April 21, 2026 • 20 mins
While talking stories of lost cars (listen to the full show podcast), Cris' mention of Carnarvon Station in Dunedin caused Mike to phone in with the origin to the much-loved restaurant.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Marcus lush Night's podcast from News
Talks AB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Good Evening Mirket's Marcus welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yeah, hi there. Yes, I was the original designer and
the builder of Canalvin Station Undernea.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Okay, flip you still got the designs.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Well, it was all done with crayon and yeah on
the floor.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Because so that the original pub was a three story pub.
Was it within there that it was or was it
a building outside of that?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
No, what happened was Wilson Neil That was the first
hotel they bought. They were retailers of lequer and originally
the breweries came in and took away all their business,
so they decided to go re detail. They didn't have
an outlet at that end of town, so the opportunity
(01:13):
came up to buy the Prince of Wales Hotel, which
didn't have a bottle store, but there was a vacant
building next door, and the building next door had a
lower level on Princess Street that we turned into a
bottle store, but that left the upstairs area that was
a level with the top floor of the Prince of
(01:37):
Wales's next door and access to that was from Hope Street.
Which was higher up, so that meant the street was
level with that floor. On the second level of that floor. Now,
that used to be a massive truck servicing area and
(02:00):
the trucks used to drive in there and be serviced.
So we had this big vacant area. So we didn't
know what to do with it. So we thought, well,
you know, we could put a restaurant in there, and
we will put some trains in there. I'd been overseas
and seen a lot of theme restaurants in America and
(02:22):
what have you, so we decided, yep, that's a good idea.
I wasn't that fussed on trains or anything, but I
got fascinated with them at that point. And so what
we did was we actually to get the trains in.
We had two carriages, full sized carriages, We had a
(02:44):
locomotive which was a small locomotive, and we had a
guards van. Now what we did was New Zealand Railways
although Hillside Workshops and the need were absolutely fantastic. They
provided all sorts of things. They provided uniforms, tickets, ticket
(03:06):
e spencer's signals, they provided the rahway lines and the sleepers.
We laid the railway lines out onto the street and
opened up these big doors where the trucks used to
go in, and we ran the rahway lines right through
to the end of the building and put in the
(03:27):
shingle and all the rest of it. And then we
went out and we looked for two old carriages. Now
I've heard a story that I think it was King
George the Fifth, that I might have got that wrong,
But anyway, there was a royal carriage and people were
I put an ad in the paper and people would
(03:48):
ring me up and say, look, I think that carriage
still exists somewhere. And I thought to myself, well, if
I keep on trying and put some news things out,
somebody will eventually tell me if it does or not.
And then one day someone rang up and they said,
(04:09):
I've been to this farmer's farm, and it was in
central Otago somewhere, and it was central Otago. I found
out where it was. I drove up this long, long,
dusty road and at the end of it was this farm.
(04:29):
And I go on to this property and go up
to the house and look across into the paddock and
here's this railway carriage with all of the wheels and
everything on it. Everything exactly as it would have been,
were full of chocks, and the outside that some of
(04:52):
the timber had rotted away, and some of the windows
were not right and the glass was broken. And I
get up and walk inside this thing, and it had
all of the original fittings and fixtures inside it. All
the brass were all of the original lattice brass lamps
(05:12):
from on the ceilings. It had the pressed steel royal
stamps across the roof and everything. It was all there.
So I negotiated with the farmer. We arranged for a
transporter to come in with a crane on it.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
How had they got it there? Was it near Was
it near a railway line?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
No, no, he must have. I think the guy just
bought it and he didn't know. I suppose he was
going to do something with it eventually. And yep, so
that was the first carriage, and it was when we
got it and put it into the actual building itself.
We restored it inside the building. So that was the
(05:58):
beginning of it. And then we'd drawn out all the
platforms and everything. And at exactly that same time, the
house for the Helen start Helenstein's was being demolished in
then Eden and it had incredible lead light windows and doors,
(06:22):
incredible wall panelings, everything like that, and old fireplaces, that
type of thing. So I went to this auction and
I bought everything, a whole bloody lot. And I went
back to the directors of Wilson now and said, look,
I spent all this money on all these things. I'm
(06:44):
not even quite sure what I'm going to do with
them yet, but you know, I'm happy to keep them
an Valy sellum or whatever, but I think we can
use it to build a restaurant. And they said, yeah,
what a brilliant idea. And that's you mentioned. I heard
you mentioned on the radio about the Nils. Well, of course,
(07:05):
Sammed me father was a director, Major Neil at that
stage of Wilson Neil, and he was very enthusiastic about it,
he said, you know, and so was Robert Wilson and
the rest of the directors. Is a fantastic idea. So
that's how it sort of all started. It was all
put out in chalk on the floor. As to the
(07:26):
waiting rooms, there was the area where people have been
talking about the dance floor that was in the center.
