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From international celebrities running low on oil to early risers shopping in their pyjamas, it’s just another day at the Matakana Service Station. Predictably, over the last three decades, petrol prices have climbed, red tape has multiplied and the familiarity of knowing most of your customers on a first-name basis has gone. But for owner Gay Smith, who still works six days a week, pumping gas remains a great way to make a living ….
Mike and I had only been married six weeks when he was posted to Vietnam for 12-months. He was a mechanic in the NZ Army and I was working in the office of a menswear in Upper Hutt. That year gave us a good start financially and luckily for me, he was a good letter writer. Sadly, though, it was to take a toll on Mike’s health, as he was one of the many soldiers sprayed by Agent Orange. We believe a lot of his present health issues can be traced back to that year. When he returned, we wasted no time in starting a family and by the time his second overseas posting came up, we had twin daughters, Leaine and Helene. We spent two years in Singapore and our son Bruce was born in the military hospital there. The army life meant several shifts between Papakura and Palmerston North, but as the daughter of a Ministry of Works accountant and auditor, I was used to not putting down roots too deeply. I attended eight different schools, including Suva Girls Grammar School, in Fiji, where we lived for three years. Eventually though, Mike and I decided to look at our options outside the army. We were considering setting up a piggery when we read about a block of land for sale in Matakana.
We passed the garage on the way to look at the property and I liked it immediately. In those days it consisted of a service station, mechanical workshop and engineering shop. It belonged to the land agent’s brother Gary Campbell and, as luck would have it, he was keen to sell. Mike and I agreed that we’d stay for five years. Now, 30 years later, and we’re still here! The place just grew on us and we felt like we belonged. Of course, Matakana was a different place in those days. Roke and Smith were running the hardware store next door, the pub was the Greens’ family home, the Post Office operated from where The Bach is today and Davies ran the store. Across the road was Stuart Shirley’s timber yard and further down Matakana Valley Road was the Penney’s butcher shop and abattoir. Les Wilmot’s father worked at the garage, before Wilmot’s moved to Warkworth, and we eventually sold the mechanical workshop to Brendan Woolley, who now owns Beaurepaires.
Because the children were still young, our plan was that Mike would run the petrol pumps for the first hour while I got them off to school and then I’d take over while he ran the mechanical side of things. That lasted about two weeks! Customer service wasn’t his cup of tea so the petrol station has more or less been my responsibility from the start. We lived in the house that was later converted to the Rusty Tui. Sometimes, if we ran out of stock in the shop, I’d nip home and get what the person wanted from my own kitchen. Opening time was 7.30am during the week and we closed after the Gubbs bus had dropped parts off for the workshop around 5.20pm. The half-day on Saturday was mainly to meet the demand for lawnmower fuel. These days we do 14-hour days, seven days a week, with an outdoor payment terminal for after-hours customers. The tanker that used to refuel us about once every four to six weeks now calls two or three times a week. It’s certainly got a lot busier. There weren’t too many women running service stations when I started and when we went to oil company conferences, the men would always assume I was “the wife” just along for the social programme.
For the first two years, I ran the station on my own. My first employee was Gay Roland, who would bring her 12-month old daughter Aimee to work. We became known as the ‘Gay’ Petrol Station. There are now eight part-timers, including my daughter and two grandsons. I’ve always loved the chitchat and the friendly banter with customers and I’ve only been reduced to tears twice. It was years ago and both times involved men who were really rude and abusive, and I think they had a problem with a woman being in charge.
We’ve extended the premises three times and been broken in to more times than I care to remember. On one occasion the thieves heaved a strainer post through the window and another time, they broke into the toilet and were coming through the wall for the safe. We’ve also had our brush with celebrity. The TV chefs Hudson and Hall once lived at Ti Point and they were always good fun. They’d pull onto the forecourt in their old Bentley which invariably needed at least a gallon of oil. Singer/songwriter Barry McGuire was a regular and Ray Columbus is one of our favourites. We also had a lot to do with the people who made the movie The Piano, which was partly shot on a farm along Matakana Valley Road. They’d come to use for local information and we’re still the default information office in the village.
We’ve witnessed accidents, pulled cars out of the river, helped stranded motorists during floods, lent equipment to people whose cars have broken down or run out of gas, and on a few occasions, I’ve even had to lend people clothes. One of the toughest times for us as a business was when the oil companies started operating their own stations and became our competitors. Three years ago we left Mobil, after 27 years, and joined Gull, a relatively small family-run company from West Australia. It was one of the best decisions we made. The other major change has been the amount of red tape that’s been introduced. At the start, there was just the Dangerous Goods Certificate. Now there are regulations for everything from food and staff, to workplace health and safety, and don’t even get me started on the Environmental Risk Management Authority rules. I don’t necessarily disagree with them; it’s just the sheer number of them that’s daunting.
Being part of the community is important and I think it’s great that we’ve got an active and positive community group in Matakana, with projects like the walkway/bikeway on the go. The poor state of infrastructure in the village, especially for parking, annoys me though. The vandalism of King George is also a major disappointment and I feel very sorry for those families whose forebears are listed on the memorial. I’m a charter member of the Lions Club of Kowhai Coast, with a 100 percent attendance rate over the past 28 years, along with Kristine Bayer and Lois Burton. I also love to embroider and knit, and for several years now I’ve been attending a weekly art class in Orewa. Retirement is on the horizon – I have five grandchildren whom I love spending time with. Mike is talking about buying a bit of land but I suspect this is just a plan to move all the stuff he’s meant to be clearing out of the workshop to somewhere else.
