Open 7 Days 20. The Old Tua Marina Store

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. 

THE OLD TUA MARINA STORE
Tuamarina, Marlborough.
Proprietors: John and Gabi Muir

Old New Zealand hotels have something in common with Texas courthouses - a tendency to be burned to the ground. That’s what happened to the first building on the site of the Old Tua Marina Store. The two-storey tavern went up in smoke in 1904, and the store dates from that time.

John and Gabi Muir met at a birthday party in Tuamarina in 1974, when John, an Australian, was staying briefly in the neighbourhood while on a hiking tour. Twelve years and three children later, they were visiting the old town from their home in Australia when they discovered that the store was up for sale, so they bought it there and then.

These days this obviously cherished old building trades as a gift and craft shop, serving teas and refreshments. It is also the post office, which means it continues to be a centre of community affairs. Between 1905 and 1983 it was a general store in the fullest sense, and the decision to turn it into the kind of business it is now was occasioned by extensive damage caused by major flooding of the local rivers, the Wairau and the Tuamarina.

The famous ‘Wairau Massacre’ happened here in 1843, when a posse of settlers led by Colonel Wakefield tried to arrest a Maori party, under the command of Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata, in a land dispute. The Maori won. The incident is commemorated in the hilltop cemetery and across the road from the store in a rest area by the tranquil Tuamarina stream.

The Main Trunk railway connecting Picton with the south passes the store. ‘In these more peaceful times,’ Gabi writes, ‘the train engine drivers often stop at the crossing and dash over to buy one of John’s New Zealand-famous pies - the ones with the money-back guarantee!’

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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N.Z. House & Cottage 30. No.259 Williams Street, Kaiapoi

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century.
I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

259 WILLIAMS STREET, KAIAPOI

State Highway No. 1 used to run through Kaiapoi but the Christchurch motorway now by-passes it. That’s not to say that the town has lost any mana - in fact it has become more interesting - but it’s a long way short of the expectations of prime-minister-to-be Henry Sewell, who observed, in 1853, that Christchurch had reached its peak, and that the newcomers were all off to Kaiapoi!

Besides its development as a port and woollen mill town, Kaiapoi’s claim to fame was the 1831 attack on the Kaiapohia Pa, nine kilometres north of the present town, by Te Rauparaha, an assault so violent that twenty years later ‘drayloads’ of human remnants of the cannibal feast had to be carted away by Canon Stack.
Modern Kaiapoi was born only ten years after the massacre and, by 1871, William Dickie, a labourer, had bought the land upon which the cottage at 259 Williams Street now stands. Despite such appalling recent events, a holding like this was considered a ‘worker’s paradise’ to immigrants from a land of inflexible privilege; three-quarters of an acre and house were deemed sufficient for a man to keep hens, a goat or sheep, and to grow fruit and vegetables for his family.

Dickie probably built the cottage but there is a slight possibility that it was already in place, erected by the former landowners ‘R.H.Rhodes and another’ as early as 1867. The central front door opens into the sitting room next to a bedroom complete with four-poster. Beyond are kitchen and scullery and, between, a narrow stairway leads to two attic rooms whose ceilings parallel the roof. From research and investigation done by its present owner, Ted McCulloch, it most likely began as a small one-roomed shed with a fireplace at one end but was soon enlarged to look very similar to its present appearance. (’Unspoilt’ is one of the descriptions most often heard.)

The cottage has had a number of owners since William Dickie. In 1925 a young couple, the Thompsons, paid £165 for it. Despite raising six children they made surprisingly few alterations beyond installing electricity and a bathroom and so, when Ted McCulloch (whose Austin 7 Ruby saloon graces the driveway)

bought the house in 1989, he found himself with a charming heritage building which he has sensitively maintained since (although he was once growled at by Mrs Thompson’s daughter for not having polished the brass light switches!) While restoring the sitting room he removed and preserved samples of twelve separate layers of wall-covering, the earliest of which were sheets from the London ‘Times’ of 1866.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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Thistle Inn, Wellington

I wrote and illustrated ‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’. It was published in 1995 and was a snapshot of some New Zealand pubs as they were at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

This is the second Thistle on its site. It was built in 1866 and used to be dated from that year but in 1967, when renovations were under way, they discovered parts of a structure that were declared to be those of the first Thistle Inn, built in 1840. So, rightly, it may be described as the oldest pub in New Zealand on its original site and shares with that historic year the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (although the Thistle may be a little less controversial than that founding document).
 
Just a beer bottle’s throw from the House of Representatives, the pub is almost marooned on a promontory of land bordered by the chariot race of Mulgrave Street and quiet Sydney Street. It now overlooks an extensive area of reclaimed land carrying wharves and railway marshalling yards; but at its beginning, the Thistle was on the waterfront. It is said to have been popular with mid-nineteenth century sea captains who, having come to safe haven after the caprices of Cook Strait, could drop anchor in the wonderfully sheltered waters of Port Nicholson, row ashore and wash the salt out of their throats in the bar while keeping an eye on their ships and restless crews.

It’s also said that Te Rauparaha, that notorious Maori general, coming home in triumph to his headquarters at Kapiti Island or going marauding with the gleam of conquest in his eye, sometimes beached his waka below the Thistle and dropped in for a pint.

You’ll hear lots of other good stories in the bar.

© DON DONOVAN
 donovan@ihug.co.nz
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