Spurred on by the popularity of the Vespa and it's many imitators, motor scooter clubs were springing up all around New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s. This one was based in Wellington, but there is no doubt that it would have passed through Horowhenua. A 1959 report on the Auckland Motor Scooter Club by the 'Press' revealed their plan for an epic journey to Bluff and back! So the Wellington scooters wouldn't have had a problem popping to Levin for some lunch.

In today's world of higher speed limits and big SUVs I think many Club members may think twice about it. 

Every photograph is a window into the past- and sometimes what you see surprises you. Children singing a waiata about being kind to animals seems like a modern day school lesson, but the writing on this slide is from 1924! In the 1920s only a few private schools taught the grammer of Te Reo. Tragically, all the other schools saw speaking Te Reo as a caning offence. Was this slide of one of the private schools- or a smaller group or club? We just don't know.

Or maybe these children were located at Waiata Shores, near Auckland (although even then, few schools used Te Reo names for locations back in the 1920s).

Art historian Walter Benjamin coined a term called 'optical unconsciousness' and part of that is seeing a photograph in hindsight. The people in it do not know the future, but we do. Whatever this photograph depicted it seems like it belongs in our present than in it's past.

But the past is full of surprises!