You may have to buy the pub
LET’S be serious for just a moment as our topic is too important for flippancy. What’s happening to Otago’s great old gold fields pubs? They are disappearing, that’s what. There are none left in Queenstown, and at Arthur’s Point a dusty demolition site is all that remains. A year ago a Chinaman in Auckland released his plans for a pub near Arthur’s Point. It was to have ‘‘124 basementlevel car parks and, at ground level, 17 car parks and six coach parks as well as 102 serviced apartments.’’ Not really an oldtime gold fields pub where the weary miner drops in for a Speight’s after a hard day at the claim.
Just along the road, the old Sportsman’s Arms, a fine old pub run by Patrick Gantley in the 1880s, is being distorted into some kind of ‘‘Grill and Fireworks Smokehouse’’ by yet another Auckland crowd.
At Arrowtown, only the New Orleans pub survives and Cromwell has only one oldtimer, the Victoria Arms, above water, Lake Dunstan having drowned the pub at Lowburn and two of the old pubs in the main street.
And now Clyde’s Dunstan Hotel is doomed, say the rumours. The locals should have bought the place if they were really concerned, says the land agent.
If we no longer have a pub on the Dunstan Hotel site we will have a loss of a heritage link which would bring tears to the eyes of a publican. In 1862, almost at the very moment that the gold rush to the Dunstan was under way, famed entertainer George Buckingham set up Clyde’s first hotel on that very corner. His calico shanty was called the United States Hotel and there his family, which include the renowned Rosetta, entertained the miners. (The infamous Bully Hayes becomes part of the story when the Buckinghams moved to Arrowtown.) By 1866 John Cox had built the Port Phillip Hotel on the site after a gale blew down the United States Hotel and a procession of publicans followed. Destroyed by fire in 1900 the old hotel was replaced by William Pitches with the present stone building which was renamed the Commercial Hotel. During the 20th century there were many owners, with some, like Bill Annan of the 1960s, becoming local legends.
You see, mentioning the publican’s name is part of the oldtime pub ritual. You will know the old story of the keen young bloke from Central Otago who came home after a year of OE and fronts up at his old pub. ‘‘Where’ve you been?’’ asks a local. ‘‘London,’’ replies the proud traveller. ‘‘Oh, yeah.
Who’s got the pub there now?’’
Old pubs were known as ‘‘Tom’s’’ or ‘‘Fred’s’’. My favourite example is Fred Moynihan’s Danseys Pass Hotel. Fred and his wife Maytal ran the pub for years and one time in the 1970s a bunch of us were staying there for a few days in the middle of winter. After a superb roast dinner, Fred announced that he and Maytal were off to a dance at the Kyeburn Hall and suggested we jot down what drinks we had and settle up in the morning. Could our Chinaman from Auckland handle that at his 210apartment palace at Arthur’s Point?
Those old pubs were of their time, of course, and thrived in the days when there was nowhere else to get a drink and when drinking and driving was rather more common than now.
Today there are halfadozen places to eat and drink in Clyde and the modern traveller probably has no idea of the charms of an oldfashioned pub where you would always find a bunch of oldtimers happy to tell you yarns and lies and something of the history of the place.
Travelling on from Clyde, some good old gold towns still offer something like a traditional pub. Alexandra, once the home of a Bottom, Top and Middle pub, still has a Middle Pub (the Criterion Club), but real pubs have fared better as you head up the Manuherikia. Chatto Creek, Omakau’s Commercial and Blacks at Ophir are all fine pubs with proud histories and great food. The Vulcan at St Bathans is worldfamous, and along the way the pubs at Lauder and Becks are still in business.
In Maniototo we haven’t lost a pub in recent times but the threat of closure is always there. In some small towns the locals are prepared to buy the pub if they have to, just to keep the social centre open.
At Macrae’s, with help from Oceana Gold who donated the pub to a local trust, the famous Stanley’s Hotel continues with a free lease.
Clyde didn’t find such a sponsor or put up the cash to buy the pub. The locals bemoaning the passing of the Dunstan Hotel may well have only themselves to blame.