Donovan’s World

Mauriceville was founded by Scandinavian settlers in 1873, and only seven years later the general store began life. It’s had a chequered history, having been closed down twice because of hard times and suffering a devastating fire in the 1920s, scorch marks from which can still be seen on the outside of the building. Fortunately somebody rescued the unusual carved wooden window frames, they are built in to the modern shop.

Patrick and Denise took the store on in 1988 after it had been closed for a year. In the time they’ve been there they have put together a collection of old artefacts and memorabilia, which are on display in the store and which they hope to build into a major attraction.

With that in mind, they bought the old Mauriceville railway station with the intention of moving it closer to the store and developing it into a tearooms and museum. But the project is on hold while New Zealand’s economy suffers recession. Sadly, they are not sure whether they can even carry on trading the store, an uncertainty that only serves to emphasize the marginal state of Mauriceville in modern times.

In days past, when smaller farm lots were sustainable, the town flourished and was capable of not only supporting the store but also a dairy factory, large hotel, saddlery, library, churches, a timber mill, two smithies and a freight company. The lime works is still in existence.

Mauriceville General Store has a rare, possibly unique, Masterton Licensing Trust licence to sell all forms of alcohol, including some interesting local wines. I hope the store will be able to continue to supply the town with liquor, groceries, petrol, oil and perishables, and that when better times come it will not be too late for Patrick and Denise Whyte to realize their dream of a museum in the old railway station.

Railway station window

© DON DONOVAN

Reversing the customary drift to the cities, Jan and Eric Bird forsook the mirrors of Wellington in 1986 for the pastoral tranquility of northern Wairarapa. What Jan describes as ‘life before Mangamaire’ was spent in Linden, where she and Eric both grew up, married, built their own home and raised three children. As soon as the family left home, Eric and Jan upped stakes and bought the Mangamaire Store. They love it there so much that they’ve bought additional land, on which they run sheep and beef cattle - that’s what the Wairarapa is all about.

The store’s white-painted plaster is reminiscent of the fresh, neat houses of Devon villages and is in stark contrast to the gloomy angles of the derelict cheese factory opposite, on whose roof the lettering ‘Rexdale Dairy Coy. Ltd’ may still be seen.

Jan believes the store goes back to 1906 and is on land previously owned by the dairy company, which closed in 1956. There was a post office next door from 1898, which was moved and run together with the store when it was established. The post office became a Postal Delivery Centre (PDC) in 1988. The Birds still handle counter mail and run the rural mail delivery, combined with bread, milk, newspapers and groceries.

Recently Mangamaire, which lies slightly west of State Highway 2 between Pahiatua and Eketahuna, has experienced an improvement in trade because its road has been upgraded to provide an alternative route between Masterton and Palmerston North, diverging from the main ‘Pahiatua Track’. This bonus, coupled with the amalgamation of five local schools into the one in the village, has increased sales of food, petrol and oil

© DON DONOVAN

Between the Raukawa Range and the Tukituki River, Pukehou sits in a gentle valley running north-west from Waipawa to connect with Hastings. It’s a bountiful valley of sheep farmlands, roadside fruit and vegetable stalls and birdlife; particularly the pukekos who inhabit the remnants of once extensive swamplands.

The district is famous for the Anglican Maori boys’ Te Aute College, a short step up the road from the Pukehou store. The store shares with the college a connexion to Archdeacon Samuel Williams, who founded the school in 1850, and the land upon which Pukehou village and the store stand was his gift.

An older store, at Te Aute, closed down in 1982 with the reputation of being the oldest business in New Zealand with a continuous trade from a wooden building.

The Pukehou General Store was built in the early 1920s for Andrew and Christina Priest, immigrants from the Shetland Isles, by their son, Harry, a carpenter. The store flourished in the decade after the late 1940s in the ownership of Neil Forsyth and his wife, who supplied the farming district as comprehensively as any stock and station agent and grocery supermarket combined. They also had a bread and grocery delivery round, ran two school buses, and a taxi service with cars available any hour of the day or night.

A Napier woman by birth, Anne Miller, who was a nurse for some years, bought the store in 1980 and she and her son, Noel, are now partners in its ownership.

‘Mrs Anne’, as the local children call her, still does a six-day paper run as well as the daily postal service.

