Nostalgia - the 1970's

[Dave Homewood]

We can probably have one of these threads for each decade going back, but for this one, what do you miss most about the 1970's?

I mean things that were around and popular then, but nowadays are pretty much forgotten. It could be almost anything.

I'd like to kick off with a few.

Pasito - it was a passionfruit flavoured soft drink when i was a kid, in a purple can with toucans on it.

Leeds Lemonade - it was great. Coke bought them out and changed the line to Srite which is nowhere near as good.

Nana Mouskouri - A diminutive and beautiful singer from Crete, Nana was one of the greatest recording artists of all time. I am not saying that out of personal favour, but out of the statistics. In her long career which seemed to peak in the 1970's, she recorded over 450 albums!! hat's over 1500 songs. She sang in 15 different languages, including Maori. She has sold over 400 million records worldwide. Her career spanned more than 50 years, and all done without the modern social media and celebrity culture of today. Beat that Bieber or Lady completely Gaga! And if you ask the young people of today about Nana, they don't have a clue who you're talking about. She was my Dad's favourite so I heard her albums a lot when i was a kid. A fe weeks ago I dug them out and for the first time in 30 years I heard them again, and was completely transfixed. I know why Dad loved her music so much. Does anyone here actually like her?

Prince Tui Teka: He was a brilliant singer and comedian.

What great things from those days do you wish were still around?

[alanw]

Dave

I do remember the Pasito, Leeds Lemonade,
Nana Mouskouri, still listen to some of her
music now and then.

The 70's what do I recall as my favourites.

During Summer holidays I would stay with my
Grandparents and on occasion they would buy
whole Flounder battered with chips from the
Fish and Chip store up the road from them.

Building a racing cart from old pram wheels
etc and hooning around with friends on that

School canteen would sell these strawberry tarts
with cream around the edge (you could get apple too)
so yummy.

Long Summer days spent exploring with my friends,
or spending it at the base pool.

Buying and building models was the best, especially
the New Zealand made ones (Lincoln toys from memory)
some of the Frog kits too.

Raleigh Bicycle (two speed), used to try and be like
Ivan Mauger on some of the back dirt roads of Hobby.

Flying NAC between Auckland and Christchurch, got these
cool drinking glasses shaped like goblets -with the orange
juice

The Ferry between Christchurch and Wellington -not
so great memories there - sea sick

Spent some of the 70's at Wigram and some in Auckland,
all great stuff and great memories. ;D ;D ;D

Regards

Alan

[Dave Homewood]

Some great 1970's BCNZ television shows included:

Spot On - rememebr this? A kids magazine show. I still remember seeing the film competition they had which i thought was amazing, and guess who won it? Apparently a young Peter Jackson did.

Ramember the Mad Dog Gang films? There was one called The Mad Dog Gang Meet [someone or other] and Ratsguts. Ratsguts was the dog, These films used to come on in the school holidays, I wish they'd release them on DVD.

Under the Mountain - the brilliant 1970's series (not the shitty recent film version). Luckily this is on DVD now and still stands up as a classic.

[fyl]

Gosh, where to start...

Ditto on the Leeds, and Nana (never forget those large glasses she wore..)

How about putting out the glass milkbottles by the letterbox?? (or chasing down the milkman a mile away because you missed him!!! )
The loaves of bread in the shop which only had a thin strip of white paper around them, so you could naw off the corners when mum wasn't looking!!

Going into same dairy with 10cents and coming out with a big bag of individually chosen lollies!!

Car-less days?? (think that one just creeps into the 70's)

The change to the metric system, and the nasty little triangular stickers you have to put onto the speedo in your car!!

Christmas holidays in a campground north of auckland (Sandspit) and it really was in the middle of nowhere...which would have to lead on to STUBBIES...and roman sandals..

Ahh...what memories...

[fyl]

Spot-On was great...remember writing to them and getting a bunch of stuff back from them...paper, pens, stickers etc

I remember Under The Mountain giving me sleeping issues!! But probably one of the best things TVNZ ever did..

