1952: Kamaka’s Last Drink

June 26, 2023

By AHNZ

In June 1952 the Kamaka Hotel was closed by The State, putting an end to what used to be an important West Coast township. The site is still there today and someone has helpfully put up some information panels on the farm gate. As the founders saw it, Kamaka was on the Grey River but as we would see it Kamaka is on State Highway 7. It’s opposite to the road to the other gold rush settlement, Notown. Ref. 1892: The Doctor of No Town, AHNZ

The owners seems to have surrendered their licence voluntarily because by going quietly there was a chance at government compensation pay-out.

Pubs at this time were under the gun to prove to the government why their license should not be revoked. Guilty until proven innocent!

“It was the most important Grey Valley town in the goldrush days, until it was swallowed by the river. Twelve Mile Landing moved inland, and was later named Kamaka. Today, one farm still proudly displays the name.” – The Vanished Town, display panel at Kamaka (viewed 2022)

“The first West Coast hotel to close since the Licensing Control Commission sat on the West Coast will be the Kamaka Hotel, about 10 miles north of Greymouth. The hotel will close its doors to the public on Monday, June 30, for the last time.” – Ref. Press (13 June 1952,) Papers Past

“I remember biking past the smouldering remains one Sunday morning about 1959-60.” – Tom Hartill, comment to West Coast Recollect

When it was still called 12 Mile Landing and closer to the Grey the town was an essential port. From 1865 it was the way to get people and goods to and from the sea port of Greymouth and this was much in demand thanks to rich deposits of gold in the area. Horse traffic by the hundreds, its own fine warden’s court, shops, and homes, hotels were all at 12 Mile. As is the way of gold rush towns, for example Charleston, the boom did not last. The river turned its back on the town too, shifting the chanel to the wrong side of the river. Ahaura, up stream, became the main port now.

By the 1870 the town was down but not out. It carried on and re-located to the junction of the ‘highway’ and Notown Road. As the old CBD had shots taken out of it by time and by the hungry river the new site was re-named Kamaka in June 1907. Thanks to farming and forrestry, and the railway, there were still families and a community at Kamaka. Before the Great War we see them with their own school and cricket club; The school grounds still “owned” by the Ministry of Educaiton today.

However, by the 1950s Kamaka was down to just the pub. It was one of the little heartland pubs which the West Coast had an abundance of. So simple, the beer was apparently served from a barrel sitting upon the bar and kept cool by the convection of a wet cloth over it.

Then, something happened in June 1952. The re-elected National 1.0 Ministry had a body called the Licensing Control Commission which set about culling all these heritage boutique pubs. The 14-room Kamaka Hotel was the first one in the firing line.

My Anarchist speculation is that National 1.0 were seemingly taking revenge on a Labour voting plantation by shutting down its heartland pubs. Sydney Holland had been re-elected after his Waterfront Strike Snap Election of 1951 and was taking charge. There was lots of power to take back from the Labour Ministry that had ‘run’ New Zealand for 20-odd years. West Coasters, being quite Left-leaning, needed to be brought to heel in such ways as having their pubs squashed. Likewise, when the Waiuta Mine and township down the road from Kamaka needed its license to exist in 1951 the answer here too was “no.” Ref. 1951 Cave In at Waiuta, AHNZ

“Link With Coast’s Boom Days (New Zealand Press Association) GREYMOUTH, August 14. One of the West Coast’s landmarks, the Twelve Mile Hotel at Kamaka, on the main Greymouth Reefton highway, was destroyed by fire to-night. Established in the early gold-boom days when No Town (now a ghost town) was a prosperous nearby centre, the ancient, single-storeyed wooden hotel had its licence cancelled by the Licensing Control Commission about eight years ago.” – Press, August 1958. Papers Past

A pub with no alcohol is no good and soon catches fire. As the Press reported in 1958 the elderly ex-publican Mr Patrick Thomas Mullins was killed by a train passing through Kamaka and within 2 weeks the hotel followed its master into the afterlife.

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Image ref. Moe Bowes, West Coast Recollect

Image ref. Prime Minister of National 1.0, Sydney Holland

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