Christchurch Still “Quiet And Dignified” After Fifty Years

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28133, 23 November 1956, Page 12

Christchurch Still “Quiet And Dignified” After Fifty Years

Interesting impressions of Christchurch “then and now” were given yesterday by Mr Harry Mason, of Sydney, who is visiting the city again after a visit 50 years ago. Mr Mason first arrived in Christchurch on a year’s visit in May, 1902, at the age of 14.

Coming then from the “rough, hustling and bustling mining and shipping centre of Newcastle." he found Christchurch much more dignified and sedate in atmosphere, in keeping with its'status as an administrative and educational centre. He began work as “oflpce and message boy” at J. Ballan-

tyne and Company, Ltd., for 5s a

Christchurch was then in the era of the horse, said Mr Mason. There were horse trams, horse delivery vans, and horse-drawn fire engines. In that year. 1902. the first motor-car arrived in Christchurch—owned by a prominent C! V.£?iP - cause d a minor sensation. ‘That was the year we first heard the word •appendicitis’,” said Mr Mason, “when a malady by that novel name postponed the coronation of Edward VII. The year also brought the end of the- Boer War, and there was much speculation about the fate of the Boer leaders.

“My most vivid memory of this burning public question was a huge sign in a Christchurch shop window—‘Don’t Botha about De Wet—buy our mackintoshes’.”

Diversions of the day, according to Mr Mason, were tramps along the clay track over the bare, tussockcovered Cashmere Hills to Governor's Ea.v\ or boating picnics on the Avon to Dallington or Burwood. After his year’s visit, Mr Mason left Christchurch in May, 1903, in the week digging started in Christchurch streets for laying the electric tram rails—and now I see they’ve taken them all up again,” he said. Fifty years later, in four hours and a half from Sydney, I have arrived 1" Christchurch again,” said Mr Mason. Cathedral square and the central business area have not greatly changed Of course, there are the bright red buses, the coloured traffic lights, and thousands more bicycles.”

On a round trip through Cashmere. Sumner, and New Brighton. Mr Mason was amazed at the neat and compact development, with snug houses and gardens bright with the mauve-pink ice plant, where he remembered bare, open hillsides or windswept sand cunts and beaches.

But Christchurch, with its neo-Gothic stone cathedral and buildings, its green parks and squares, and its tree-lined river banks and avenues, still retained for Mr Mason its atmosphere of quiet and leisurely dignity.