So you had down one war, you had the actual kitchen,
all the ticket offices, there was a waiting rooms, there
was a signals box with all the original signals from
(07:51):
Hillside Workshops that they'd found to help us out, and
of course all the lead light windows and paneling and
everything was used in the big waiting room with the
big fireplace all go and all the rest of it.
So the craftsmen that came in a lot of cabinet
(08:14):
makers and people like that and upholsterers did all the
work on the actual railway carriages themselves, and then we
simply built a tunnel to make it look like it
was going out through the wall so that people really
could believe that it was actually a real train. Actual well,
(08:36):
it was a real train and it was actually going
to go somewhere. And it was quite interesting because a
lot of people had come in and sit in the
carriages and have their meal and then say to the waitress, well,
look we've got to go somewhere else, and when is
this train leaving, So they really believed that it was
(08:58):
going somewhere. And the guards van was another one that
Hillside Workshops helped us find on a railway siding, some
obscure place somewhere, and it was one of those ones
where the guard had the pot belly stove in the
back of all of the area. In the front well,
(09:21):
we converted that into was sort of a special dining
area and that was a nineteen hundred and eight or
something wagon, very rare wagon. And of course the Prince
of Whales in itself was unique because that was built
(09:44):
in eighteen eighteen eighty three or eighteen eighty six or something,
and the original the original consent conditions for actually getting
the hotel license. They had to have stabling for six horses,
(10:04):
and one of the rules was that if the gold
miners came from Central Otaga and needed a bed or
a drink, they especially were allowed and late. But the
only rule on that was that the singing room that
was set aside had to close down I think at
(10:26):
three o'clock in the morning or something like that. So
you know, quite the whole lot was really quite special,
and of course people couldn't yeah, people couldn't comprehend because
they had the only way to get into the place
was to walk up this old stairway into the Prince
(10:49):
of Wales Hotel, which is quite small, and then there
was this big archway because we'd carved through. Luckily, the
two floors of the two buildings were level and we'd
carved a tunnel through. So we had another ticket office
that and we were fairly strict on what people wore.
(11:10):
That we didn't want people going in in Jandle's or
anything like that, so we had another sort of ticket
office and a small restaurant in the Prince of Wales,
and then you went into Carnarvon Station, which was of
course massive area and at one stage we served so
(11:31):
many meals. We had a carvererry as well as an
ordinary type menu. We almost ran it the South Island
out of legs of pork. At one stage we were
serving that many meals. It was an incredible number. And
(11:51):
our winelist of course had all of Wilson Neil's brands on.
It was something like thirty eight pages of winylists. It
had if you wanted to shadow the camp name your vintage,
I mean, and everything was wholesale plus five percent I
(12:14):
think it was. So it was really inexpensive. Wines. French wines,
I think there was eight pages of different first growth,
second growth, third growth French wines. Quite incredible. German wines
a whole lot and then every good New Zealand wine
(12:35):
you could lay your hands on. So what you were
reading before was the children's meaning religion, and of course
the kids loved it they went there.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Could you just tell me what year it opened?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Look, look I can't.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, early eighties okay, So it had gone for six
or seven and once it burned down was it still.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I was I was gone by I'd retired but four
years before that.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And it maintained its magic or it sort of you know,
was it pumping for all those years?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Was it not to the extent that it was originally?
I mean it was just cues of people. I mean
it was just chaos and bedlam, you know, all sorts
of things strange. You heard the gentleman that was managing
(13:39):
the bottle store down below when it burnt down and
talked about the police and that. Well, of course, you
know those days in Dunedin it was a bit of
a wild West, and the liquor Squad did all that
they could to try and control all the hotels. But
(14:00):
there was always there are always ways around things. For example,
if you if you've booked in to have a meal,
you could start you were okay, you could go past
the official closing time and you're okay if you were
a guest of someone staying in the place. The Prince
(14:20):
of Wales had six rooms, so it had a hell
of a lot of guests. But yeah, it was really fascinating.
