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Story: City children and youth

Milk-bar cowboys

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Milk-bar cowboys
Milk-bar cowboys (bodgies who owned motorbikes) congregate along Auckland’s Queen Street in the 1950s. Bodgies and widgies were successors to the larrikins and youth gangs of the 19th century. Like those before them, they shocked and irritated conventional society with their anti-social behaviour, such as racing motorbikes through city streets.

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New Zealand Herald

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How to cite this page

Ben Schrader, City children and youth – Bad behaviour, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/21965/milk-bar-cowboys (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Ben Schrader, published 4 February 2010.