Living in the Lookout Point-Calton Hill area, Carisbrook was easy walking, even running, distance, especially on the way there; perhaps less so on the way back. Sometimes there was a need to get there early so as to be signed up by Don Dennis to sell his pies or to be taken on as a programme seller. Such jobs were passports to free access for young kids with no money.
That was especially so for the big occasions. Sometimes for a test starting at 2.30 or 3pm, we'd be at Carisbrook by 9am, knowing the bulk of the selling would be done by kickoff time and we'd be flush with 2s 6d as well as a free seat.
Before then, we earned our half a crown not just by selling but by edging our way through the forests of legs on the terrace, some of which stood atop wooden beer crates and from which strange hoses appeared. It was only many years later that I realised the purpose of the hoses.
When it came time for the main game, the thing that remained with me was the blackness of the New Zealand jerseys and shorts. I learned later that invariably the test in Dunedin was the first in the series and therefore the jerseys and shorts were at their anthracite blackest and had not been dulled by coverings of mud.
When Gareth Edwards wrote in the 1970s that there was something about the blackness of an All Black jersey that sent a shudder through your heart, I knew exactly what he meant and I never had to stand on the other side of halfway from one.
Carisbrook was not just the big rugby occasions. Cricket was a pleasure of summer, especially when Otago could call on men such as Bert Sutcliffe and John Reid.
Crowds went to first-class matches then. Even later, when Glenn Turner was learning his trade, cricket was still a simple joy that attracted.
But it wasn't even just rugby and cricket. The Festival Mile used to be run there and men such as Gordon Pirie, from England (before he came to settle in Auckland), and Merv Lincoln, of Australia, ran and raced at Carisbrook.
Yvette Williams (as she was then and living just across the railway line in Bridge St) strived mightily out the front of the old main stand to set a world record in the long jump.
That was at the royal sports in 1954: a queen of athletics performing for the queen of the realm.
Time in the end beats all things, including Carisbrook.
The old ground is nearly gone, but the memories from it will always remain.
• Ron Palenski is a rugby writer and the chief executive of the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame.