It was interesting times and it won New Zealand's first
Tourist Award for an Outstanding Tourist Attraction and us on
the first one that it was the National government that
(14:43):
awarded it and I flew to Wellington to pick it up.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And were you were you working for Wilson El or
were you a contract that.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
No, no, no, I was a CEO of the liquor division. Yeah, manager,
the executive director of Wilsonel. Yeah. So Wilsonell then was
a very you know, we were quite we've been left behind,
I suppose in the elector industry. They'd originally been wonderful
(15:12):
wholesalers to all of the hotels and Central Otagon that
they didn't sell to the public at all. They just
didn't do that, and of course the breweries came in
and bought all the hotels, so they were left with
import licenses and everything else to bring in the liquor.
Because everything in those days you needed a license, you
(15:35):
had liqueur licenses, you had champagne licenses and all the
other things. So they decided the directors were not going
to They were offered many, many occasions to sell to
the breweries, but they decided no that they felt there
was a chance to use Wilson now because they had
(15:59):
a wonderful export division. Were involved with fish. They exported eels,
so they had asparagus farms. They had all sorts of
really good produce you could use in a restaurant, particularly
the fish side of it. He also mentioned we bought
another hotel called the Bowling Green that we turned into
(16:22):
Zuga Valentine's. And I can tell you many stories for
that because I went advertised throughout the North Island for
stuffed animals and I'd stay in the hotel and wait
for the calls. And I was in Palmerston, North and
I got a phone call from a guy and he said,
(16:45):
he said, oh, I got this magnificent head of this goat.
He said it's got these huge horns on it and everything,
and he said it's just fantastic. And he said you've
got to see it. So I said, okay, we'll bring
it over and have a lock at it, you know,
and I expected it to be, you know, something special.
(17:06):
The only trouble was it had only been killed about
three hours before and he expected me to buy. But
I was in christ Church and a woman rang up
and she said, I came out from England and I
bought one of our possessions with us. And it's a
(17:31):
massive bear standing up on its hind legs. And I thought, okay,
well I go around to the house and have a
look at it, and it was just massive, I mean,
this huge thing. I ended up buying off her and
I had to get it through the ranch sliders and
get a truck to get it out. And that was
(17:51):
sort of the beginning. And then I bought another one
off an antique dealer, a big bear that was walking along.
There was all sorts of things I'd bought. We wanted
a tree inside the place, so we I was driving
along one day and I saw on a farm this
dead tree with all of these branches. That was just fantastic.
(18:15):
So I went and bought the tree, cut it down,
put it in the restaurant. We bought a land Rover,
one of those convertible land rovers, and that was the
reception for them, and that was all done out and
camouflage and what have you. So yeah, really interesting times.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
And with the canarvan station. Once that burnt, did they
was at that the end of the whole complex, was it?
They didn't rebuild that there just.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
No Well the Prince I went back many years later
because I live in Auckland now and the Prince of
Wales is still going. But that building next door is
I can't remember what was, whether it's still there or not.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Sidewriters or something now Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, okay, so you know everything was lost and it
was just dreadful. I mean some of those the workmanship
and some of those things were so unique, especially the
King's carriage, very very special, and you know, lots and
lots of things that were antique things that that Hillside
(19:31):
Workshops gave us. You know, it was amazing how they
helped us. And it was interesting because people said you
must have loved trains or something, and it really I
didn't have that sort of feeling about the whole thing.
It was just an opportunity that existed. I'd seen a
(19:51):
lot of theme restaurants in America and I thought, you know,
this is a crazy opportunity. We've got to do this,
you know, and so I just set of circumstances all
stacked up to together to put it all together. In fact,
we have a conference there of architects and they asked
(20:13):
me to go along and give them a bit of
a talk about how we put it all together and everything.
And they were a bit horrified because, you know, when
I told them I'd put a chalk on the floor
and said that's where this is going to go, the
Rabi lines here, and drew it all out and then
walked around it to see if it at all work
and everything, and the guy just said to me, he said, well,
(20:35):
he said, no architect could have ever designed that because
it's just too complicated.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
You know, I'll leave it there, Mike, but look, thank
you so very much. That's been wonderful to talk. Do
you able to move on? But that's tremendous, So thanks
for every much for that.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
For more from Mica Slash Nights, listen live to news
Talks there'd be from eight pm weekdays, or followed the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Marcus lush Night's podcast from News
Talks AB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Good Evening Mirket's Marcus welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yeah, hi there. Yes, I was the original designer and
the builder of Canalvin Station Undernea.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Okay, flip you still got the designs.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Well, it was all done with crayon and yeah on
the floor.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Because so that the original pub was a three story pub.
