For sale - a community's heart

The Ongarue Store serves a township of 30, plus 80 or 90 country families. Now it needs a buyer. PATRICK GOWER visits a unique piece of our vanishing rural history.

If the doors of Ongarue Store are shut when you get there, just toot your horn for service.

So reads the opening hours sign tacked to the front door of the general store that has served the tiny King Country township for the best part of a century.

A For Sale sign is also pinned on the shop.

Owners Allan and Sheryl Clark are stepping aside after eight years behind the counter, hoping someone else will keep the doors open to help preserve what is clearly a dying breed - the once-ubiquitous rural general store.

"It is all about lifestyle - don't go expecting to make your fortune here," says Mr Clark.

With a population of no more than 30, Ongarue is a far cry from its heyday, when it had around 1000 residents and a timber mill and was a stop on the main trunk line.

Then there was a cinema, a butcher, a bakery, a farmers trading co-op, boarding houses, a number of residential dwellings - even a billiards saloon.

But the mill is gone and the train doesn't stop on the main trunk line any more. The tennis pavilion is now a chookhouse-cum-pigsty and the postmaster's building is the (now defunct) rugby club.

All that really remains is the store, and the 27-pupil Ongarue School, which is gearing up for its centennial celebrations next year. The Clarks' 10-year-old daughter, Therisa, is a pupil.

Les MacMillan, who has lived in the area for all his 70-odd years, said he would dearly love a new storekeeper to come to town.

"Even though you can't get everything under the sun there like you once could, it is still a heck of a lot handier than going all the way into Taumarunui."

Although just 25km from Taumarunui, and a further 50km from Te Kuiti, it is too far for the sales reps, who seem to have deserted the town before the storekeepers.

It costs the Clarks 6c more a litre to get wholesale petrol delivered than it costs the ordinary urban dweller at the pump - meaning regular trips to the servo (service station to city people) in town with a large drum.

The other goods are the same - often cheaper to buy at Pak 'N Save in Taupo or Hamilton than wholesale.

"That leaves only us here for the convenience of the community really, and it doesn't take long until you pretty well know what will go off the shelves and what won't."

And what does sell best?

Newspapers and milk of course, then there are cigarettes, peanut slabs, a few copies of Woman's Day - all booked up on accounts kept behind the counter.

Thrown into the deal is the rural delivery to the 80 or 90 "nearby" families - it is nearly a 1000km round trip every week - that has seen Mr Clark travel nearly 500,000km since he has been the postie.

"Don't come if you don't like driving," he says.

And then there's Friday night - takeaway night, when the Clarks are rushed off their feet cooking up orders booked in 10-minute slots between 5 pm and 8 pm.

"Some ring in wanting the same time slot and the same order every week since we have been here, and probably before, and I like to throw them in some free mussels or something."

When they became the storekeepers, the Clarks got an ageing German shepherd thrown in. They will now sell the store complete with the rural delivery and truck, five pigs, 20 or so sheep, chickens and three goats from over the road.

The store has been on the market for four months, and, with just a couple of calls and no takers, Mr Clark says he is now more than ready to talk turkey.

A reasonable offer is all it will take to keep the doors open. Just toot if no one's there.