Whanganui’s town centre can amaze visitors - Rob Rattenbury

While Whanganui lives with its history, people coming into town find it is like stepping back in time, writes Rob Rattenbury. Photo / Bevan Conley

OPINION

So the tree is down, and the decorations are put away for another 12 months.

Heaps of Christmas cake left to enjoy over the coming weeks, soaking in its brandy. Summer is now here to be enjoyed without all that retail pressure and worry about how Christmas Day will go.

For many January and February are the months that the bills start arriving for those retail therapy trips we undertook in November and December. The credit cards have had a bit of a pounding and now it’s time to pay the piper.

Hopefully, the music is still pleasant to hear. I guess some of us will be planning budgets to pay off debt in the coming months, a little bit here and a little bit there. As my mum used to call it, “on the never, never”.

It’s how most of us operate or did operate over the years. Trying to make Christmas and New Year as wonderful as possible for everybody.

Those decisions made in November and December, even Boxing Day, will be starting to come home to roost about now.

Some may have over-committed and will need some help to cope. Luckily Whanganui has a very good, non-judgmental Budget Advisory Service that is accessible to all of us if we need them.

The new year is here with all its possibilities and plans.

I am always planning purchases. I want a new television. Our old one is bravely trying to deal with all the new technology that is out there now as I am as well. It’s maybe time it went into well-deserved retirement. It can’t quite cope with all the streaming channels I’d like.

I guess it will at some stage end up with Jim O’Neill and his Grumpy Old Men out at Hinau Street, getting recycled or reassigned.

Jim is an old mate and is best known as “Mr Paving” from the days that the lower blocks of Victoria Avenue were beautifully re-developed in the early 1990s.

He also paved most of the section at the love cottage on the hill quite a few years ago now, bringing our place into the 21st century.

Jim and his crew do a sterling service fundraising to help various groups in Whanganui by breaking down and recycling or selling the innards of all our electrical appliances that are no long wanted.

Talking about the rejuvenation of Victoria Ave, this included the old Rutland Hotel which had been through quite a few reincarnations by the early 1990s and was much in need of some tender loving care and some imagination.

It became what we see today at the same time as the avenue got its spruce up, a lovely old English-style pub following the theme of its name and its history.

One of the pubs that catered for the British military units based in Whanganui at the York and Rutland stockades at the time of the New Zealand Wars and prior to that as well.

The Rutland is only one of the beautiful old buildings re-purposed in our town centre.

We delight in taking out-of-town visitors around the place, usually at some point having a meal in the pub.

Visitors are really surprised to see the gracious oldness of our town centre, theirs mostly all gone under the demolition hammers.

We did the tour just last week with an old school friend of mine from Wellington.

The Old Town, the river and the avenue. He is much travelled and has been living in the UK for some years until recently. Whanganui reminded him of his home in Britain.

I guess, whilst we live with the history of our place and probably take it a bit for granted, people coming into town find it is like stepping back into time, but in a good way.