When Andrea and Wayne French moved to St Bathans from Wakatipu about 18 months ago, a huge part of the attraction was the sense of community in the small town (population five or six permanent residents, depending on who you ask) and a moving feast of crib owners, tourists, campers, and other travellers.

“It ticked all the boxes for us,” Andrea said. 

“After Wakatipu, I needed a sense of community. I like to know our neighbours’ names.”

They have recently become a much more important part of that community, buying the historic and legendary Vulcan Hotel just last week. 

“I didn’t even know the pub would be up for sale, but the more you talk, then the ideas start to happen,” Andrea said. “We got in touch with the ex-owner and it just wasn’t working for him but it hadn’t been put on the market. 

“It was just sitting down and having a yarn, it was just an easy conversation to make it happen.”

Chef Amy Kirwood and her family had the lease for a year and the right of refusal for another three but were happy to give that up, with Amy remaining as chef.

Andrea and Wayne French now own the historic Vulcan Hotel in St Bathans.

Andrea and Wayne bought the building and set up another company to operate the hotel, with hotel manager Jeanine Lester as the third partner. Eunice Golder, a childhood friend of Andrea’s, had also moved to St Bathans and was working at the hotel and also stayed on.

“All the things had to line up to give it the green light,” Andrea said. 

“To secure Amy in the kitchen was a really big thing for us, and to also have Jeanine as the manager to run the thing, and Eun, who just slots in anywhere. If one cog was missing, it would have been really difficult for us.”

Those three strong staff - Amy, Jeanine, and Eunice - have also given Andrea an idea of how the hotel can give back to the surrounding community.

“With such key three members working on the operating side of things, it’s a really good launch pad for young people to learn hospitality,” she said. “I have this firm belief that if you learn hospo, you can go anywhere in the world. It’s quite important to me that we give young people the opportunity to learn under some skilled key members.”

For her, she said, happy staff are essential for customers to enjoy themselves, as is good food, and Amy’s food is appreciated around the area.  

Andrea would also like to work with other rural hoteliers in the region. 

“You can go down to Roxburgh, Millers Flat, you can go to Lawrence and all the way up here to Waipiata and they all have their own little character, but are all vitally important for the chain of visitors that come here. I really want to promote, ‘You’ve been here, now you must go to the Naseby Hotel, or Waipiata has good food - you have to have one of their pies.”

Her ideal would be to have a relationship with those other hotels, she said.

But back to the Vulcan, and no story about the 1882 mud brick building would be complete without mentioning the hotel’s resident ghost, a sex worker known as Rosie who plied her trade from one of the rooms. Rosie was murdered in the front room, with the murderer never identified, and is said to still haunt the premises.

“Some people want to stay in the room because of Rosie, and some people don’t,” Andrea said.

The hotel only has four rooms, to which Andrea said they would love to add en-suite bathrooms, but being a historic building, they have to work in with the Historic Places Trust.

“We want to keep the flavour of the rooms and keep the character coming through,” she said.

As for Rosie, on a dark winter’s night when all the tourists have departed, Andrea may just host a seance to see what the ghost has to say.

“Bring her on,” she said, with a full-throated laugh.