Custom House Hokitika

Hokitika’s 1897 Custom House is still there on Gibson Quay unlike many businesses, families and ships who have come and gone and succeeded and failed in Hokitika’s fickle climate.

Not the first such facility on this site, this little government shop replaced another wooden structure more hastily erected in 1866 when gold, timber and other import and export businesses were booming on the West Coast.

The 1897 building, constructed under prolific government architect John Campbell has demonstrated its strength and retained it’s charm well into it’s second century. This enduring style was applied to police stations and post offices throughout New Zealand, and has been described as ‘a New Zealand Adaptation of Queen Anne’, many of these of public service buildings showing a similar endurance.

The build cost the government a full four hundred pound to build and immediately began to repay the investment, with the Customs Collectors taking duty on inward and outward goods, mainly gold and timber. The first permanent appointment here was a Mr William Rose from Nelson, who held the office of collector from 1901. Another gentleman of the Customs office to serve here was Mr Edward Chilman, a prominent Mason who served his entire career with Customs until his death in Hokitika in 1901.

For vague reasons a fort canon made in Scotland in 1813 is parked up here next to the Custom House. Presented to the town by Seddon in 1894, the canon is thought to have been brought to New Zealand for the 1860s Land Wars.

Like the Canon, the Custom House is no longer in active use, but remains a marker of history and geography in it’s setting, nearby the impressive Hokitika bridge, toward the mountain ranges to the South, depending, like everything else in Hokitika, upon the weather.