Jumping Sundays

Award-winning writer Nick Bollinger’s deep history of the transformation of New Zealand life wrought by the counterculture in the 1960s and ’70s.

On a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1969, thousands of people defied Auckland city bylaws and came to party in Albert Park. A rock band played on the rotunda. Some people held hands, some danced alone, some sat under trees with guitars, flutes and bongos and made music of their own. They wore kaftans, ponchos and leather-fringed jerkins, floppy hats, headbands, beads and flowers. Poetry and political diatribes were delivered from a podium, improvised from an upturned tea chest. There were bikies, balloons, bubbles, sack races and a lolly scramble, lots of dogs and a pet possum. Someone brought a canoe and paddled it around the fountain, until it capsized. As the afternoon wore on there were joss sticks, skyrockets and what some will have recognised as the musky smell of marijuana. . . — From the Prologue

In Jumping Sundays, award-winning writer and broadcaster Nick Bollinger tells the story of beards and bombs, freaks and firebrands, self-destruction and self-realisation, during a turbulent period in New Zealand’s history and culture.

Author Biography

Nick Bollinger is a Wellington-based writer, broadcaster and critic. He was a music columnist for the Listener for more than twenty years, has written for Mojo and been the voice of Radio New Zealand’s music review programme The Sampler. He is the author of How to Listen to Pop Music (2004), 100 Essential New Zealand Albums (2009) and Goneville: A Memoir (2016), all published by Awa Press. Originally a thesis written for the creative non-fiction programme at the International Institute of Modern Letters, the manuscript of Goneville won the 2015 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing and was longlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards.