Donovan’s World

Empty, lifeless and encrusted with peeling paint, the Te Pohue Store seems to exemplify the rural decline of the 1980s. When I called at the local hotel to find out something about the store, I was told that the people of Te Pohue drive to Napier for their groceries these days. That’s a distance of nearly fifty kilometres, but short enough to kill off one general store!

I was fortunate to make contact with Peter King, formerly of nearby Rock Station, who told me a little of the shop’s history.

The building has been on its site for about a hundred years. It started life as a billiards saloon but became the store in 1910 when Grant and Howell’s store, opposite, burned down and they moved across the road. Percy Howell married Grant’s sister, Leana, and between them they ran the Te Pohue Store. Their three children, born between 1916 and 1920, worked in the store after leaving the village school.

Peter King tells of an occasion when the mare had a foal while still harnessed in the shafts of the delivery cart when Percy had popped inside the store to have his lunch! Later he did his deliveries to the local farming community and five timber mills in a less capricious ‘International’ truck.

The store was brightly lighted with rock gas in the early days, and in addition to the usual stock, all of which was served from shelves behind the counter, Peter King particularly remembers a speciality - ‘bachelor buttons’ a device made in two parts that could be clipped onto trousers, thus obviating the need for sewing on buttons.

Westal Tucker took over the store in 1948 but, sadly, it closed down in 1967.

© DON DONOVAN donovan@ihug.co.nz

Chris Stanger is a solo parent. He finds living in Okains Bay perfect for his lifestyle because while he works the shop, his sons go to the school whose front gate is less than a gumboot’s throw across the road. Chris, a mechanic by trade who has served time as a truckie, took over the store in 1987 for a bit of peace and quiet. He now looks after the needs of about forty families, but gets very busy for eight weeks in the summer when the local camping ground accommodates about 400 holidaymakers.

Because Okains Bay is so isolated, Chris doesn’t quite suffer the problems other country storekeepers have of competition from big-town supermarkets. That means he carries a more comprehensive inventory of groceries, dairy lines, petrol and oil, hardware and home-brew supplies. The store has the postal agency and is the fire group’s call-out point. It also provides a focus for news and advice, and Chris often finds himself consulted about marriage guidance, household budgeting, fixing the car, employment and how to achieve a successful home-brew.

It’s a great old building, very original, with two old kauri counters in the shop. When things are quiet in the winter, Chris manufactures garden gnomes - a gang of seven plaster dwarfs - which he sells, either naked or painted, both in the store and to garden centres in Christchurch - The Big Smoke north of the Port Hills beyond Lyttelton Harbour.

© DON DONOVAN  donovan@ihug.co.nz

This may be the only store in New Zealand that has a coal range that’s fired up every day, summer and winter. On this fifty-year-old veteran, the Thomases brew up tea and coffee for visitors who come to see what is now principally a museum.

The store is older than its site. It was built in 1882, and in 1908 the whole town turned out to see it dragged to its new home by traction engine. It still sits directly on the ground, with no piles, exactly as they left it! It used to serve the community with ‘everything from a needle to a haystack’, but in later years, with most people travelling to Timaru for their shopping, the inventory has become limited to a postal agency, confectionery, gifts, teas and hot bread.

Graham and Dorothy bought the store in 1988 and, because it has such a rich history, decided to turn it and the adjacent 1862 smithy into a museum. They now spend much of their time restoring and organizing an enormous collection of artefacts, a labour of love that might never be finished.

Inside the store There’s a ‘Bull Dog Ale’ box that dates from 1848. It used to stand outside and when the locals weren’t sitting on it for a chat, the storekeeper put groceries in it for customers to collect after hours. That was in the days when, according to Graham’s records, a ton of flour cost (in today’s money) $34.50, a pair of boots $1.75, a dozen eggs 10 cents and One Fat Cow $16.50!

Albury lies in the beautiful valley of the Tengawai River, between Cave and Fairlie. It marks the approach to the pass named after James McKenzie, the so-called sheep stealer, a resourceful and ill-used man who was arrested and then escaped here in 1855.

© DON DONOVAN

‘I don’t know why they call it Cave. There isn’t a cave round here’. The guide book agrees with Kevin O’Neill, but with the proviso that there could have been a limestone cave that was destroyed by quarrying.

The Cave Store stands out from its surroundings like a buttercup in a summer meadow. In doing so, it contrasts brashly with the genteel mellowness of All Saints Church, opposite, built of soft-toned riverbed stones and surrounded by ornamental trees.

There is nothing historic or outstanding about the store; its appeal, for me, lies simply in its colour and its reassuring air of reliability.

It started life as the private home of one of the first owners of the original store, which was completely destroyed by fire.

Kevin and Margaret O’Neill, both from farming backgrounds, moved in in 1986. They continue to sell general groceries, petrol, bread, milk and farm supplies as well as operating the postal centre and doing the rural mail run around the district.

© DON DONOVAN

The first store in Oturehua (then called Rough Ridge) was built in 1899 by James Caldwell, but within three years Thomas Gilchrist had bought him out and the business remained in the Gilchrist family for the next eighty-seven years.

Very close to the site of the original store, the present building was put up in 1929, with a bakery at the back run by Alex Robertson, who married into the Gilchrist family.

It was gold that lured Thomas Gilchrist from Victoria and also sustained the early settlement, although farming became the eventual heart of the economy. Horse-and-cart deliveries were made to St. Bathans and Moa Creek, orders being taken one week and delivered the next, and the offering included everything from timber, petrol (in cases), tyres, fencing materials and stock foods to crockery, tools and clothing.

In 1989, when only Herb and Bruce Gilchrist remained (Herb having been there forty-seven years and Bruce thirty-six), the Rolstons moved in from Norsewood. The shop remains little changed and still sells a wide range of goods. It has the local postal agency and runs the rural delivery of mail, papers and groceries, often through heavy snow.

The community is nowadays composed of transport workers and farmers, supplemented by visitors who summer at their cribs , enjoy winter sports at the Ida Burn Dam or appear in their thousands at the motorcyclists’ Brass Monkey Rally every Queen’s Birthday weekend.

© DON DONOVAN

In 1987 the century-old Patearoa Store and its post office were on the point of closing down. However, the locals wouldn’t hear of it, so they clubbed together (as did the people of Millers Flat) to buy the land and buildings, which they now lease to the Warrens.

Bill, a retired Christchurch policeman, and Mal, an unretired sign-writer, own the Pateroa Hotel across the road. It dates from 1928 and is on the site of one built by Thomas Newton in 1887. It was called the Sowburn Hotel then, and the first store was next door, on land owned by the publican. That hotel, like so many others in New Zealand over the years, burned down in 1927.

In the 1940s the publican, Arthur Keegan, tried to raise the rent and this incensed Mr Robertson, the storekeeper, so much that he bought the abandoned Upper Kyeburn schoolhouse, moved it from near Dansey Pass and set it up on the other side of the hotel. The resultant ill-feeling was sorted out by the parish priest. What now constitutes the Patearoa Store is the old store and the schoolhouse butted together.

Patearoa was part of the Central Otago goldfields, and remains of the nearby Sowburn diggings are evident in buildings and abandoned machinery. Now a farming area, it’s a vibrant community, its residents competing actively around the Maniototo Plain at rugby, cricket, tennis, golf and bowls. The store, besides being a postal agency, supplies general groceries, milk, bread, newspapers and the friendliest of welcomes.

© DON DONOVAN

The Hampden Super Store occupies a charming spot in a village that, although it straddles State Highway One, still manages to tranquilise the senses. The trees, grand and mature, are very English, and that’s as it should be, for Hampden takes its name from a wealthy Buckinghamshire landowner and lover of fair play who took arms against Charles I and died for his ideals on Chalgrove Field, near Oxford, in 1643.

