In small towns the local store is often the first to go when times get tough and Patearoa lost its store as long ago as 1998, not an unusual story in the country.
Around Maniototo, stores have faced uncertain times. Both Waipiata stores, Hore’s and Macdonald’s, are long-demolished and the Wedderburn store is but a memory.
Naseby, once thriving as the commercial centre of the plain, is lucky to have a busy, revitalised general store in recent times and, of course, Gilchrist’s store in Oturehua continues to thrive and is now the oldest continuous trading store of its type in New Zealand, dating back to 1902.
Patearoa put up a good fight for 130 years. John Bremner set up one of his many goldfields shanty shops in Sowburn in the mid-1860s. Bremner’s shops also sold liquor so the connection between pubs and shops is a long one.
John "The Real McKay" McKay, who built a short-lived pub in 1886, had a store run by Ben Washer who had been a miner at Cambrians. "Crockery Bob" McSkimming and his wife, Ellen, ran this store from 1888 to 1918 by which time Bob was ready to devote his time to full-time farming.
On the other side of the river next to the other pub, another store operated from 1903, often run by the publican. Rather mysteriously, this store burned down the day after the pub was destroyed by fire in 1927. Publican Arthur Keegan rebuilt the pub and moved what had been the old church and school to a section next to the pub and leased it as a store to Bill Thurlow.
Ex-publican Jim Kennedy used his stables as something of a shop in the 1930s, sometimes selling fish and most memorably shipping up ice cream brought from Dunedin by train to Waipiata in green canvas containers and becoming the township’s hero dishing out almost-ready-to-melt ice creams to the kids enticed away from their swimming in the Sowburn.
Alan Jopp had the real shop in 1948; then Alan Hilton in 1954 who sold in the same year to Bob Harborow, a wartime air force pilot, who drove his Volkswagen van around the district making deliveries. Those were the days when cockies settled up their accounts two or three times a year and the shopkeeper was not too dissimilar to the old-time goldfields merchant who grubstaked the miners until they hit on some gold.
The post office was moved next to the store in 1967, and the storekeepers became postmasters. The community bought the store in 1984 to make sure it wasn’t lost when Bob sold up.
It’s a bit like the way the community worked on buying the pub last year to avoid its closure, this time to no avail.
From 1984, store lessees were Pat McAuley and then Stan and Frances Barclay. In 1988 Pattie and Kit O’Malley kept the shop ticking over and publican Bill Warren did the honours during 1990-91.
Then came Lee and Gary Watson in 1992, and Christine and Brian Thompson from 1993 to 1998. The post office had closed in 1996 and, with that, the shop’s future was uncertain. The Thompsons closed the store in September 1998, and the community used the premises briefly as a craft shop, calling it "Crockery Bob’s" as a nod to pioneer shopkeeper and hawker, Bob McSkimming.
By 2003 it seemed the end must be near and demolition was talked of. Instead, Rosemary and Graham Johnston bought it and since then it has undergone magnificent restoration as a holiday home but still proudly labelled "Patearoa Store".
In recent times retail therapy has been available at Gaylene Flamank’s Bunny Lane gift shop but that has simply whetted the appetite for more.
More came with last week’s opening of The Patearoa Trading Post in the pub building.
While ex-publicans Lewis and Sarah Norman continue to raise their family and offer accommodation, Laura Macauley presides over the old bar, now the Patearoa Trading Post, stocked with intriguing stuff, including antiques, almost as intriguing as the collection of antiques and odd characters who once drank there.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
