‘I’ve served four generations of the same families’: Rural town’s last store to close after 89 years

Sunday, 31 May 2026

A general store that’s been the anchor of a rural community for 89 years is closing its doors, after thousands deserted the once bustling mill town.

Twelve hours a day, seven days a week for almost seven decades, Manu Lala has stood behind the counter at Kākahi General Store.

The 85-year-old has been perfectly placed to observe the town, about 20 minutes south-east of Taumarunui in the central North Island, shrink as industries, services and families disappeared.

Now Lala says it’s finally time to shut the shop he took over from his father, Dahya, in 1957, while still at school.

“When dad first came here [in 1937], the population was over 3000, the town was buzzing,” Lala told Stuff.

“[There were] two picture theatres, boarding houses, a big railway, three butcher shops, fruit shops and of course the sawmills.

“It was noisy with three huge mills operating, they’d be hauling timber from the bush.”

Kākahi was already a booming mill town at the turn of the 20th century.

By 1909 it had its own school and the railway brought people in and took timber out. But by the 1970s the mills had closed and the town began to shrink. At the last census there were just 147 people living there.

Lala said there are only 50 or so homes, with newer holiday baches among ramshackle 19th century dwellings.

He said the store used to be swarming with customers, mill workers buying tobacco after long shifts, fishermen stopping for bait and a yarn and local children on horseback clutching a few cents to buy milk and lollies.

Not everything has changed, though. Lala still adds up purchases with pen and paper and allows ‘IOUs’ for long-time customers.

“I’ve served four generations of the same families.”

For decades, the store has sold everything the community needed — groceries, fishing gear, liquor and postal services. At one stage rifles and ammunition were displayed in the front window.

“We even used to sell petrol - good job we don’t do that any more,” he laughs.

Renowned artist Peter McIntyre had a holiday home in the town and wrote a book Kakahi New Zealand, published in 1972 shortly after the mills closed. According to Te Ara, the book praised the general store and its importance to the community.

“With the cinema gone, the billiard saloon gone, almost the entire social life of Kakahi centres around the store,” McIntyre wrote.

“In its way it is a sort of Aladdin’s Cave, festooned with the minor treasures of modern life – pitchforks and paperbacks, shirts and spades, newspapers, magazines, fruit and fishing flies. Its literature ranges from The Guns of Navarone to the Kama Sutra.”

Now the walls are lined with faded photos of the old days and Lala’s preparing to let go of the shop that has shaped almost every chapter of his life.

New life in New Zealand

Lala arrived in New Zealand as an 8-year-old boy after a five-week sea voyage from Mumbai to Sydney with his mother in the late 1940s. Neither could speak English.

“We had to fill out these immigration forms but had to just put a thumbprint.”

From Sydney they flew to Auckland on a “flying boat” that landed in the harbour.

“The aeroplane landed in the ocean and you were rowed ashore.”

The final leg of the mammoth journey to the small timber town that would become home was by steam train.

Once in Kākahi, Lala was taken under the wing of a local family, where he learned English with a strong Kiwi accent.

“They became my Kiwi brothers and sisters and I called their grandma, ‘grandma’ too.”

On a trip to Ōtorohanga, his parents stopped to visit friends and Lala noticed “this nice-looking girl”.

“My parents had told me I would have an arranged marriage like in India, and when I met Kamu, I told them I was ready for them to arrange it.”

The couple raised three children, who all left town for university. His son now works for Sydney University and holds a doctorate in philosophy and research. One daughter is a clinical psychologist in Auckland and the youngest lives in Wellington with her child.

“My first grandchild. That’s all I wanted for them, a good education. I didn’t want them to take over the shop - too clever for that.”

Lalu wanted to be an accountant while at school, but when his father was taken ill, his talent for numbers was put to use in the shop instead.

Fisherman’s friend

While much quieter than it once was, the store remains popular with anglers travelling to fish the nearby Whanganui and Whakapapa rivers.

“Strangers come through fishing and they come to ask advice. I learned to fish in those rivers as a boy.”

Though the family built a life in rural New Zealand, Lala never lost touch with his Indian heritage. He still speaks and writes Gujarati, and eats vegetarian curries cooked by his wife and children.

When he closes next month, he would like to stay in the Kiwi town he calls home, but wants to visit India too.

“I’d like to make a final trip back to my birthplace.”

Leaving the store behind will not be easy.

“It’s never been just a business,” he says. “I’m gonna miss it. It’s been a fantastic life for me.”