Another town whose glory days are far behind it.
We are staying in a hotel of faded grandeur, built by Mr Dargaville himself in 1840 (or under his guidance, I should say).
There are plenty of fabulous old buildings around town, but nothing new apart from the Ministry of Social Development. There are a few empty shops, and things that don’t belong on a high street such as charity shops, but at least there are a few restaurants around: one Chinese, one Indian, and two Thai (although the Thai restaurant we walked past at 7:30 last night after our dinner at the hotel was completely empty apart from the chef sitting down at a table looking lonely and forlorn.)
It was Halloween but there was no evidence of it apart from one little girl eating her fish and chips beside the river with her mum and brother, who was wearing a dress with Elsa from Frozen on the front, but it’s conceivable that’s just her favourite dress that she wears all the time everywhere. We never saw any teenagers anywhere so hopefully they were all at a fabulous party somewhere, getting drunk and having a good time.
I guess any money around is no longer from logging Kauri trees, but dairy farming instead. The town is on the banks of a wide estuary, full of brown, unappealing water at high tide, or mud at low tide. No ingredients for a tourist mecca. One night here is long enough.