Your shout!

It’s a scenario playing out all over the country: earthquake building standards and the changing way we socialise are seeing a popular Kiwi icon - the pub! - slipping into extinction. So it’s great to see two grand old dames of the local hotel scene alive and kicking in Whakatāne!

There was a time not too long ago that the pub was the heart of small town New Zealand, a place to catch up on gossip, quench your thirst after a hard day’s yakka, eat out, and maybe meet your significant other. Any self-respecting pub featured several bars - the obligatory public bar, a lounge bar, and possibly a sportsman’s bar - as well as a dining room and accommodation for the ubiquitous-at-the-time travelling salesmen. And while any self-respecting one horse town had a pub, the mark of a truly great town was a bevy of boozers to choose from.

Back in the day, Whakatāne had three. One has long since passed into folklore, but the Commercial Hotel and Whakatāne Hotel are still to be found in the town’s CBD, busy and brilliant reminders of a golden era.

The Commercial Hotel – popularly known as The Comm – is actually the second watering hole to grace the current location. In 1893 a Mr E L Smith, eager to capitalize on the wealth of a growing Whakatāne, was granted a hotel license in March with the proviso that his establishment be in operation by June. With no time to spare, he acquired a hotel from the Coromandel goldfields - where the gold was running out and the pubs were going cheap - and had it dismantled and put aboard a ship.

The Commerce Hotel, Whakatāne, c.1908, Whakatane Museum.

As with most building projects the reassembly of the building was soon behind schedule and Mr Smith stood to lose his license if he didn’t complete his end of the bargain. Not to be stopped, he erected just the doorframe and door, complete with nameplate and sign, and declared himself open for business. The liquor licensee must have been a man of excellent humour, as he quietly ignored the fact that the rest of the ‘Hotel’ was a pile of lumber, turned a blind eye, and the beer flowed.

Once completed, the original building served the town well and passed through several owners, one of whom died there together with seven of his staff and guests in the 1918 influenza, and it was also common folklore that Te Kooti was a regular drinker there in the later years of his life. In 1939, the old Hotel was demolished and a new Commercial Hotel rose in its place.

Bank of New Zealand, 1939.

It was in that same year that the Whakatāne Hotel was built. It too replaced an older structure as there had been licensed premises on that site since the 1870s, and one story has it that, like the original Comm, one of these establishments arrived on a ship from the Coromandel. In this case, however, the pub was destined for farther up the coast and was only staying in Whakatāne to wait for a storm to pass, but in a heated late night card game the ship’s master used the pub as collateral on what he was certain was a winning hand. It wasn’t and the pub stayed in Whakatāne.

The Whakatāne Hotel was built in 1939 fancied itself as a cut above The Comm, with ‘remarkable incandescent bulbs’ and proudly advertising that it had a ferry connection across the river, though passengers found themselves conveyed across by what contemporary photos clearly show was just a row boat.

The Commercial Hotel, 1939. Whakatane Museum Collection.

Bank of New Zealand, today.

The two pubs enjoyed a long and (usually) friendly rivalry. ‘The Whaka’, as it was commonly known, scored a coup when it played host to the cast and crew of the 1954 film The Seekers, the first colour feature made in New Zealand, which was partly shot on location in Whakatāne. A hint of sexual abandon and big screen scandal rippled through the town when one of the stars - Laya Raki an ‘exotic’ actress of ‘mysterious island origins’ - took to spending her evenings draped on the windowsill of an upper floor room while smoking cigarettes. So many of Whakatāne’s young men took to spending their evenings draped on the bonnets of cars in the street below that a nearby cobbler opened after hours so as to give them an excuse to be there. The cobbler promptly made a tidy sum from unnecessary shoe and boot repairs - and Laya Raki turned out to be one Brunhilde Marie Alma Herta Jörns from Hamburg, Germany, but she stayed in character throughout her visit and in the days before Google no one appears to have been any the wiser.

In the early 1970s the Commercial expanded into the BNZ building that had been its neighbour for many years, and this corner location became ‘The Comm’ that we know today. It has been recently refurbished, and both Whakatane’s fine old watering holes are still perfect locations to quench your thirst - or for a trip into New Zealand’s past.

The Strand and Whakatāne Hotel in the 1960s; the fountain - loved by some, loathed by others - was removed in 1987.

The Commercial Hotel at left and the Bank of New Zealand at right, c. 1939. Whakatane Museum Collection, P658