DUVAUCHELLE HAS EARLY PENINSULA HOTEL

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33147, 10 February 1973, Page 12

DUVAUCHELLE HAS EARLY PENINSULA HOTEL

(By

E. R. G. DOBBIE)

There is not much call these days for a punt service for passengers between Akaroa and Duvauchelle, and it is unlikely that the Licensing Committee will make its provision a condition for the new owners of the hotel at Duvauchelle as was the case when the pub was established in the early 1850 s. Sold recently by Mr G. J. Barnard to a Christchurch group, the Crown Hotel, known to the locals as The Bricks, but first as the Traveller’s Rest and later the Somerset, is one of Canterbury’s oldest, having been on the same site since, probably, 1852. In its lusty past, the hotel was twice burnt down. It first served a hard-drinking lot of timber-millers and boat-builders who worked at Duvauchelle and Barry’s Bay, where the population in the late 1850 s probably exceeded 300. Early records are scanty,

but it is known that Jonas, John and William Pawson, who started cutting timber at Duvauchelle (Pawson’s Valley is named after the family) about 1850. provided the timber for the first hotel. John Pawson held its licence in 1857. The first documented hint of the hotel is in a Canterbury Provincial Government Gazette, which, in an electoral roll for 1854, gives the names of Alfred Silk and G. Tribe, publicans, Head of the Bay, Akaroa. Not much is known of Silk, or, as some would have it, Saleck or Selig, but he had a wine and beer licence at “River Street, Heathcote,” in 1861. First licence George Tribe was almost certainly the money man, Silk running the pub for him. After Pawson, John Andersen ran the place, then officially known as Andersen’s Accommodation House. In 1860 or 1861, the building was destroyed by fire. Benjamin Shadbolt bought the property, and rebuilt almost immediately. He or

his family held the licence for f more than 20 years. Shadbolt was a man of parts, who had come to the Head of the Bay, as that part of Duvauchelle was then known, in 1855. He had a family of eight sons and six daughters. He bought Pawsons’ saw-mill and cut millions of feet of superb timber between the water’s edge and the skyline in the whole basin between the Pigeon Bay and Little Akaloa saddles. He had a 1000-acre estate. Road board chairman He grew cocksfoot in a big way, was the local butcher, store-keeper and stock-leader, a prominent horseman (he paid 300 guineas for a thoroughbred in Melbourne) and was for many years chairman of the Akaroa and Wainui Road Board. His imposing old home, on the little flat near the creek 200 yards from the hotel, was demolished in the 19505. Shadbolt’s first licence was

issued in 1861 in the name of the Traveller’s Rest, Head of the Bay, Akaroa. Duvauchelle in those days was connected by tracks to Little River, Pigeon Bay, Akaroa and some of the other bays, and sea travel was much easier. Punt service That is why the licence, like the earlier ones issued for the pub, contained a clause requiring the licensee to provide not only six beds for travellers and a shed for at least two horses, but “to keep at all times a safe ferry boat (punt) in good working order for the conveyance of passengers between the town of Akaroa and the head of the harbour.”

He had to provide the service during hours of daylight, and the fare was set at 5s for a single passenger, or 3s 6d a head when there was more than one passenger. Free transport had to be given to officers of the Supreme Court, magistrates, police constables on duty and prisoners, but bailiffs and persons serving civil processes had to pay. In addition — and this was a cause of much contention with isolated hotel keepers—the licencee had to be sworn in, act as a special constable and co-operate with the law. Shadbolt’s pub was burned down in 1882 at the same time as fires were started by an incendiarist in Akaroa hotels and in the Pig and Whistle at Little Akaloa. Never caught, the person responsible was described as “a sobering influence." Shadbolt had died by then, but his widow rebuilt, in brick, without delay, as the hotel, if its more raffish days were over, stood next to the Duvauchelle coaching stables which were the headquarters for the services started in 1873 from Akaroa to Christchurch (later onlv to Little River) and to Pigeon Bay, which lasted until 1911. By the turn of the century, the Duvauchelle hotel had become respectable, and had gained a reputation as a good place to take the family for a pleasant holiday. Many of the older generation will remember the hospitality of noted hosts Joseph Gaskin and Martin Dunn. In the days before 10 o’clock closing, The Bricks retained, like the Akaroa pubs, a delightful independence to the licensing laws, the east coast version of the sensible West Coast belief the pubs were for drinking, when one wanted to. Local rules Not so many years ago. the clocks in the pubs at Akaroa' and Duvauchelle stopped two minutes before 6 p.m. and the police-sanc-tioned rule was strict, if discriminatory — no Maoris after hours, and no “townies” on Sundavs. Otherwise, behave yourself. Friday and Saturday nights were likn they are now, but they went on later. Perhans until 20 vears ago, the Banks Peninsula branch of Federated Fanners used to meet in the cosv back lounge at The Bricks, with the hatch opening regularly for refreshments to be passed in from the oasis. During one of the periodic “flans” about stricter enforcement. the branch was told that it was. in fact, meeting on licensed premises after hours, and while a special licence could be obtained it might' be better . . . The meetings moved *o the draughty, teetotal hall. Again in the not-so-distant past, a well-known farmer, narched bv the long drive home from Christchurch, nulled up at The Pricks at 10 p.m., and. finding th o nlace in darkness, stepped back on to the road and yelled for service. Out of the shadows of the Peninsula Salevards Company buildings opposite came the man in blue with words of advice and caution. The farmer, the story goes, left Duvauchelle and was revived at an Akaroa hostelry. But Duvauchelle has changed, though locals can tell stories about more modem happenings and the lively imagination of Gerry Barnard. In its new guise, altered and — that ghastly word — modernised, The Bricks may never be the same again.