Auckland Fruiterers

url: http://www.arfai.co.nz/index.php?page=40

Alec Wong the "Taro King", came to Auckland in 1949 from the South Island after several years market gardening in Oamuru.

He and his wife Helen bought a shop in Ponsonby's Three Lamps just as the influx of Pacific Island people was beginning. These people encouraged to New Zealand to increase the supply of labour in our booming post-war economy, congregated in Ponsonby and Grey Lynn and created an immediate, seemingly insatiable demand for such vegetables as taro, yams, kapi, green bananas, coconut and breadfuit.

"There were 20,000 to 30,000 Polynesians living in the area in those old, cheap houses, some of them living two families per house," Alec says. "As I was in the right area I sat down and worked it out so that in a very short time I became known as far as Otahuhu as the shop that was never out of taro.

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