A tale of two pubs

The tale of two pubs

 

I chose to bring you one of my early watercolors portraying the two hotels on the corner of TeNgawai Road and the Main Highway at Pleasant Point. around the year 1910.

For those who don't know where the village of Pleasant Point is located, it can be found about 12 kilometers north along the Main Highway between Timaru and Mt Cook/ Mt Aoraki in the Mackenzie Country of New Zealand.

Pleasant Point became one of several stopping places along the way by those early settlers who were game enough, pushed inland in he 1850s and 60s.  There were no roads, just tracks and very little in the way of accommodation. I don't want to bore you with all the history of this particular site, however I must tell you of the fire in the Railway Hotel in 1911, that is the read brick building to the right of the TeNgawai Rd corner.  On the night of that fire, one particular gent, who rented a room in the hotel on the left, had indulged more than he should have in the bar.  They say he was carried up to his room on the second floor.  Later that evening he was aroused by a voice shouting, Fire!...   Fire!   Still under the weather and thinking a fire was about to engulf him, he rushed to his bedroom window and dived out.    He sobered up in a hurry, for he broke his leg in the fall.  It was only then, he found it was the  hotel across the street was engulfed in flames.    Bugger.