Another great kids art show was a bbc one i think.... Vision On..
The older guy on there was just incredible...

[Dave Homewood]

The Metric system came in in 1967 didn't it? Same time as decimalisation i thought. One of the best moves NZ ever made in my opinion.

Carless days, Roman sandles and stubbies are all things that I think we'd rather forget about the 1970's, surely, rather than look back fondly.

You reminded me, around here we used to get Finlay's Sunday Bread. It was made by Finlays bakery of Frankton but unlike every other day where the bread was made the night before it got to the shops, this was made Sunday morning and when you bought it as 10.00am it was still hot in its red and blue chequered rapper. It was the best!!

[Dave Homewood]

Yes, Vision On was brilliant, as was Don't Ask Me with Magnunus Pike and David Bellamy. And NZ's own show Your's For The Asking with Peter Hawes was also a favourite of mine.

[furyfb11]

I did a trip to a CAF airshow during car less days. Ever tried explaining to an American sitting beside you what a carless day was.I doubt if he believes me yet.

[nuuumannn]

Ahhh...the 70s; listening to David Bowie on a Pye stereo.

Seeing my grandmother off to Fiji from Tauranga in an F-27 in NAC markings (then on to AKL to depart in a DC-8). We picked her up from the 'new' terminal at Mangere; green and brown carpet, smorgasbord restaurant and the Concorde Lounge...

"He's my man and he's lots of fun in his STUBBIES!"

My uncle's purple Holden Belmont with bench seats and a klaxon horn!

Rob Muldoon money box!!!

[The Red Baron]

I haven't had a swim in the sea since 1975.....

[baronbeeza]

The metric system followed The currency but it was spread over a long period.
I am guessing we changed to metric road measurements about 1975 or '76.
I can remember seing movies from the UK on how to do the conversions etc and was amazed that by the time I was working over there in 1981 they had actually done little. Same applies in 1999 when I thought fuel was 44P a gallon... ahhh not so, it was per litre then and we were paying about a Dollar in Aussie at the time.

The Brits on my motorbike forum still talk miles etc..... . The Yanks are the same..
means little to me these days,- I have been converted, brainwashed, indoctrinated and whatever else. .

[Dave Homewood]

When I was in Britain in the 1990's I saw roadsigns that had both miles and metres on them. Talk about confusing. ie something would be 400 m away, not 400 yards as you'd expect with miles.

The USA still uses full Imperial (though the US version, they have to adapt everything). They very nearly changed to Metric but I think it was President Carter who dropped the whole thing.

[jonesy]

Yeah for a kid growing up during that decade it was pretty cool. We didnt have a TV till the late 70's so missed out on a lot of that. But looking back they were carefree years, travelling from the Kapiti coast to Te kaha for Xmas hols in the back of the old mans Holden ute while he towed a caravan-couldnt do that these days! A huge adventure for us kids tho...
I guess it always depends on how old you were will impact on your memories of a particular decade...happy years for me anyway.

[mozziemad]

I can remember the tollbooths on the harbour bridge in auckland & the treat it was to hand
the coin over to raise the boom.. 4 kids in back of a EH station wagon... & we had an Air Force with 2 types of strike aircraft.. i used to have an uncle who worked at Ohakea who would get empty shell casings & running outside whenever one flew over.. coool.. easier times..

[mumbles]

Nov 4, 2011 10:56:57 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Some great 1970's BCNZ television shows included:

Spot On - rememebr this? A kids magazine show. I still remember seeing the film competition they had which i thought was amazing, and guess who won it? Apparently a young Peter Jackson did.

Under the Mountain - the brilliant 1970's series (not the shitty recent film version). Luckily this is on DVD now and still stands up as a classic.

My earliest memories are from late 1979, so I don't really qualify for this thread, but I can say that 'Under the Mountain' wasn't from the 70's. It first screened in 1981, and had a big impact on my perception of Auckland when we went there for our Christmas holidays that year

Spot On also ran into the mid 80's, so I remember the various incarnations of that quite well

[Dave Homewood]

My mistake on the wrong decade for 'Under the Mountain' - I was only ten then so things get a bit blurred. I guess the book it was based on was written and set in the 1970's.