Was it within there that it was or was it
a building outside of that?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
No, what happened was Wilson Neil That was the first
hotel they bought. They were retailers of lequer and originally
the breweries came in and took away all their business,
so they decided to go re detail. They didn't have
an outlet at that end of town, so the opportunity
(01:13):
came up to buy the Prince of Wales Hotel, which
didn't have a bottle store, but there was a vacant
building next door, and the building next door had a
lower level on Princess Street that we turned into a
bottle store, but that left the upstairs area that was
a level with the top floor of the Prince of
(01:37):
Wales's next door and access to that was from Hope Street.
Which was higher up, so that meant the street was
level with that floor. On the second level of that floor. Now,
that used to be a massive truck servicing area and
(02:00):
the trucks used to drive in there and be serviced.
So we had this big vacant area. So we didn't
know what to do with it. So we thought, well,
you know, we could put a restaurant in there, and
we will put some trains in there. I'd been overseas
and seen a lot of theme restaurants in America and
(02:22):
what have you, so we decided, yep, that's a good idea.
I wasn't that fussed on trains or anything, but I
got fascinated with them at that point. And so what
we did was we actually to get the trains in.
We had two carriages, full sized carriages, We had a
(02:44):
locomotive which was a small locomotive, and we had a
guards van. Now what we did was New Zealand Railways
although Hillside Workshops and the need were absolutely fantastic. They
provided all sorts of things. They provided uniforms, tickets, ticket
(03:06):
e spencer's signals, they provided the rahway lines and the sleepers.
We laid the railway lines out onto the street and
opened up these big doors where the trucks used to
go in, and we ran the rahway lines right through
to the end of the building and put in the
(03:27):
shingle and all the rest of it. And then we
went out and we looked for two old carriages. Now
I've heard a story that I think it was King
George the Fifth, that I might have got that wrong,
But anyway, there was a royal carriage and people were
I put an ad in the paper and people would
(03:48):
ring me up and say, look, I think that carriage
still exists somewhere. And I thought to myself, well, if
I keep on trying and put some news things out,
somebody will eventually tell me if it does or not.
And then one day someone rang up and they said,
(04:09):
I've been to this farmer's farm, and it was in
central Otago somewhere, and it was central Otago. I found
out where it was. I drove up this long, long,
dusty road and at the end of it was this farm.
(04:29):
And I go on to this property and go up
to the house and look across into the paddock and
here's this railway carriage with all of the wheels and
everything on it. Everything exactly as it would have been,
were full of chocks, and the outside that some of
(04:52):
the timber had rotted away, and some of the windows
were not right and the glass was broken. And I
get up and walk inside this thing, and it had
all of the original fittings and fixtures inside it. All
the brass were all of the original lattice brass lamps
(05:12):
from on the ceilings. It had the pressed steel royal
stamps across the roof and everything. It was all there.
So I negotiated with the farmer. We arranged for a
transporter to come in with a crane on it.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
How had they got it there? Was it near Was
it near a railway line?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
No, no, he must have. I think the guy just
bought it and he didn't know. I suppose he was
going to do something with it eventually. And yep, so
that was the first carriage, and it was when we
got it and put it into the actual building itself.
We restored it inside the building. So that was the
(05:58):
beginning of it. And then we'd drawn out all the
platforms and everything. And at exactly that same time, the
house for the Helen start Helenstein's was being demolished in
then Eden and it had incredible lead light windows and doors,
(06:22):
incredible wall panelings, everything like that, and old fireplaces, that
type of thing. So I went to this auction and
I bought everything, a whole bloody lot. And I went
back to the directors of Wilson now and said, look,
I spent all this money on all these things. I'm
(06:44):
not even quite sure what I'm going to do with
them yet, but you know, I'm happy to keep them
an Valy sellum or whatever, but I think we can
use it to build a restaurant. And they said, yeah,
what a brilliant idea. And that's you mentioned. I heard
you mentioned on the radio about the Nils. Well, of course,
(07:05):
Sammed me father was a director, Major Neil at that
stage of Wilson Neil, and he was very enthusiastic about it,
he said, you know, and so was Robert Wilson and
the rest of the directors. Is a fantastic idea. So
that's how it sort of all started. It was all
put out in chalk on the floor. As to the
(07:26):
waiting rooms, there was the area where people have been
talking about the dance floor that was in the center.