It’s been a general store since 1890, and at the rear there are the remains of an old bakehouse. The business has been in the Long family since 1975. Joy and her husband, Steve, took it over from her parents. Since Steve died, Joy has run it with the aid of her children, Mark and Vicki. They all enjoy serving and chatting to the customers, who comprise residents and the seasonal holidaymakers who come to this restful seaside village.

Joy says the shop is, ‘a meeting place where people may catch up on local news … a general store with most things available that you could get in town. We still run monthly accounts, as it’s a farming and fishing area … they always pay’.

The welcomed appointment of Hampden Super Store as an agency of NZ Post followed the complete restructuring of postal services in 1988. When I visited, the appointment was so recent that its impact could still be seen on the ‘A1′ sign under the tiger!

© DON DONOVAN

One doesn’t have to search hard for the origins of this store - James Loudon clearly had a sense of history and proudly dated the commencement of an establishment that he, correctly, expected to last many years. As at 1990 he is not forgotten, and that’s more than may be said about most people who were around in AD1881!

Alan Deuchrass says that Loudon ran it as a general store and post office, making deliveries as far afield as Taieri Mouth by horse and cart - a round trip that could take two days. Loudon might have relished the odd night away - he shared the house next door with his wife and twelve daughters!

Loudon fades from the scene about 1916, after which there were numerous owners until Alan and Joy (who, incidentally, was a member of the national champion women’s bowling pair in 1990) took over in 1982. There their three children grew up and, until they left home, played their part in running this typical neighbourhood family store.

Inevitably the buildings have been modified over the years; a hay loft at the back became living quarters. A bacon-curing business was carried on at one stage, and Alan thinks the sides may have been hung in a large room he found under a trap door in the kitchen floor. Although there was extensive mining in the surrounding area, James Loudon would not permit it under the store, which has therefore never been affected by subsidence; clearly he was a man of considerable influence and foresight.

© DON DONOVAN

From a dreary world Bill Freeman’s dairy shines out like an artist’s palette! I couldn’t resist it, especially when I could see that so much trouble had been taken to cover up the old house next door (now used as a store room) and that one of the world’s classic motorbikes had, fortuitously, been parked outside.

The store (once two tiny stores - as evidenced by the two front doors) dates back to about 1930 and replaced another that had been there since the turn of the century. Bill Freeman runs it as a typical seven-day dairy, with a small garden centre selling flowers, shrubs and vegetable plants. (The faded sign on the rough wooden door had me imagining animated tomato plants coming and going like Chicago gangsters at a speakeasy!)

Milton may have been named after the poet. Whether that’s true or not, the name is appropriate, for since 1857 it has been a mill town on the Tokomairiro River. It has been famous for many years for wool spinning and scouring, although the oldest part of the mill complex started life grinding flour.

The town sprang to importance when Gabriel Read discovered gold at Tuapeka. Milton lay neatly placed between Dunedin and the diggings, a good spot to rest up, stock up and saddle up before taking on the heartless rocks of Central Otago.

© DON DONOVAN

Louis Faigan opened his first store in Millers Flat in 1896 in a one-roomed shop leased from a watchmaker. Three years later he bought the boarding house on today’s site, turned the front into a store and the back into living quarters, and that’s the way it stayed until fire destroyed it in 1936 and the ‘moderne’ store was erected.

In gold-mining days Faigan’s supplied goods by pack horse to remote diggers, and by horse and cart to the dredge workers on the Clutha as well as to local farmers and residents. Sensitive always to customers’ needs, Faigan even imported ginger and rice for the Chinese miners, and this service philosophy was exemplified in his slogan, ‘Everything from a needle to an anchor’.

The old man died in 1910, and Leopold Faigan, who had started work in his father’s shop in 1899, carried on the business until shortly before his death in 1976. The store stayed in the Faigan family until 1980.

Malcolm and Lesley James closed the store in 1989, but within forty-eight hours, $30,000 was raised from about a hundred households to buy the stock and plant. The enterprise has been owned by community shareholders ever since, with Judith Omond as manager.

© DON DONOVAN