Nowadays it is easy to have a cold drink on a hot day, but it was not always as simple as adding ice from the freezer to water from the refrigerator. Once the ice made a far longer journey.
After the initial enthusiasm of the 1870s, Julius Vogel’s reputation suffered in the 1880s when New Zealand’s economy slumped into a long depression that was triggered by an international banking crisis.
Julius Vogel wasn’t the first colonial politician to promise public works and immigration on the back of borrowed money. But the early 1870s offered better prospects for success.
In 1870, Colonial Treasurer Julius Vogel launched the most ambitious development programme in New Zealand’s history. The ‘Vogel era’ was a decisive moment in New Zealand’s 19th-century transformation from a Māori world to a Pākehā one.
The bad old days: stowing frozen carcasses in one of the Port Caroline’s refrigerated holds. Even in such a gleaming new ship, it was cold, hard work and could be dangerous as well.
The Port Caroline was constructed in 1968; this image is from 1971.
Containers changed everything. Railways ordered fleets of flat deck rolling stock and ‘daylighted’ tiny Victorian tunnels to get them through. Truckers bought heavy duty vehicles and new businesses sprung up to store, clean and repair containers. In warehouses and loading docks all around the country, heavy forklift trucks lifted boxes on and off vehicles.