So you had down one war, you had the actual kitchen,
all the ticket offices, there was a waiting rooms, there
was a signals box with all the original signals from
(07:51):
Hillside Workshops that they'd found to help us out, and
of course all the lead light windows and paneling and
everything was used in the big waiting room with the
big fireplace all go and all the rest of it.
So the craftsmen that came in a lot of cabinet
(08:14):
makers and people like that and upholsterers did all the
work on the actual railway carriages themselves, and then we
simply built a tunnel to make it look like it
was going out through the wall so that people really
could believe that it was actually a real train. Actual well,
(08:36):
it was a real train and it was actually going
to go somewhere. And it was quite interesting because a
lot of people had come in and sit in the
carriages and have their meal and then say to the waitress, well,
look we've got to go somewhere else, and when is
this train leaving, So they really believed that it was
(08:58):
going somewhere. And the guards van was another one that
Hillside Workshops helped us find on a railway siding, some
obscure place somewhere, and it was one of those ones
where the guard had the pot belly stove in the
back of all of the area. In the front well,
(09:21):
we converted that into was sort of a special dining
area and that was a nineteen hundred and eight or
something wagon, very rare wagon. And of course the Prince
of Whales in itself was unique because that was built
(09:44):
in eighteen eighteen eighty three or eighteen eighty six or something,
and the original the original consent conditions for actually getting
the hotel license. They had to have stabling for six horses,
(10:04):
and one of the rules was that if the gold
miners came from Central Otaga and needed a bed or
a drink, they especially were allowed and late. But the
only rule on that was that the singing room that
was set aside had to close down I think at
(10:26):
three o'clock in the morning or something like that. So
you know, quite the whole lot was really quite special,
and of course people couldn't yeah, people couldn't comprehend because
they had the only way to get into the place
was to walk up this old stairway into the Prince
(10:49):
of Wales Hotel, which is quite small, and then there
was this big archway because we'd carved through. Luckily, the
two floors of the two buildings were level and we'd
carved a tunnel through. So we had another ticket office
that and we were fairly strict on what people wore.
(11:10):
That we didn't want people going in in Jandle's or
anything like that, so we had another sort of ticket
office and a small restaurant in the Prince of Wales,
and then you went into Carnarvon Station, which was of
course massive area and at one stage we served so
(11:31):
many meals. We had a carvererry as well as an
ordinary type menu. We almost ran it the South Island
out of legs of pork. At one stage we were
serving that many meals. It was an incredible number. And
(11:51):
our winelist of course had all of Wilson Neil's brands on.
It was something like thirty eight pages of winylists. It
had if you wanted to shadow the camp name your vintage,
I mean, and everything was wholesale plus five percent I
(12:14):
think it was. So it was really inexpensive. Wines. French wines,
I think there was eight pages of different first growth,
second growth, third growth French wines. Quite incredible. German wines
a whole lot and then every good New Zealand wine
(12:35):
you could lay your hands on. So what you were
reading before was the children's meaning religion, and of course
the kids loved it they went there.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Could you just tell me what year it opened?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Look, look I can't.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, early eighties okay, So it had gone for six
or seven and once it burned down was it still.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I was I was gone by I'd retired but four
years before that.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And it maintained its magic or it sort of you know,
was it pumping for all those years?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Was it not to the extent that it was originally?
I mean it was just cues of people. I mean
it was just chaos and bedlam, you know, all sorts
of things strange. You heard the gentleman that was managing
(13:39):
the bottle store down below when it burnt down and
talked about the police and that. Well, of course, you
know those days in Dunedin it was a bit of
a wild West, and the liquor Squad did all that
they could to try and control all the hotels. But
(14:00):
there was always there are always ways around things. For example,
if you if you've booked in to have a meal,
you could start you were okay, you could go past
the official closing time and you're okay if you were
a guest of someone staying in the place. The Prince
(14:20):
of Wales had six rooms, so it had a hell
of a lot of guests. But yeah, it was really fascinating.
