Northern Wairoa Hotel Dargaville — Hotel in North Island

Dargaville for the weekend. Certainly not a tourist hotspot and itself a town showing signs of a struggling economy and lack of tourist dollars being injected. We chose to stay at the Northern Wairoa Hotel. Impressive from the outside but once you enter the double doors you sense it's heyday has past. No reception to welcome you. Instead a mesh security frame. No sign of any one. I headed into the bar area. Empty but there was noise from an adjacent bar. There the locals glued to the TV watching with drinks in hand hoping it seemed their numbers would come up.||I introduced myself to the bar lady who in turn called the manager. We followed him, a young man, outside to the reception area. He checked our details and handed over a key. Nobody took us up to our room upstairs. We opened the door and immediately realised this was nothing like the room we had seen on the website. $130 certainly wasn't acceptable for this room. So downstairs and found the manager again. Another key handed over. This time a better room, however tired and dated. Carpet had a smell of years of smoke. Furnishings old. Might have come from the op shop over the road perhaps? Bed comfortable. TV with all the SKY channels. No tea or coffee making facilities in the room but there was a guest kitchen down the passageway. Rubbish left on the kitchen bench hadn't been removed.||Our room had an ensuite. A full bath, green stained from years of dripping taps. A shower over the bath set at a height for children. We had to kneel to wash our hair and upper torso. The shower wall had mould and rot on the base. Handbasin was cracked and had no plug.||The walls were very thin. We listened to the neighbours in the adjacent room and when they went to sleep the soothing sound of deep snoring pervaded the evening. Music from another room thankfully ended after about an hour....

We took our kids out on a 'flip the coin' adventure for lunch and landed in dargaville. Our usual go to was closed due to being a public holiday, and we drove around a bit, not finding anything that really excited us (we even drove past the pub, and hubby said he wasn't keen as it just looked like an unfriendly sports bar from the street, and probably not kid friendly) so we parked up to head to the bakery, and my curiosity, and disappointment at not being able to grab a cheeky beer with lunch, and hubby's rubber arm led us for a wander with our 4 kids. It is so unassuming from the street, we almost didnt venture in, but when we poked our heads in the door, our 5 year old was straight in, and it was like being transported back to what places were like when we were children. It was beautiful (needs a bit of love - and the doll cabinet is a bit creepy lol) but the wait staff were so friendly. They had multiple highchairs for our two babies, and huge tables with plenty of space. Our eldest daughter was disappointed with her meal being the squid which just had what looked like a pile of julienned carrots, she enjoyed the squid itself but couldn't eat the rest, but hubby and I LOVED our meals. He had the fish and chips and I had the fish burger, it was obviously very clean oil it was cooked in and my fish burger was one of the best I've had. Our 5 year old had cheesy pasta, and our babies shared chicken nuggies and chips. They are very tough critics and the usual lunch war was avoided with next to nothing ending up on the floor. We will definitely be back, keen to try the...

I haven’t had dinner there for a good few months until recently with family. $27 for a meal, there were several options for the sides, they asked what one I’d like I told them. About 5 mins later came back and said sorry you wanted this side aye which was completely different to what I had asked. I replied no and said what I had originally gone for. 20 minutes passed, we had skinny garlic bread totally different to last years bread… $12 for that. Everything had seemed to down in size and up in price. Dinner came round & they had brought out the different side to what I had asked for.. funny thing is they asked me twice and this side they gave me wasn’t even on the menu. The coleslaw was drenched in Mayo, couldn’t even taste the carrot etc. Other family members potato mash looked as if it had come out of a microwaveable packet. The menu had hardly anything in it.. not many things to choose from. Desserts are $15.50 each…. Half a scoop of ice-cream and a brownie. Whilst eating dinner the waitresses basically stood there watching us.. as we were the only ones in there. Surely manners would be nice especially when someone is eating…

Food used to be really great. You’d expect for prices like that it would taste good but yeah not a fan. Won’t be going back till there’s either new owners or something is done about the food....