

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:37:59 +1300

The death of King George VI in 1952. I was 7 and remember the large black newspaper front pages.

Carol Stewart

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:37:12 +1300

I didn't really register the Wahine sinking, partly because I was very young and perhaps also because we didn't have a TV at home. NZHistory says: The Wahine’s demise also marked a coming of age for television news broadcasting in New Zealand as images of the disaster were beamed into…

Russell Brown

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:33:25 +1300

Actually, I've realised that the Wahine storm is actually my first news memory, having been a couple of months before Robert Kennedy was shot.

I remember being kept home from school and gazing out the window at the weather, and a general sense of dread more than the sinking of…

Rob Stowell

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:30:56 +1300

Wahine sinking feels like the first. But that's mixed up with the storm itself, which was eventful enough. For a young lad in an environment of trees and boats, it was intensely dramatic: not just no power or school for days – all the moored boats in Diamond Harbour bar…

Carol Stewart

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:27:48 +1300

Carless days. Imagine trying to enforce such a measure now.

Thomas Lumley

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:18:15 +1300

The Dismissal.

warren mac

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:16:33 +1300

Going back (was born in 82)
GST coming in
Sharemarket crash – seem to have ingrained memories of the word redundancy without a clue what it meant at the time at the time
Oliver North's face – so – Iran Contra
Tienanmen Square – the iconic man vs tank
87…

Gaz Tayler

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:14:20 +1300

Aside from being confused between MASH and the Vietnam War coverage on the news (helicopters, soldiers in Asia).

Specific events, not in order:
Death of Elvis – came home to my Mum in tears
Erebus – announced over the school intercom
Strikes in Britain
Oil Crisis – fighting in Israel/Egypt,…

Raymond A Francis

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:57:48 +1300

Tangiwai disaster, I remember discussing it with my father, arguing actually but not what we disagreed on though.
I would have been 4 at the time.

Carol Stewart

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:56:37 +1300

The moon landing, as a small child who'd just started school. Teacher had the radio (or was it the TV?) on in the classroom.
And then – Mt Erebus, where the news filtered in to Whitianga Marae where I was on a school camp.

Russell Brown

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:37:23 +1300

Ha, that was quick! From the first five minutes on Twitter:

"The death of Elvis."

"The Wahine sinking."

"Norman Kirk died."

"Mt Erebus."

"Helicopters being thrown from ships after the fall of Saigon."

"End of the Vietnam War."

"Challenger."

"John Lennon's death."

"Tiananmen, then the coup against Gorbachev."

"Wellington's last…

Public Address

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:37:23 +1300

Discussion from blog post.