It was interesting times and it won New Zealand's first
Tourist Award for an Outstanding Tourist Attraction and us on
the first one that it was the National government that
(14:43):
awarded it and I flew to Wellington to pick it up.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And were you were you working for Wilson El or
were you a contract that.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
No, no, no, I was a CEO of the liquor division. Yeah, manager,
the executive director of Wilsonel. Yeah. So Wilsonell then was
a very you know, we were quite we've been left behind,
I suppose in the elector industry. They'd originally been wonderful
(15:12):
wholesalers to all of the hotels and Central Otagon that
they didn't sell to the public at all. They just
didn't do that, and of course the breweries came in
and bought all the hotels, so they were left with
import licenses and everything else to bring in the liquor.
Because everything in those days you needed a license, you
(15:35):
had liqueur licenses, you had champagne licenses and all the
other things. So they decided the directors were not going
to They were offered many, many occasions to sell to
the breweries, but they decided no that they felt there
was a chance to use Wilson now because they had
(15:59):
a wonderful export division. Were involved with fish. They exported eels,
so they had asparagus farms. They had all sorts of
really good produce you could use in a restaurant, particularly
the fish side of it. He also mentioned we bought
another hotel called the Bowling Green that we turned into
(16:22):
Zuga Valentine's. And I can tell you many stories for
that because I went advertised throughout the North Island for
stuffed animals and I'd stay in the hotel and wait
for the calls. And I was in Palmerston, North and
I got a phone call from a guy and he said,
(16:45):
he said, oh, I got this magnificent head of this goat.
He said it's got these huge horns on it and everything,
and he said it's just fantastic. And he said you've
got to see it. So I said, okay, we'll bring
it over and have a lock at it, you know,
and I expected it to be, you know, something special.
(17:06):
The only trouble was it had only been killed about
three hours before and he expected me to buy. But
I was in christ Church and a woman rang up
and she said, I came out from England and I
bought one of our possessions with us. And it's a
(17:31):
massive bear standing up on its hind legs. And I thought, okay,
well I go around to the house and have a
look at it, and it was just massive, I mean,
this huge thing. I ended up buying off her and
I had to get it through the ranch sliders and
get a truck to get it out. And that was
(17:51):
sort of the beginning. And then I bought another one
off an antique dealer, a big bear that was walking along.
There was all sorts of things I'd bought. We wanted
a tree inside the place, so we I was driving
along one day and I saw on a farm this
dead tree with all of these branches. That was just fantastic.
(18:15):
So I went and bought the tree, cut it down,
put it in the restaurant. We bought a land Rover,
one of those convertible land rovers, and that was the
reception for them, and that was all done out and
camouflage and what have you. So yeah, really interesting times.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
And with the canarvan station. Once that burnt, did they
was at that the end of the whole complex, was it?
They didn't rebuild that there just.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
No Well the Prince I went back many years later
because I live in Auckland now and the Prince of
Wales is still going. But that building next door is
I can't remember what was, whether it's still there or not.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Sidewriters or something now Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, okay, so you know everything was lost and it
was just dreadful. I mean some of those the workmanship
and some of those things were so unique, especially the
King's carriage, very very special, and you know, lots and
lots of things that were antique things that that Hillside
(19:31):
Workshops gave us. You know, it was amazing how they
helped us. And it was interesting because people said you
must have loved trains or something, and it really I
didn't have that sort of feeling about the whole thing.
It was just an opportunity that existed. I'd seen a
(19:51):
lot of theme restaurants in America and I thought, you know,
this is a crazy opportunity. We've got to do this,
you know, and so I just set of circumstances all
stacked up to together to put it all together. In fact,
we have a conference there of architects and they asked
(20:13):
me to go along and give them a bit of
a talk about how we put it all together and everything.
And they were a bit horrified because, you know, when
I told them I'd put a chalk on the floor
and said that's where this is going to go, the
Rabi lines here, and drew it all out and then
walked around it to see if it at all work
and everything, and the guy just said to me, he said, well,
(20:35):
he said, no architect could have ever designed that because
it's just too complicated.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
You know, I'll leave it there, Mike, but look, thank
you so very much. That's been wonderful to talk. Do
you able to move on? But that's tremendous, So thanks
for every much for that.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
For more from Mica Slash Nights, listen live to news
Talks there'd be from eight pm weekdays, or followed the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
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