Evelyn Webb, 96, from Albany, Auckland talks about events that happened in the year NZ's population hit two million. Photo / Dean Purcell
Evelyn Webb, 96, from Albany, Auckland talks about events that happened in the year NZ's population hit two million. Photo / Dean Purcell
New Zealand's population is increasing by one person every 5 minutes and 26 seconds, and is forecast to hit 5 million within the next few months. What will the nation look like when it happens, and what was life like in the years when each million milestone was reached? Welook at the different stages of our nation's growing population in this five-part series. Lincoln Tan talks to a Kiwi great-grandmother about the time the population hit 2 million in 1952.
Great-grandmother Evelyn Webb, 96, was listening to the radio in 1952 when the news came on that New Zealand had hit a population of 2 million.
She was then a 27-year-old mother living in Riverton, Southland, and thought to herself "Oh my, that sounds like a big number.
"We didn't picture things by the millions back then, and I remember thinking to myself, how will this country support that many people?"
The former post office worker said it was a different world back then, and life was tough.
She had just lost a child, and found refuge in listening to the radio because there was no television and access to newspapers and magazines was limited.
Webb now has four surviving children, nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
It was before the transistor radio was developed, so she listened to a bulky radio that used vacuum tubes.
The big news she remembers from the year was Kiwi sportswoman Yvette Williams becoming New Zealand's first female Olympic gold medallist.
Amateur radio operators monitoring shortwave broadcasts and making commentaries of the event allowed Webb and other listeners to hear Williams compete.
The athlete leapt 6.24m to set a new Olympic record, just 1cm shy of the world mark, to win gold in the womens' long jump.
How the New Zealand Herald reported on Yvette Willams' Olympic medal win in 1952. Photo / File
"We finally had our first female sports hero, and it was a proud moment indeed to hear God Save the Queen and God Defend New Zealand being played," Webb said.
"She was indeed our first real golden girl."
Sir Arthur Porritt, a NZ member of the International Olympic Committee and 1924 bronze medallist, presented Williams with her gold medal at the Helsinki Games.
Williams returned a national hero after a month-long holiday in Europe, and was feted at public receptions in Auckland, Dunedin and around the South Island.
The first television transmission was made that year when Canterbury University College senior engineering lecturer Bernard Withers and his students set up an experimental station ZL3XT.
But it only reached a radius of a few kilometres in Christchurch and the pictures were "disappointingly fuzzy" and "barely legible", according to NZ History Online.
The Queen's ascent to the throne was one of the milestones of 1952. Photo / File
One of the big news events of 1952 was the collapse of the Remutaka rail tunnel. An explosion on September 9 trapped 27 men.
All but one of the workers were rescued within nine hours. Rescuers took 30 hours to reach Greek migrant Athanasassios Athanassiaddes. The 20-year-old died in hospital later that evening.
Webb is a royal follower and etched in her mind was Queen Elizabeth II becoming New Zealand's new head of state early in 1952.
When her father King George VI died in February, Elizabeth became head of the Commonwealth.
"She was beautiful and young, and it felt wonderful also having a woman as our new head of state," Webb said.
Population1952
Another milestone that year was the black-and-white feature film Broken Barrier made by John O'Shea and Roger Mirams.
Produced on a shoe-string budget, the movie about a romance between a Pakeha journalist and a Māori woman was described as the "first real attempt at a feature film being produced in New Zealand".
The film played an important role in re-establishing the domestic film industry after World War II. It addressed mistrust and prejudice, and challenged established perceptions of race relations in the country.
The year also saw the death of two Kiwis who had made headlines for very different reasons.
Tainui leader Te Puea Hērangi died after spending four decades establishing the national status of the Kīngitanga, or King Movement.
She was also behind reviving Tainui's economic base and persuading her people to join in the Māori land development schemes.
Population1908
About 10,000 mourners attended Te Puea's tangi at Tūrangawaewae.
Meanwhile, at Seacliff Mental Hospital, white supremacist Lionel Terry also breathed his last.
Terry had been convicted of a race killing in Wellington in 1905.
It had taken 44 years for New Zealand's population to double from when it hit a million in 1908.
When the first million was reached, it was the year Kiwis voted in the general election for the 17th session of the New Zealand Parliament.
Nearly four in five eligible voters - or 537,0003 - turned out to vote, and nearly six in 10 voted for the Liberal Party, which won 58.7 per cent of the votes.
The completion of the main trunk railway line, linking Wellington to Auckland, was a milestone in New Zealand's history.
The Main Trunk Railway line was completed in 1908, as reported in the NZ Herald. Photo / File
In August that year, the first train travelled the full length of the North Island. Called the "Parliament Special" the train took 200 passengers including about 60 parliamentarians to Auckland to greet the American "Great White Fleet" of battleships.
A two-day passenger service, with an overnight stop at Ōhakune, was started on November 9.
An undated Blackball Miners strike that year also ended New Zealand's reputation as the "country without strikes".
In the West Coast mine, miners were given only 15 minutes to eat their lunch and the manager wanted to increase their work day to 10 hours.
A union leader, Pat Hickey, refused to finish his pie at lunchtime when his manager told him his 15 minutes were up, and he and six of his six supporters were fired.
The rest of the Blackball Miners Union went on strike, and after three months the mining company gave in and gave them back their jobs and agreed to their demands.
This was seen as a massive blow to the arbitration system, and various local miners' unions joined with other unions to form a national Federation of Labour.
The series
• Yesterday:Countdown to 5 million • Today: Hitting 2 million • Tomorrow: Hitting 3 million • Thursday: Hitting 4 million • Friday: Looking at 6 million and beyond
