Car less days. In 1979 there was a world wide fuel shortage and to reduce petrol consumption the New Zealand government decreed that each car could only be used six days a week. Our car was owned by Taubman’s Paints as I worked for them at that time. They, most selfishly I thought, insisted that the firm’s car-less days would have to be either Saturday or Sunday. Our day without a car was Sunday and we could no longer drive from our beach township of Oakura into New Plymouth for services at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church. We walked instead up to Oakura township’s little combined church. And that was the beginning of something rather special.