Spot On began in 1974 and went a long time with several hosts, one was Danny Watson who's now a talkback radio host. Before him though there were three hosts together, one was Ian, there was another bloke and a girl. I don't recall their names.

IMDb purports it was on in 1987 with Jay Laga'aia and Phil Keoghan. I don't recall them being in it at all. I was 16 then and don't even recall it still being on TV then. Maybe it was only regional or something because I'm sure I would have watched it, even with those two presenting.

Another great show from the 1970's was Nice One Stu. And who remembers the Birdman competitions show where people tried to fly off the wharf?

[shorty]

The 1970s? lets see , that was the decade my three kids were born, at the start of it we got sent to Wigram to do a Skyhawk basic electronics course, what a load of crockW we were framies gor god's sake, why the hell did we have to be able to draw a cascade circuit from memory( and what the hell does one do?)
Also it was when I got shoulder tapped to go to New Guinea to collect P-40s, P-39s and Beauforts for Dave Tallichet.
So while you guys were eating ice cream in the back seat of the Holdens some of us were up to our nuts in crocodiles and snakes pulling rusty warbirds apart.

[Dave Homewood]

It's thanks to you Shorty that we can now eat Ice Creams at airshows and watch some of those warbirds in the air, such as P-40N Currawong that you recovered. Well done.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Nov 4, 2011 15:14:32 GMT 12 nuuumannn said:

Rob Muldoon money box!!!

I've still got one of those Piggy Muldoon money boxes. It is full of one & two cent coins and I use it as a paperweight. The only way to get the money out was to cut the thing open, so I never bothered with mine, which is why I've still got it and it is still full of coins.

1970 was my last year at high school. When I left school at the end of the year (and began an electrical apprenticeship), I had enough money saved up from school holiday jobs over the previous couple of years to buy a 1955 Ford V8 Customline. My Mother went mental when I turned up at home with that. At the same time, my mate bought a 1954 Customline (the last of the side-valve V8s). Petrol was only 33c per gallon and we'd go cruising in those gas-guzzling yank tanks all evening on Friday and Saturday nights (did that make us early-1970s boy-racers?).

In 1972, I attended a Led Zeppelin concert at Western Springs in Auckland and got to hear "Starway to Heaven" for the first time (a couple of months before the album it was on was released). In January 1973 I was at the Great Ngauruawahia Music Festival, which featured a new, unheard of Kiwi group called Split Enz who were onstage immediately before Black Sabbath and got pelted with beer cans and booed by the crowd of metal-heads who found them to be a wee bit weird. However, I was amazed to discover that one of the members of Split Enz was a former primary school classmate from Mahora School in Hastings, Phil Judd. His parents owned the dairy across the road from the school.

In late-1974 while employed as an electrician by the NSW Public Works Department, I got the job of wiring up the blowers for the huge new pipe organ that was under construction in the Sydney Opera House, and then, when I started the blowers up to test them, I got to play the first notes on the new organ before the organ-builder (a chap called Ron Sharp) got a chance to do it (which upset him no end). However, it was another four years after that before the instrument was completed (from memory, I think there were about 10,000 speaking pipes installed into the organ).

In 1976, I started the job which I am still doing. It was only meant to temporary for a couple of years while waiting for a vacancy as an electrician with the railways (I had been intending to undertake advanced trade certificate training with them), but the money was much better in loco than as a tradesman, so more than 35 years later, I am still doing the same job, although in a different location from where I started.

The 1970s (and a large part of the following 1980s) were a time of constant partying (hey, I was still young) and probably quite a bit of irresponsible behaviour at times, but that is all part of growing up I suppose.

[Peter Lewis]

The 1970s - ah yes, my motor racing period.

Lotus Super 7, MGB, Escort RS1600, Torana XU1.

Big Puke, Little Puke, Bay Park, Levin . . .

My feet twitch at the memories.