OPINION
Many things have changed. Everyone smoked. Everyone went to the pub. It was cheap. Attending University was not the financial hurdle it is today. Join the students’ union, buy your textbooks and get a seasonal job during the Christmas New Year break with maybe some part-time weekend employment. If you were reasonably careful financially, going out wasn’t a problem.
For those years up to about 1985 most at university were white. There were hardly any foreign students. The only people from ethnic minorities one met on a day-to-day basis ran shops or takeaways.
Maori nationalism and separatism barely existed in 1985. No one talked about it. The idea that New Zealand might one day be split on ethnic grounds and the rewriting and translation of a thing called the Treaty of Waitangi would help to destroy the morality including the unity of this happy land: that was never contemplated.
