Addissa Poi Poi (left) and Francis Waihape at new Napier-Wairoa road stop the One Stop Kai Shop Convenience Store at Raupunga. Photo / Paul Taylor
It’s called simply the One Stop Kai Shop Convenience Store, but for the barely 250 people of Raupunga and passers-through it may as well be Buckingham Palace.
The State Highway 2 store, 82km from Napier with 35km to go to Wairoa, opened a week ago, on the site of one of the premises that, comparatively speaking, proliferated back in the days when there was a Post Office and store, a petrol station and garage, a fish ‘n chip shop, and, believe it or not, a small movie theatre, in the 1970s.
But there’s been no store in Raupunga for about 40 years, meaning people have had to travel to Wairoa or Bay View and Napier for the daily supplies of life, such as milk and bread.
For much of the time over the four decades there’s been just one other store on the road, at Tutira, but there were also in the past stores at Putorino and Kotemaori.
The small business hub of Raupunga, in recent years mainly a travellers’ toilet stop at an award-winning latrine across the road, was busy the days when everyone had work and income, and the young guys leaving school could follow in the footsteps of dads, older brothers, and uncles, into jobs with the Ministry of Works, the railway, and, up the road, the forestry.
The main local business now is shearing and farming, and the vineyards, with travellers mainly associating the township as the town just north of the Mohaka Viaduct, the tallest railway viaduct in Australasia, and, of course, the awa that flows beneath the viaduct, the nearby SH2 bridge and out to sea.
Quite when the last business closed its doors seems to be guesswork, although it’s clearly remembered when one of them, no longer used as a store, burnt to the ground in 2016.
It’s that on that site that Nathan Aranui and partner Addissa Poi Poi realised a dream by having a former university classroom transported from Hamilton and opened as the new store on the Thursday before Labour week, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony performed by Nathan’s mum, Maraea, the owner of the site.
It’s been about a six-year project, which saw the building arrive a short while before Cyclone Gabrielle, and final take shape amid a swathe of documented applications and consents.
“When we got it we didn’t realise it was going to be such a mission,” she said.
It also needed the handiwork of the couple, who’ve operated businesses in the area for much of the last two decades.
They had 10 years in kiwifruit contracting, Aranui had a rural recycling contract, and the couple started running a gym at the local hauora (health centre).
The plan from the start was for early starts – 5am, for the truck drivers – and to establish a diverse range of supplies and food, from the stables of country and corner dairy fare to their own hangi and pāua pies.
Tuesday was a big hit, with the community emptying the lolly jars ahead of the Halloween treks of the community’s children.
Nathan Aranui grew up across the road and had long thought about reopening a store, while couple had also noted the numbers of trucks stopping in the layby for drivers to check their vehicles and loads or use the public amenities.
Maraea owned the site with late husband Ariel, and the petrol station and garage was operated by the Bill Adsett, with stories of the days flooding through the door with seemingly almost every customer, some of them travelling from as far as Frasertown and Mahia, just for he pies, says Poi Poi, who grew up in Napier suburb Maraenui and met Aranui after moving to Wairoa.
“A lot of people share their stories,” she said. “It’s great. We love it.”
They access supplies through delivery by such concerns as Star Foods in Napier and Bid Foods in Whakatu, but they still have to go to Wairoa for such things as the Tip Top ice-creams from Gisborne, and are on the lookout for others travelling the road regularly to help with other stock when necessary.
The word’s spread quickly, by mouth and by social media, and by the weekend it was all on.
“Sunday was crazy,” she said, saying the hāngī packs and pies all went, and there could have been more if she and assistant Francis Waihape didn’t need to close by 6pm to make sure they have time to bake and be ready for the early start the next morning.
The irony of running the kai shop and a gym isn’t lost, and she quips: “Gain the calories here, and lose them there.”
Ngaire Huata, who runs Pahauwera Shearing with husband Boy Culshaw, said there were some good other thigs happening in the area, including a recent hunting competition which attracted several hundred people, and the local Black Power chapter’s hosting of a rugby league challenge trophy match and a netball tournament, attended by even more.