West Coast Days
| COMMEND to all who are weary of the obvious things on radio Jim Henderson’s excellent documentary, Ghost Town (1YA), one of the most likeable and completely Kiwi programmes I have heard for some time, In this story of Burnett’s Face, a now abandoned mining
town on the West Coast, there were enough aggressively New Zealand voices to delight the most passionate admirers of our local accent. Although to my ear they were often ugly voices, in this context they gave a concreteness to the reminiscences of earlier days in Burnett’s Face which professional mimics or "cultivated" voices could never have achieved. The elderly postmistress, the couple who tenaciously held on when the rest had left, the miner trapped underground during the Murchison ’quake, the woman-who used to hang out a white sheet to warn the two-up school that the johns were on the warpath, the "Bachelors’ Club" singing their lustily defiant chorus-these, and others, created a picture of West Coast life which was as vivid as it was nostalgic. Accurate in
detail or not, it was radio reportage at its best, made ‘of the stuff of reality, but trimmed and patterned to a satisfying shape.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19580725.2.40.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 988, 25 July 1958, Page 25
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198West Coast Days New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 988, 25 July 1958, Page 25
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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