Big Night Out In The Bush

" Hi, you’ve reached Swamp Palace, the Oruru Community Hall Cinema. We are located at Oruru, 7 kilometres inland from Taipa, just stay on the tar-seal and you can’t miss us. Our program tonight is the Kiwi film, Number Two".
This is what you’ll hear if you dial 09 4087040 and Richard Weatherly, the local exhibitor gives an amusing account of what’s on offer for us locals.
Well, it was Number Two last weekend and it played to full houses in New Zealand’s most unlikely cinema venue. It wasn’t a great movie but the sell out audiences (it only takes 65) prove that we love to see stories about ourselves. Set in Mount Roskill it reminded me a bit about playing my senior Rugby at Te Papapa in Auckland back in the seventies along with my Maori and Pacific Island team-mates.
I’ve always loved the movies and have designed and built multiplex cinemas all over New Zealand, but it’s the old ones that I really love, the cinemas in the most unlikely places that survived the coming of television, which closed so many suburban and provincial screens.
Kerikeri boasts the Cathay, which was opened in the thirties by Bus Emanuel, one of the leading fruit growers among a group largely made up of well-off English expats who settled here from China to escape the troubles and start again. Just like today in the small communities lucky enough to boast a cinema, it was the movies that kept everyone informed, entertained and part of the big world.
In its day, season tickets were sold at the Cathay and dress was formal on a Saturday night. Woe betide anyone found sitting in one of the old China hands reserved seats. Long term operators, Doug and Pat Turner kept the cinema going through the lean years supported by a town pleased to keep such an asset going. It was enthusiasts like these and Richard Weatherly of Swamp Palace, who made the difference, multi skilling including providing the only discipline many kids ever got, in the case of Pat Turner. The Cathay now boasts an excellent restaurant and is up there with any of the art house in the cities.
If you are ever in the Far North give the Swamp Palace a go. You won’t believe that a cinema exists out among the farmland totally without surrounding commercial buildings of any type. Much larger Kaitaia hasn’t had a screen for years but Oruru, an almost non-existent village does.
Patrons often wait outside for the delightfully eccentric Richard and his dog to arrive. Ticket queues form in front of a sign indicating prices for local adults at $10 below a note to Aucklanders that they must pay $15. Slow banter over Eskimo Pies and the eating variety of Jaffas means that the start is often a bit late if Richard so chooses, but if you are late when he is not, expect a lecture.
A rush takes place for the front row upstairs allowing leg stretch room and a view clear of Rasta hairstyles. The seats are much the same age as the patrons and give a very good guide to the movie. Even ardent movie-goers found Lord of the Rings failed the backside test.

Before the movie kicks off Richard staggers upstairs and perches on the balcony to address the audience. "Thanks for coming folks. Tonight’s movie is set in Mount Roskill. Let me tell you that Mount Roskill has never looked that good in real life" and so on. " Next weeks movie is Kinky Boots by the team from Calendar Girls and The Full Monty, so you’ll enjoy it. Remember there is no screening on Good Friday. I’m not religious but the dog is!"
We are lucky to have a New Zealand Film industry so active at present, thanks to stalwarts like John Barnett and Peter Jackson on the creative side, but also thanks to those strugglers like Richard Weatherly who keep the small town movie-going experience still alive. Make sure you experience it.

WAYNE BROWN