Mr Gundry QSM is away travelling the world, so his old mate from the pub is back this month.

How good were the Olympics and congratulations to everyone who represented New Zealand so superbly and in particular our medal winners. Eleventh nation for medals and arguably the best country for medals by population. And, RayGun – surely Australia’s greatest ever contribution to Olympic sport?
As a gentleman of a certain age, I grew up in Devonport in the 1960s with the family home being reasonably close to Cheltenham beach. I attended Vauxhall School, primer 1 to standard 6, but after school our lives revolved around the Bath Street Reserve; it was our sporting arena and gathering place.
In winter, it would be soccer, rugby, epic full-contact bullrush contests, all activities in any weather and we’d play until the street lights came on.
In summer, it was cricket, softball, swimming, canoes, fishing and learning to sail. Maybe it’s my increasingly unreliable memory but I’m sure the weather was better, with long, hot and dry summers and the occasional big easterly gale to liven things up.
Looking back, it was an idyllic time and place to grow up, and yes we did have the freedom to roam widely that simply isn’t possible today. But there were boundaries and consequences, because if you did get up to mischief it was almost certain your mother would know about it long before you got home and you’d be greeted with “Mrs Williams phoned me, and just wait until I tell your father”.
New Zealand had one of the highest living standards in the world, we had a world class education system that concentrated on teaching the 3 Rs properly, an excellent health system, social welfare from “cradle to grave” and State Advances that helped people buy their first home.
Most of our butter and nearly every lamb we produced was sent off to Blighty and there were jobs aplenty. The then Prime Minister Sir Keith Holyoake once joked there were so few unemployed that he knew them all by name. That all changed in 1973 when Britain joined the EEC and the apron strings were cut. I tend to believe that apart from brief periods of prosperity, New Zealand has battled economically since.
Devonport was not a wealthy suburb and many of my friends’ families didn’t own a car or a tv; clothes were generally handed down from older siblings. By today’s standards there were few luxuries and I don’t recall any of my mates going to the GC or Fiji for their school holidays. I read in a recent Channel magazine about a school trip to Hawaii. I can only recall two school trips, one to the newly opened sewerage plant in Albany and a trip to a dairy farm in Dairy Flat.  Hawaii didn’t even come close.
I’m sure staple food items were comparatively cheaper and having grown up in the Depression era, our mothers certainly knew how to make those essential food items go a long way and nothing was ever wasted. People did get by and there was resilience and self-sufficiency which appears to have diminished over the passing years.
We attended school every day and there had to be a particularly good reason not to. Our mothers made our lunches, and for a special treat on Fridays you could order fish and chips or a pie and a doughnut/cream bun for your school lunch. Imagine that today, the food police and perpetually outraged would be apoplectic at the mere thought.
They were simpler and less sophisticated times. New Zealand was a more egalitarian society. I don’t recall seeing obvious wealth nor do I recall seeing poverty either, although I’m sure it existed. I suspect most of our families had just enough to get by with a no frills, meat and three veg type existence. There were plenty of jobs but also a strong work ethic and it was important to have a job, no matter how humble, to support your family and do your best to provide for them. Families were valued as a unit, without too much state interference, and I think we were better off for that.
Rogernomics finished many of those “make work” jobs and I do understand why that needed to happen, but those jobs gave people a reason to get up each morning and a sense of pride and purpose, which leads us to today where we can have several generations of a family and nobody has ever been troubled by employment.
New Zealand was comparatively wealthy, ambitious and we had some forward-thinking leadership. Just consider a few of the developments that we depend upon today that were built during the 1960s: Benmore hydro scheme, Auckland Airport, expanding the Southern Motorway, Tongariro hydro scheme, waste treatment plant at Mangere, Kapuni gas field developed, harbour bridge 'Nippon" clip-ons, and the now shamefully vandalised Marsden Point Refinery.
As a country we currently face a multitude of issues, and we need a clearly articulated vision for our future, with a general consensus as to where we’re going and how we intend to get there. Sadly it’s hard to see how that will happen with such entrenched social and political division.
I recently walked our small hound around the rocks from Narrow Neck to Cheltenham on a brilliantly fine, crisp and clear winter’s morning. The Waitematā sparkled, Rangitoto looked green and magnificent and it occurred to me that despite all our problems, maybe this isn’t such a bad place after all, and who knows, perhaps New Zealand’s best years really are ahead of us. Let’s all hope so.