Adaptation to modern times is the key to survival, and Anne intends, while maintaining the base of grocery, petrol and postal services, to add to her tearooms by providing fast foods and light meals for the passing motorists on this busy tourist route.

© DON DONOVAN

‘In such a remote locality it’s not unusual for customers to arrive at the store on horseback. Following Cyclone Bola, bread was flown in by helicopter and handed out free to those in need. Fresh milk is still only delivered two days a week…’ It’s easy to appreciate from Sid Hanson’s comments that East Cape is a world apart.

The store drifted into existence. Around 1940, when sugar was in short supply, Molly Colbert sold lollies to the local children from the front door of her house. In 1976 the local store burnt down and was not replaced, so the Colberts, having tasted sweet success, built the first of many expansions on to the side of their house and the Te Puia Springs Store officially came into existence.

The store has always sold ‘everything’ and at times has included the post office (now a postal service) and a Westpac Bank agency. It serves not only the town and outlying farmers but also nearby Waipiro Bay, where, incidentally, may be seen two deserted general stores, one of which was owned by the Rasmussens, who now have the big store at Ruatoria.

The Hansons bought the store late in 1990. It had been owned by Sid’s brother Eric and his wife, Jill, who turned it into a self-service store with a difference - there’s no checkout. Local customers like to pick out their needs and bring them to the counter, sometimes making half a dozen trips before they’ve completed their purchase. That way they get to catch up on local news and gossip. And when all is said and done, isn’t that what the country general store is all about?

© DON DONOVAN

It dates from about 1910. The Hiinis have had it since 1980. Tama thinks it has two or three roof layers, has been extended at least twice and has had about ten owners since new.

Hicks Bay General Store has always been a meeting place for the three hundred residents and up to a thousand holidaymakers who come to the bay in summertime. Mail comes in six days a week, fresh bread daily, milk twice a week. They sell groceries, petrol, oil, clothing, toys, hardware, haberdashery, small goods, gifts, jewellery, fishing equipment and pharmaceuticals. They hire videos, have had a postal agency since 1988 and were expecting a liquor licence when I called. As Tama says, ‘The peculiar thing is that it’s a peculiar thing to find a true general store in this day and age.’

Lena comes from Horoera, a hamlet on the way to East Cape lighthouse. Tama was born in Manaia on the Coromandel. He and Lena married when he was in the army, and they bought the store when he was discharged. Their children are grown up and ‘do their own thing’ now, but Lena says that quite a number of the old Hicks Bay families are returning to this friendly place from the cities, re-examining their whakapapa and, through children’s education and adult courses at the nearby Wharekahika Kokiri Centre, are regaining their origins.

© DON DONOVAN

PARAWERA STORE

Arapuni Road, Parawera, Waikato.
Proprietor: Margaret Glass

The Waikato, well watered and lush-pastured, has some of New Zealand’s most productive dairying land, and Parawera sits in the middle of it. Margaret Glass was born of a farming family, and she and her husband, Ken, had a dairy farm before taking over the Parawera Store in 1977. At the back of the store Ken and their son, Steven, opened up a workshop, which she says, ‘keeps them busy’.

It came as a pleasant surprise to find that, although a little chipped and faded, the name of the store has been particularly well sign-written. (Talking of sign-writing, I liked the AA finger posts across the road - a lexicon of Maori place-names!)

Madiv Chunilal, the first owner, had established a previous store in 1937, built on land leased from Umu McLean snr., by Joe Moses. Madiv, nicknamed ‘Chuni’, then returned to India for a spell, but when he came back he bought land from the Kenemata family and in 1954 built today’s Parawera Store.

‘Chuni’ also ran the school bus and taxi service. He had a frustrating habit of leaving a note on the shop door when he had a taxi fare - ‘Back in 1/2 hour’. The trouble was, nobody knew when the half-hour had started, so residents would either sit and wait or go home and telephone until ‘Chuni’ answered. Sadly, he was killed in his taxi south of Otorohanga in 1962.

The Glasses serve the Parawera community with general groceries, newspapers, dairy products, petrol and - busy round the back - workshop facilities.

