Ōtautau - Township Businesses- Central Garage; Various, see entry for list of na... on eHive

The first photo in this collage is from Paddy's Market, we think about 1987. At this point the Central Garage was owned by Graeme & Shirley Froude, the father of present owner Keith Froude and his wife Thelma, but there were no notes put with the photos of who took them sadly. The second photo in the collage was taken by local photographer and history lover Peter Gutsell, who has said any of his photos can be used by anyone for historical purposes, thanks Peter! This was taken from the top of the old Coronation Library and Town Hall, now demolished and looks up the Main Street pointing north, giving us a great view. It is interesting that in the first two photos the garage is painted in white. The third and fourth photos in the series of the collage were taken by myself (the digitising archivist of this new community heritage project) and they were snapped during the first Covid Lockdown in early 2020 to show the effects of the pandemic on the local businesses in Ōtautau. As the garage now sports a lovely sunshine yellow paint, all the Covid posters strangely compliment the bright colour palette of the building! Together, they make a great collage of different views over the more modern years of the Central Garage on the Main Street of Ōtautau. It is of note that this building has one of the oldest histories of any in the township. The site started off as the towns very first General Store in 1876, run by Robert Campbell for many years. It has now been made into a Motor Garage for most of it's long life, with a range of different names and owners. More can be seen about this in new entry that is coming soon, under CWA.105.15.10, so watch out for this one. Information above is researched by and copyright under a CC BY Licence to “Between River & Stream”, early history of Ōtautau book, and is kindly gifted by that project to our online community archive so everyone can view it. This account will definitely be added to, as we have had quite a few people from the district continue to donate quantities of photo and record documents to the archive, which we are extremely privileged to have been gifted to share with you all. Time constraints alone at this moment, have prevented all of these from being shared right now. However, if you or anyone you know has got any more photos, information or accounts of this building, the varying Motor Garages run from here over the years, or on any aspects of business or community life that has taken place here, make a comment in the space provided under the image page. Please let us know if you have more records to add to these, so we all benefit. Kia ora, thank you.