It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of big hair, it was the epoch of walk shorts.
It was the decade of shoulder pads and Georgie Pie, Chardon and Marque Vue, canoeing gold at the Olympics and underarm deliveries in cricket, Keri Hulme winning the Booker and Janet Frame writing To the Is-land, the Te Māori exhibition touring the US to loud applause, the Rainbow Warrior being sunk beneath the tide, and Roger Douglas imposing GST on everything.
There was no internet and just a handful of hulking mobile phones. Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 was on the radio, Billy T James and McPhail & Gadsby on the TV, breakdancing on the streets, spacies in the games arcades. John Walker told us that Fresh-Up had got to be good for us.
The decade began with the lazy, hazy Sweetwaters, a music festival near Ngāruawāhia that featured Split Enz, Elvis Costello and Mi-Sex. In 1981, the Springbok Tour cleaved a nation over it being seen as sanctioning apartheid in South Africa.
But better times were on their way. The All Whites made the Football World Cup finals, the unseeded Chris Lewis made the final of Wimbledon, Lorraine Downes was crowned Miss Universe, Charles and Diana visited. The 1984 election saw the divisive Rob Muldoon swept away by Labour and the party’s brutal neoliberal economic policies refashioned the nation.
Homosexual law reform was finally introduced. The sharemarket crashed like a bomb. The All Blacks took out the inaugural Rugby World Cup, thrashing everyone they faced. The nation grew up, just a little.
Good As Gold provides a stroll back through life in New Zealand during the decade. By Matt Elliot (Bateman Books, $49.99.)
