Terminus Hotel on the right. Note the Onehunga Public Library on the left, replaced early in the 20th century by the Carnegie Library building close by. Ref. 4-846, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Library.

Back to Onehunga’s new Railway Terminus Hotel which, despite the victory for Lundon and Co, wasn’t doing all that well as far as business went. James Sullivan took over in 1873, a man said by Mitchell to have “a wide knowledge of classical literature and of the latest scientific theories and political systems.” He knew both Latin and ancient Greek languages. He was a chief supporter of George Maurice O’Rorke, and is said to have helped the latter into the House of Representatives. In 1893, Sullivan ably assisted another famous Onehunga identity into politics,Elizabeth Yates, after Sullivan himself had retired in 1887. A Schultz was a licensee, then M Edgar (1890-1893), Patrick Benison and W H Knock in 1893, W J Bray in 1894, then B C Roberts 1896-1899. Mitchell provided a list of many subsequent licensees.

Around 1925, the name of the hotel changed to that of the Post Office Hotel. It was purchased by the Onehunga Borough Council in around June 1971, and demolished within a year.

Yesterday, visiting the Museum's Weird & Wonderful section with
good friend Liz Clark, I spied that you folks now have Avondale Spiders
on display: "made famous by the Spider-man films". Um -- no. Avondale
Spiders (aka Australian huntsmen) don't feature in any of the Spiderman (no hyphen)
movies, they were gathered up for use in "Arachnophobia".

Seriously -- did