Sober new era for historic pub site - Police call ``time' on old pub

by Peter de Graaf
A 140-year-long chapter of Northland drinking history is officially about to come to an end.
From the 1860s until 2006 the corner of Walton and Cameron streets was frequented by thirsty Whangareivians in need of a cold pint - their imbibing broken only by the fires or demolition crews that in turn levelled each of the five pubs on the site.
On February 20 the corner starts a fresh chapter when Whangarei police take over their shiny new station.
They will move from the old Cameron St base over the following three days in time for the official opening of the $22.5 million building on February 24.
Whangarei's top cop, Inspector Paul Dimery, said the opening would be "as big as we can make it without going over the top.
"The old building was well past its use-by date. The new one will take police forward for the next 30-40 years.
"It's been designed by police right from the beginning to give us what we want," Mr Dimery said.
Apart from being big enough to have all 180 staff under one roof - instead of being scattered in four buildings across the city - the new station is designed to be more "community-friendly", for example by separating people reporting crimes from those reporting on bail.
"I'm looking forward to getting out of a building that leaks, that has mould on the walls and is falling apart ... but I'm really looking forward to having all the staff in one place."
Mr Dimery praised the patience of police staff for putting up with a run-down building for far longer than expected.
"They've waited a long, long time for this, and it's going to be a great day when it opens," Mr Dimery said.
A new station was mooted in 1999 but stalled in 2004 when the then Whangarei District Council backed out of a deal to sell the police a block of land on Vine St.
That block is now occupied by a carpark and a TAB.
Design work for the Settlers Hotel site started in mid-2006, with bad weather and "extended testing" of floor panels delaying the project by about three months.
The new station will have meal and meeting rooms, a gymnasium, 20 cells and enough space to allow a 15 per cent expansion in the force.
But, unlike the old station, the one thing it won't have - a departure from the site's history, and a sign of changing times - is a bar.
Regional police headquarters will remain at Walton Plaza on Walton St.
The Cameron St site will be returned to the Government for the Crown land bank.
* Cheers! A little history sip-slides away
We may never know which thirsty pioneer downed the first pint at the Settlers Hotel site in Whangarei, or when.
What is known - thanks to a sketch by one Robert Reyburn - is that a modest house on the corner of Walton and Cameron streets was operating as a hotel as early as 1860.
In 1865, George Naylor bought two lots on the corner for 65 and built a two-storey hotel with a shingle roof and a verandah along Walton St.
He was granted a "bush licence" and announced the opening with an advertisement in the Northern Advocate.
The hotel was also the informal headquarters for Whangarei's cricket team - who played on a paddock across the road - and the setting of one of the town's premier social occasions, the Gumdiggers Ball.
A fire in June 1874 razed the hotel, leaving Mr Naylor's widow to sell the smouldering site for 175.
A certain Robert Thompson built a new Settlers Hotel in 1875, which was destroyed in one of the fires that raged down Cameron St in 1899 and 1900.
The third hotel, pictured, was built early in the 20th century and served the owners' Ehrenfried Beer.
The fourth hotel was by far the biggest - a two-storey brick and concrete building that ran the length of Walton St block between Cameron and Hannah streets. It was built in 1923.
The fourth incarnation was an early casualty of leaky building syndrome, thanks to the sea sand used to make the mortar.
It was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with a modest tavern in 1969, demolished in turn in 2006 to make way for the police station.