Tairua robbery leaves town without its much-loved ATM in a phone box

A 1938 phone box was destroyed in Tairua on July 22 and thieves stole the ATM machine housed inside it.

Tairua residents are lamenting the loss of their quirky ATM in a 1938 phone box after thieves destroyed both.

Police confirm they responded to reports of the theft of an ATM from a phone box on Main Rd at about 3.30am on July 22.

“A vehicle was used to gain access, and take the ATM. The broken ATM was located in the river near Tapu Rd, empty over the weekend. Police are following lines of enquiry into the incident,” a police spokesperson said.

Tairua resident Julie Palmer said she regularly used the ATM and the bench that was beside it and it was “just sad”.

“It’s kind of a sad thing, it was [almost] 100 years old, everyone loved it, it had a seat next to it and it has just got totally demolished. I liked to use [that ATM] because it was handy, it was really convenient. There is another one, but that one looked really nice and I really liked that.”

She said some of her local customers found the ATM and alerted police to it.

A story from Coastal News in 2017 when the 1938 phone box was installed at Tairua. It was destroyed on July 22 when thieves stole the ATM machine housed inside it. Photo / NZME

Palmer doubted it would be replaced because of the prevalence of that type of crime all over the country.

The bright red 1938 telephone box was transformed into a money machine and installed in Tairua’s main street in June 2017, making it one of the most unusual ATMs in the country.

It was the brainchild of local commercial property landlord Gavin Morris, who had retired in 2009 and returned to Tairua after several years spent sailing.

At the time he said the town “just needed something different”.

“The town needed another ATM because the current ones are always seeming to run out of money at certain times of the year, and the whole concept was to come up with something that attracts tourists.

“There’s nothing that we can find in the world that has been done like this. We’ve seen them in the UK with the back cut totally but nothing which is standalone.”

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Palmer said they had been unable to contact Morris to tell him the sad news.

The telephone box was an original one from 1938 and the only major change was to alter the exterior sign from telephone to money ATM. It took cards for most major banks and was positioned close to the Tairua Information Centre and Tairua Stationery shop.

This is a Public Interest Journalism funded role through NZ On Air