It's lunchtime on Wednesday and the bar is abuzz with the crack of pool balls and the melody and clatter of pokie machines in session.
"This is a community hub. Everything happens here," she says.
Live music on Friday nights, pool tournaments and Hikurangi Anglers Club meets.
The asking price for the hotel, which is being marketed by First National's Allan Inglis, has dropped from its original price of $340,000 in 2008, to $250,000 in 2012 and now $199,000. The property, including the village green and car park, is owned by Auckland investor Hashid Singh. The lease has another four years with right of renewal for another 10 years. Melva reckons the hotel and grounds would cost about $1 million to buy outright.
A photo of snooker and pool champ Eddie Charlton is pinned to a wall behind the bar. Above it, a one-metre-long whale penis hangs from the ceiling, looking more like a beaten up baseball bat than a 1897 whale member.
"We get lots of tourists coming in to have their photo taken with it."
It was removed from the last bull whale to be processed at Whangamumu in Northland and loaned to the hotel by Des Pickles. Mr Pickles had never reclaimed the phallic ornament and Melva says "it was now part of the chattels".
Other memorabilia circling the bar's patrons while they sup beer are a number of menacing boar and deer heads, two stuffed ducks in flying motion, two stuffed pheasants and a dozen boar husks, as well as a gigantic swordfish - the spoils of local weightlifting legend and hunting enthusiast Peter Wedge and his brother Noel.
Fifty metal trays surround the walls too, also for gratis with the nine bedrooms, outdoor garden bar, bottle store, free standing TAB with 13 pokie machines, the restaurant, two bars and kitchen.
The hotel was built in 1880 when Hikurangi township, established in 1862 when 12,000 acres was purchased by the District Commissioner of Lands from local Maori, was a centre for milling timber and digging kauri gum.
It was made from two buildings - the two-storey accommodation portion a boarding house from up the road which was moved on skids to where it now stands on King St.
The township has seen some flooding and Melva says she once spotted an old photo of the hotel with a dinghy floating in flood waters outside the local watering hole.
"The kitchen once went on fire, I was told. The entire maids' quarters were in flames but it burnt right through to the water tank. It quenched itself."
Melva hopes to sell the lot for cash and move to Tauranga, where she can spend time with her three grandchildren and two children.
"I have a daughter and son down there - Napier and Tauranga."
Her son spent some time serving in Iraq with the NZ Police in 2008.
"He called me once, from there, and he was saying 'the rockets are starting to land, I have to go'. I never knew if those chats and his words would be his last to me. Then he'd phone me back 30 minutes later, calm as you like."
She said she wanted to spend more time with her family.
