HDC swaps ice cream for petrol

Hawke’s Bay’s ‘national treasure’ Rush Munro’s ice cream parlour at 704 Heretaunga Street will be bowled for a petrol station after 90 years of trade.

The Hasting District Council on Thursday  granted a resource consent for a Discretionary Activity for fuel company NPD Ltd to construct and maintain a 24 hour self-serve fuel facility and associated convenience store on the parcel of land that  includes the  Rush Munro’s former premises and adjacent car park. 

BayBuzz is yet to see a proud announcement from HDC on this one!

The consent comes despite there being two petrol stations within 400m to the east and another station 900m to the west of the site, along Heretaunga St.

However, the land falls into a Commercial Service-Zone and there is no heritage listing for the Oriental style architecture of the original Rush Munro’s.

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” says Councillor Damon Harvey, “that such an iconic building and business will no longer  be on that historic site. We need to make sure all the resource consent requirements for the petrol station are carefully followed, particularly for surrounding neighbours who are upset by the development.” 

Like many in Hawke’s Bay, Harvey has memories of going to Rush Munro’s with his grandmother. “It was an experience …  more than just buying ice-cream.”  

He is concerned too  that the new owners of the Rush Munro’s site may have no connection to Hastings and “could create something that is a blight on our community while not impacting on their lives.” 

For current Rush Munro business owners Vaughan Currie and his family, it was also “disappointing” when owners Jaymark sold the building, gardens and adjacent car park in October 2021 to an Auckland company BRO Heretaunga Ltd. 

“The new owners said they already had a tenant in mind for the land and they wouldn’t renew our lease when it came  up for negotiation,” says Currie.

“The saving grace for us is that our ice-cream production is based at the Old HB Dairy Factory in Williams Street, and has been for 20 years – so that’s not impacted.” 

Rush Munro’s will continue as is until the close of business this Sunday (so get on down there) and then it will re-open  as ‘Rush Munro’s on Albert Square’ next Thursday 3 November. 

Currie says he sees his family as custodians of a community business that has “a passion and a depth.

“Rush Munro’s has been a touchstone and tradition for Hawke’s Bay people,” he says. “When everything changes around them they have always had Rush Munro’s.”

So true. The closing of Rush Munro’s long-time home is an unsettling end of an era for Hastings. It is a place that has been treasured above all for its authenticity – and that’s our loss.  A place to slow down and relax in, in the Oriental-style garden, fountain, goldfish and lily ponds, classical stone walls, even stone seating facing the footpath, a place to rest and slurp an ice-cream. It is the last surviving ice cream parlour of its type in NZ, hailed by the NZ Ice Cream Association  as ‘a national treasure’. 

“it’s a travesty that such a historic building is being destroyed,“ says Auckland-based Chris Newey, author of A History of Ice Cream in New Zealand. “A place that means so much to so many people over so many years. The oldest continuously-operating ice cream business and brand in New Zealand.

“The fact that it’s being bowled to make way for a petrol station makes it even worse!”

“We are devastated to learn of the demise of  the Rush Munro’s site,” local resident  Rosalind Moore (nee Walker) wrote to Council and BayBuzz this week.

“I am 84, I grew up with the wonder of  it as did my children & grandchildren. Surely it is part of the heritage of Hastings, we have so little. That garden, stone benches, fish ponds & fountains & old trees will never be able to be replicated as a pop-up in that site in the middle of Hastings, no trees, no parking, no history & to me remembered only for the quaint old hotel the council pulled down.”

The history

I suspect Frederick ‘Rush’ Rush-Munro, son of an English confectioner with German training, wouldn’t have liked this change either. 

Yet Rush must have felt he was onto a good thing when he came to Hastings in 1925, having tried his hand with two businesses in Auckland. The confectioner had only £10 in his pocket but with wife Catherine, he soon opened Munro’s ‘Garden of Sweets’ in Heretaunga Street, central Hastings, opposite the Cosy theatre (later the Embassy) on 26 May 1926.

The ‘Garden of Sweets’ started out with seven varieties of toffees and candies, later adding ice cream, chocolates and fruit drinks. The ice cream was made on a hand churn packed with ice and salt, flavoured with fresh fruits in season; strawberries, raspberries and passionfruit.

I pause a moment here because interestingly, the same year the Rush Munro brand opened in Hastings, my father, Jim Redgrave was born, later joining his family’s Heretaunga Street business, Redgrave’s Garden Centre. 

For my father there was great excitement  90 years later, in 2016, when he was able to participate in Rush Munro’s 90^thbirthday celebrations – a free ice-cream to anyone turning 90 that year!  

The story woven into generations of our family, is of how Dad dressed in his best sportscoat for his special outing to Rush Munro’s. He then stood in line clutching his expired passport (‘proof of his age’), telling anyone who would listen that he had been coming to the parlour with his parents since he was young boy. 

In the last year of his life, by then a resident at Mary Doyle, the only outing that really sparked his interest was to Rush Munro’s, to sit in the gardens licking a large cone of passionfruit.

In 1931, Rush Munro’s central Hastings premises were destroyed in the Napier earthquake –stocks of ice cream were given to the sailors of H. M. S. Veronica who were clearing debris from the streets, while sweets and fruit went to the hospitals.

Just seventeen days later, Rush Munro’s managed to re-open in a tent in an empty section near Stortford Lodge. While based in the tent they started work on building a new shop and house at 704 Heretaunga Street West. Around 1932 they moved the business to the new premises which eventually evolved into the famous Rush Munro’s Ice Cream Gardens

A comprehensive history of Rush Munro’s on the New Zealand Ice Cream Association’s website says “’Rush’ was a very generous man, quietly contributing to many community causes, but he was also famous for his quick temper, known on occasion to end an argument with a customer by closing the shop!

In 1948, Rush sold the business to John Caulton, who had been a WW2 Spitfire pilot, and his wife Marie. Rush’s secret recipes were part of the transaction and he stayed on for three months to pass on his knowledge to the new owners.

The Caultons maintained Rush Munro’s high standards and worked on expanding the factory and product range.  John wrote: “The town was getting bigger and it seems silly to say but it [Rush Munro Ice Cream Garden] was a special place to come to. People used to come from overseas because they had heard about it, it became part of their journey for their holiday times.”

John put three no smoking signs up in the parlour, and customers had to make up their mind – “they either wanted an ice-cream or they wanted a smoke, take your pick, as simple as that. It caused a bit of a rupture every now and again.”

Over the years the ice cream gardens became a Hawke’s Bay landmark and family tradition, much-loved for its soda fountain and hand-made, batch-churned ice cream, scooped high in a peaked cone, or served in a dish with a silver spoon, in a range of natural, real fruit flavours.

From this coming Thursday go visit “Rush Munro’s on Albert Square”. It might be a new place, a new era, but the ice-cream will be just as good!