Combining interviews with original and archival photographs, Sandringham Stories explores the lives of eight Sandringham residents set against the backdrop of an evolving community.
The stories in this book may feel familiar to you. They follow the lives of Sandringham residents, past and present, for whom this community has had an outsized impact. Some of them were born in Sandringham and can recall fond memories of the local theatre and fish shop. Others moved here from out of town or overseas and have built a home for themselves among the Californian bungalows and cabbage trees.
Like many in this book—and many of you—I attended Good Shepherd School, Edendale School, Balmoral Intermediate, and Mount Albert Grammar School. I visited the village shops often and caught the bus from the corner of Mt Albert and Sandringham Roads. I have eaten at Paradise countless times.
My earliest memory of Sandringham is that of the playground. I recall running across the road after dinner to climb over the dysfunctional set of rusted monkey bars and shabby wooden platforms. This wasn’t long after my parents and I moved here from West Auckland in 2015, and Sandringham Reserve had not yet been redeveloped. I was eight years old, still an only child, and completely oblivious to the hows and whys of moving house. Our new home on Vancouver Ave was cosy and colourful with a green roof and an alarmingly red front door. I knew all the neighbourhood kids from school, and miraculously we were all the same age.
When my sister was born, our little corner of Sandringham was her entire world. She had a children’s coupé that I would push, and we would go on adventures to the playground and football field, next to which lived a woman who always gave us seeds to feed the pigeons.
Around that time, Sandringham Reserve was redeveloped into the much-loved gathering space that it is today. The Sandringham Project in Community Empowerment (SPiCE) was formed to facilitate community involvement in the project, and since then, it has organised numerous events that residents will be familiar with, including the Floral Carpet Festival, Moth Plant Competition, and the community section at the Sandringham Spring Festival.
I started working with SPiCE in 2020, and when we were discussing how to celebrate the International Day of Older Persons in late 2024, we knew we wanted to do something a little different from the large community gatherings we were used to. Eventually, we decided to experiment with writing a set of stories that celebrated the lives of Sandringham residents.
The first public meeting we held to discuss this project consisted of a group of local kaumātua. I went into the meeting with no real sense of what the stories would look like, but hearing them talk about their experiences helped me understand what it was we needed this book to become: a collection of personal narratives set against the backdrop of an evolving community. Rānana, who was present at that initial meeting, is one of the voices included in this book.
I wanted to offer an intimate portrait of individual lives while providing context for the time and space they were living in. To this end, the integration of oral history-based narratives with original and archival photographs felt like the best approach.
Traditionally, oral histories present the speaker’s words verbatim, but the non-linear and multi-media nature of this project called for narrative intervention. As the narrator, I introduce each individual as I met them — waiting in an open doorway, drinking tea in a quiet corner, standing outside their home — before shifting focus to their narrative.
In the process of writing this book, I was struck by the remarkable overlap between the interviewees’ lives. They have walked down the same roads, attended the same schools, and shopped at the same dairies as you and me. We have probably passed each other on the street. On the page, their narratives coalesced and wound their way around one another. It was an amazing experience, seeing how these seemingly disparate lives are interconnected, even if in reality they were strangers.
It has been a pleasure getting to know Alison, Fay, Helga, Hugh, Mark, Rānana, Robert, and William. I am honoured to have been entrusted with their stories, and incredibly grateful for the warmth and enthusiasm they have shown towards this project. They are each such remarkable, generous, and resilient individuals with so much knowledge to share.
With Sandringham Stories, we set out to create a lasting document of our community, for our community. Something that brings us closer together. Something we can keep in our homes. I hope this book helps us recognise ourselves in one another — so that we can become more than strangers who pass each other on the street, but neighbours, friends, and family.