© DON DONOVAN

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

T-JAYS SUPERETTE

30 Barry Road, Waihi.
Proprietors: Trevor and Doreen Powell

The Powells took over the store in 1987, the latest in a series of owners going back to 1909, when it was built to service what was then a separate little settlement to the north of the main town of Waihi. In those days there were other stores and a hotel, which was subsequently removed to Rotorua and became the Princes Gate.

Coincidentally, Waihi was at the peak of good fortune in 1909, and it’s only a short step away from T-Jays to the gaunt ruins of the Martha Mine pump house building, relic of one of the world’s most productive goldfields. Today a mining renaissance exploits the gold and other minerals that still enrich the strata of Martha Hill.

Trevor Powell is a professional storekeeper of the old school. He learned his trade with Farmers’ and Super Value in Matamata, and with Farmers’ Co-op in Kaponga and Ohura (where he witnessed the closing of the state coal mines). His experience and an opportunistic move to Auckland later fitted him to help set up New World, Pak ‘n Save and Four Square stores all over the North Island, from Northland to King Country to Poverty Bay, before he and Doreen took over the superette.

One solid, no-nonsense structure, T-Jays and the adjoining house reflect the steadfast earnestness of a goldmining town. The customers comprise local residents and travellers heading for the beaches and resorts of the eastern Coromandel.

And, no doubt, once the kids at No. 21 have sold their pups they’ll be in to T-Jays to spend some of the proceeds on ice lollies or Coke.

© DON DONOVAN

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century.
Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

In 1978 a group of local people formed a co-operative and bought the Colville Store. After some years of love and little reward they have rebuilt it into the industrious and thriving business it is today.

It is the northernmost store on the Coromandel; as such it looks after the needs of residents as far out as Port Jackson and Port Charles, and suddenly, when the holiday season comes, a customer base of anything up to five thousand. There was a strong ‘green’ feel about the store long before the popular move started, and although it sells ‘everything’, the co-operative members most enjoy selling healthy foods, in bulk, trying to avoid plastic packaging as far as it’s possible in modern times. They also encourage locals to sell their cottage-industry products through the store - home-made candles, jewellery and craft works - and they’re noted for their honey from friendly neighbourhood bees.

The store is not so old by rural general store standards. It was built in 1946 by Dick Goudie out of materials acquired from the old naval base at Port Jackson. In those days Colville was an important timber-milling district. In the 1990s farming is the mainstay, but the population is drawn from all walks of life: timber millers, settler-generation farmers, doctors, lecturers, potters, weavers, inventors, tax consultants, moteliers, beekeepers, plumbers, painters and Department of Conservation staff.

‘Being a co-operative makes it interesting,’ says Meryl Johnson, one of the co-ordinators, ‘especially when people say, “Oh, you’re a co-operative - do you all live out the back?”‘

Old hand-cranked fuel pumps just north of the Colville Store.

© DON DONOVAN

While the crumbling paintwork and undulating boards of the Clevedon Dairy might excite the artist and titillate the historian, they don’t do much for the Pohatus, who plan to pull the building down and create a new complex.

Julie Pohatu reports that the store was built on this site around 1900 by G. McKenzie, who combined it with a billiards room. The game must have been popular with the local lads, for a later owner, T Murray, added a second billiards room and living quarters. The range of services has waxed and waned over the years; at one time the premises included a barber’s salon and at another, apparently, BNZ banking services. The click of billiards balls ceased in June 1936, since when, presumably, youth has not been misspent!

The Clevedon area was already an important supplier of dairy products for the Auckland market by the late 1850s, but it was more formally settled ten years later, after the Waikato land wars, mainly by immigrant Scots who were allocated parcels of land confiscated from local tribes who had fought against the British.

Nowadays it retains a feeling of rural peacefulness that contrasts pleasantly with the bustle of Manukau and Auckland cities. Clevedon is neatly placed as a watering hole for traffic going out from Papakura to nearby beaches. To the north lie Duders Beach and Maraetai, while the right fork leads east, past the historic McNichol homestead, to the pretty resorts of Kawakawa Bay and Orere Point.

For years the Clevedon Dairy has served as an oasis for travellers, providing meals and refreshments as well as general groceries. Now, recognising the needs of people on the move, Ben and Julie have extended their repertoire to include takeaways.

© DON DONOVAN