Capping Week: 50 years ago this month

Did you help reassemble a car on top of the Government Life building in 1971?

Negative strip from the Christchurch Star Archive showing Student capping prank
Parking fine for student prank, 5 May 1971, Christchurch Star Archive. CCL-Star-1971-0997-010-018N-01.

This extreme prank was just one of the many things that happened for Capping Week 50 years ago! Maybe you participated in this or one of the other activities? Students were up to all sorts of things other than parking an Austin with an amazing view, from a liquorice eating contest, making and riding floats for the procession, fund raising for Te Wai Pounamu College and finally actually graduating. The Christchurch Star newspaper was out and about photographing what the students were getting up to. Were you one of them? Or do you know someone who was and can find them in the collection? You can add comments and stories to the images so that we all know more about the events that took place. You can register to post comments directly to the images in the toolbar for Canterbury Stories.

These negative strips are just some of thousands in the Christchurch Star Archive that we house and are working through to digitise and make accessible online. There are currently over 4,500 negatives and 5,400 prints to explore in this particular collection.

Explore our whole collection for more fabulous capping and graduation images. We now have a total of over 26,000 items that you can explore in Canterbury Stories that include photographs, negatives and maps.

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