Still old-fashioned value

The intersection of Kings Ave and Tawa St used to be the hub of the Wanganui suburb of Gonville, with a post office and a whole suite of shops. These days there are only three businesses left but they are still going flat tack, and all appeal to people who want old-fashioned value.

Half past two on a summery Thursday afternoon and Gonville's Hospice Shop is humming, the secondhand dealers next door have just unloaded an estate lot of furniture and the Butchart bakery has nearly sold out of pies.

The three businesses ensure their end of Tawa St sports a line of parked cars. And each of them has a special attraction for customers.Gonville's Hospice Shop is large and it's busy, with cars constantly coming and going.

It's one of three in Wanganui, all raising money to supplement the funding the Government provides to Hospice Wanganui.

Since early September it has been managed by Julie Coffey and it has sections for clothes, toys, books, bric a brac and furniture.

Mrs Coffey is the only paid employee, helped by 45 volunteers who spend from half a day to four days a week at the store.

It was originally set up by Marlene Lockett in Alma Rd, in the present hub of Gonville, and was moved to Tawa St about three years ago. Wanganui's other hospice shops are in Wanganui East and Victoria Ave.

Everything in them is donated, and Mrs Coffey said people were exceedingly generous.

She has a background in retail, ran the Salvation Army shop in Lower Hutt for years and had her own craft and gift shop in Victoria Ave in the mid-1990s.

She said she worked more hours than she was paid for, and considered that part of her own giving to hospice.

The shop raised lots of money and had customers from all walks of life.

Some were short of cash and just needed the bargains. Others liked the idea of clothing, books and furniture being used more than once.

Mrs Coffey is one of those. She said she knew how much energy went into making fabric, and had always worn secondhand clothes.

"The biggest sellers are clothes and after that come books. Some people buy books, read them and bring them in and they get sold again and I really like that. It fits in with my belief system."

She has an eye for what's valuable and collectible, and generally sends those items to the boutique hospice shop in Victoria Ave, where they fetch higher prices. But not all of them get there.

"I sometimes slip some through here. People will come back if they've got a bargain."

The shop's large building was formerly part of timber manufacturing business Sovereign Woodworkers, which made pencil cases and rulers inlaid with native timber.

ALSO crammed with pre-loved items of all kinds is the City Furniture Exchange next door - and the hottest item of the moment is preserving jars.

"We sold 150 to two people. Bottling is actually taking off again. Young and old are doing it," owner John Keating said.

He and his wife Sue have been running the store since 1989, and the building was also once part of Sovereign Woodworkers.

Mr Keating took it over from his mother, Betty, who ran the shop with his help for two years after his father, Tom Keating, died. But the business was actually started by Ted Duthie at the Victoria Ave site where the Winz office is now.

It has kept the same name and still sells household goods, tools and appliances, buying most of them from estate and house lots.

The Christmas holidays can be a busy time for the Keatings, as families come home to break up the estates of dead relatives or help elderly ones move into rest homes. This year has been no exception, with four house lots absorbed into the shop or the storage area out back.

"We are chocker," Mr Keating said.

Other product is bought on the phone or brought to the store by sellers, or acquired through Hayward's Auctions.

Sometimes people bring in stolen goods, but he said that hasn't happened much since photographic identification became mandatory.

Buyers come in all shapes and sizes - from teenagers looking to set up flats to farmers who want quality tools. Some of them try to haggle.

"Sometimes if I'm in the mood I will do a deal and other times if it's fresh stock we don't," Mr Keating said.

The strangest thing he's ever sold was a set of false teeth.

"I put them in the window as a joke and some guy came in and wanted to try them on. He stuck them in and they fitted."

The Keatings are both pretty much full-time, and also employ Darren Ahern. Like the Hospice Shop next door, they are open on Saturday mornings.

DON Butchart is the third in four generations of bakers and is still "the clown" who does 10-hour days at Butchart's Bakery & Dairy in the weekends.

He inherited the business from his father, Ian, and passed it on to his son, Cameron, last year.

"That's how I got it and that's how he got it. He can do what he likes with it," the father said.

Mr Butchart expanded the bakery business into the dairy next door during the 1980s. It now employs eight people, some of them part-time, and turns out 17 types of pies, plus sponge cakes, doughnuts, sausage rolls and sandwiches every day.

The filled rolls are big sellers, helped by "my mother's recipe of mayonnaise which people go bonkers on", Mr Butchart said.

Work begins in the early hours when Mike Bishop arrives. Cameron Butchart gets to the kitchen at 5am and female staff arrive still later, to fill the rolls and make the sandwiches.

Butcharts has had 12 wins in the Bakels New Zealand Supreme Pie Awards and the pride of the male bakers prevents them letting women near the oven.

Mr Butchart's dad used to praise his son's cream puffs and chocolate eclairs, and he's continued making them "just to prove I can still do it".

He was brought up in the street during its busy years and remembers watching trams go by.

He said the little shopping centre once had a greengrocer, a butcher, a fish shop, a chemist, a book and toy shop and a large grocery. There was an ice cream cone factory further up the street, as well as Gonville's town hall, lodge and swimming pool.