I had told myself for decades that one of these days. I will sort through the family slides. Not so much a day, it turned out, as a couple of weeks but I am close to the end.

Both Mark’s parents and Mark himself photographed on slide film in the days before digital cameras. It was always an expensive medium to work in, probably even more so in the days when slide films had to be sent to Australia to be developed. There were boxes and boxes and boxes of slides. Forty years of them.

I decided early on that I would scan and keep the historic images of the garden and the property and those of identifiable family members but the close-ups of flowers could all be discarded, as could random landscapes and events that meant something at the time but are of no discernible relevance now.

My task became a lot more interesting when I came to the slides that Mark’s mother, Mimosa, took and now I worry that I may have been too ruthless in my selection of those to scan and keep and those to discard.

Mark’s mother only left the country once that I can see. But that one occasion was a big trip – Le Grand Tour, in fact. Mark has always been a bit vague on her absence, it being ‘quite a long trip’, he thought. I was a fair way through sorting the slides before I realised what a huge experience it must have been for her. She spent about two months voyaging there and back and five months exploring the UK, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands.

It included the Chelsea Flower Show where she was clearly impressed by the marquee displays which were of the very highest standard. She didn’t take many photos of the outdoor gardens. It seems that the showpiece outdoor gardens have evolved quite a bit in the last 65 years. Perhaps they are more fashion-forward these days?

I wanted to date her Chelsea visit and I can now say that it was indeed 1960, as I thought. We also happen to have the menu cards from the trip over and back. We forget how recent long-distance air travel is and how extraordinary it is that we can travel all the way across the world in just over 24 hours in the air. Mimosa sailed out of Aotearoa New Zealand just before Christmas 1959, on board the SS Australia, a long-distance passenger liner operated by the Italian company, Lloyd Triestino, with an Italian crew.

This solved one mystery. I was a little surprised by this somewhat raunchy image until Mark and another both suggested it was related to ‘crossing the line’, ergo, the equator. I found the programme for the event. One wonders what form the 10.15am Discorso di Nettuno e battesimo deo neofiti took (Neptune’s speech and the baptism of the landlubbers) but it all happened on January 12, 1960. Those relatively uninhibited young men in the photo appear to be the Italian crew. The voyage terminated on January 27 at an Italian port, having travelled via the Suez Canal.

It must all have been quite the culture shock for a middle-aged woman from Tikorangi but Mark tells me his mother prepared for it all by putting quite a lot of effort into teaching herself Italian. I am not at all sure how one would even plan a trip of that length, in pre-internet days but even more so as a woman travelling on her own with no prior experience. I doubt that she would wing it, as we have done, and she probably travelled with a great deal more luggage than we have ever taken.

The return voyage was likely less exotic, on board the R.M.S. Rangitane, owned by the New Zealand Shipping Company so it likely transited the Panama Canal which, according to my mother, was very dull compared to the Suez. She boarded the Rangitane on or about June 3, 1960 and they docked in NZ on July 6. The menu cards from this return voyage show a diet that was considerably less adventurous than on the Italian liner.

Mimosa was always interested in gardens but she mostly photographed landscapes and architecture. She had a good eye and, 65 years on, it was her people photographs that I found most delightful.  

When the rainy weather sets in again, I will turn my attention to ordering the garden scenes that I have scanned in. It is interesting to see the earliest plantings and constructions and the various stages they have gone through in close to 75 years. It makes us realise yet again that a garden can never be frozen in time. Gardening is a dynamic response to a changing environment, in the longer term at least. Curated examples may appear here in due course.