Just 1min 50.01sec later, the all-Otago team of Melville, Hunter, Stephen Lunn and Dick Tayler set a national record which still stands today.
When Bruce ''Blondie'' Hunter, a former Waitaki Boys' High School pupil and All Black winger, stopped the clock at 7min 27.2sec in 1971, almost 10sec had been shaved off the national 4x800m record.
The Otago team's record is the fourth-oldest in New Zealand athletics history.
Only Peter Snell's 1962 800m record (1min 44.3sec), Bill Ballie's 1963 one-hour record (20.19km) and Bob Thomas' 1968 long jump record (8.05m) are older. Stuart Melville (65), who represented New Zealand in the 800m at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, said the record-breaking run in Dunedin was the team's second attempt at the record.
''We did it at night after work because generally the Caledonian was a pretty breezy place on a Saturday,'' Melville, now an accountant, said.
''We picked a night so we could have a go at it. The first time we did OK, but obviously thought we could do better and had another go at it.''
Just weeks before the record attempt, Hunter won gold and Melville bronze in the 800m at the national athletics championships.
Dick Tayler, who is now based in Christchurch, was also in good form - having won silver in the 1500m at the same championships.
''I had been running against Bruce, Dick and Steve [Lunn] almost every week,sometimes at different distances. But when an 800m came up, we would have a go at each other.
''And the focus for us was on getting reasonable results in the Otago championships so we would be selected, believe it or not, to go to the national championships.''
Lunn ran the first 800m on the night of the record in 1min 52.1sec, before handing off to Tayler, a 1500m to 10,000m specialist.
Tayler clocked 1min 52.7sec, before Melville ran his two laps in 1min 52.3sec.
''I handed it off to Bruce for the final leg,'' Melville said.
''He was the top dog at that particular stage. He was running really well, so we hoped he would bring it home satisfactorily.''
Melville, who stopped seriously competing in 1977, said the idea to have a go at the record came about on a training run.
Coached by former Otago Daily Times reporter Alistair McMurran, Melville ran about 80km a week at the time, and did the majority of his running with Tayler.
In addition to racking up mileage, they did a lot of speed work, repetition sprints and time trials.
Melville was involved in another national record, which still stands today, four years later. He was a part of the 4x1500m relay team with Olympic medallists Dick Quax, John Walker and Rod Dixon that clocked 14min 50.2sec in Auckland in 1975.
Neither the 4x800m nor the 4x1500m relay are frequently run, one reason both records still stand.
''Being realistic, there have been very few attempts. But I do remember one or two within the decade [1970s],'' Melville said.
Two Otago teams and a Canterbury team ran the 4x800m relay at the Otago championships at the Caledonian Ground in December. Otago's Anthony Trainor (20), Andrew Smith (16), Kirk Madgwick (19) and David Catherwood (32) won in 8min 43.98sec.
