Trader Jacks on the waterfront at Avarua is Rarotonga’s best known bar and restaurant. All thanks to its colourful and often controversial owner, Kiwi-born Jack Cooper, who passed away early last month at his hillside home overlooking the old taro swamp at Avarua.

A couple of years back, I had the privilege of spending 10 days with the publican, recording his life story in every gritty detail. He delivered his stories with blunt honesty and an acerbic wit, drawing on his huge life experience working in the hospitality trade, “40 years behind bars” as he described it.

Born in Wellington on December 8, 1946, Jack was just made for running a watering hole in the Pacific. His great great grandfather Thomas William Deacon built the original Riverhead Hotel at the head of Waitemata Harbour, back in 1867, the first riverside tavern to be constructed in New Zealand.

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First time young Jack carried a tray was at the Logan Park Motor Inn in Auckland. He loved the work, but his feet were itchy. Throwing it in, he did a stint on an oil rig in the middle of Australia’s Gibson Desert, telling me how he remembered that time well because that’s when Hey Jude came out. He listened to it crackly over the shortwave radio.

Back in New Zealand, he took up running the house bar at the South Pacific Hotel, Corner Queen and Customhouse Streets, Auckland.

His hospitality career took him around the North Island, with stints at hotels in Wellington, Whakatane and Hastings, progressing to management.

As he was about to make another move to the Rotorua International hotel, he was headhunted by Paul Temm, a QC from Auckland who at the time was chairman of The Rarotongan.

This hotel situated on the southwest coast of Rarotonga had been built in 1977 but was having some problems. Jack didn’t know much about the Cook Islands, but the challenge interested him enough to take the job. He arrived there in 1983 to take up the job of turning the place around.

Only trouble was, the new United States management company were not impressed at what they thought was some young Kiwi smart-arse coming up and interfering in their operation, and they did everything in their power to obstruct him. Just eight weeks after arriving, Jack was ousted.

With bridges back to New Zealand burnt, Jack was in Raro to stay. An opportunity arose to take over the Vaima restaurant in Vaima’anga at the southern end of the island, in partnership with an old mate from Wellington, Brian Pilkington, who was married to a Cook Islands woman.

Jack ran the place quite successfully for a couple of years as he developed a wider vision about what he wanted to achieve.

As he put it to me: “There was always something I just couldn’t figure out about the Cook Islands. It was surrounded by water but there were few watering holes to actually sit down and drink and watch the ocean, the sunrise or sunset, or just contemplate the waves out on the reef. That was what tourists wanted, but it felt like no one provided it.”

After plenty of looking and asking around, Jack found the perfect bit of land right on the waterfront virtually right in town. No one can actually individually own land in the Cooks, you have to lease it or get it allocated from family entities.

But this chunk of land at the very head of Avarua Harbour was reclaimed, which meant no families had ever owned it, so he negotiated a 60-year lease directly with the Cook Islands Investment Corporation (CIIC).

Once he had the lease tied up, he went about meticulously planning his new bar and restaurant, bringing in all the necessary experts to execute his grand plan. All his planning paid off, Mainland Brown contractors building the whole place start to finish in six months.

Initially Jack was going to call it Lighters Bar and Restaurant, the name taken from the adjoining unloading facility which used lighters or longboats to unload cargo from freighters which would moor off Avarua Harbour.

But just six weeks before he was due to open, the lightering service got pulled out. All the unloading of shipping cargo got switched to Avatiu Harbour next door.

Suddenly, Jack was confronted with finding a new name for his establishment. General traders are big in the Pacific, and a few Trader names already existed, the biggest being Trader Joe’s in the States. Vanuatu had Vanuatu Traders, in Rarotonga there was even a Trader Vics, but none of them were bars. So he thought, “Trader Jacks, yes why not”.

Trader Jacks opened for business bang on schedule on Friday, June 6, 1986. Jack started with 10 staff, as opposed to the 54 or so the business built up to pre-Covid.

Right from the start, Trader Jacks became a real meeting place where any business big or small, or social concerns, could be frankly aired. The bar even became jokingly referred to as the Cook Island’s “Second Parliament”, that phrase even entering into the country’s Hansard when a member got up to point out the true influence of Jack’s establishment in Rarotongan affairs.

Like many a foreigner, Jack felt welcomed to Rarotonga, but he also appreciated he was a papa’a, the Cook Island’s word for a foreigner which literally means “four layers of clothes”, the way the missionaries used to dress.

He told me he felt like a white man in paradise, just privileged to be here. His heart just felt like it belonged there. One of his especially proud moments being when the locals started calling him Tiaki Kupa, the transliteration of his name in Cook Islands Maori.

Jack also reckoned he would have been a rich man if it hadn’t been for three cyclones which wiped him out each time, the last, Meena in February 2005, costing him a good million bucks.

The first to hit was Cyclone Sally in early January 1987, just seven months after opening. The poles and roof survived relatively intact, but everything else was totally destroyed, five metre waves pushing through the building with terrific destructive force.

The only thing protecting Trader Jacks had been a flimsy tin seawall, and that was all ripped away. The hardwood floor had been pushed up by the sheer hydraulic force of the waves which undermined the foundation, allowing the floor to collapse like matchwood, mixing it all with beach sand, shingle and coral. Not only was it an absolute total disaster, but it would be the last insurance pay out he would ever get, and that took a good year and a half to come through.

Cyclone Pam in December 1997 was the second major hurricane to hit Trader Jacks. That cyclone smashed in on his birthday, costing him around $80,000 to repair.

The third and most devastating cyclone of all to hit Traders Jack was Meena in February 2005. Rarotonga had five that season but Meena was by far the worst, sending waves through Avarua and wiping many businesses out completely. There was just nothing left of Trader Jacks but a pile of rubble and a few poles sticking out of the foreshore.

For a few days it certainly felt like the end had come. But then he had a brainwave, converting a 20- foot-long stainless-steel-lined shipping container into a side opening bar which he positioned back on Avarua Harbour waterfront.

Calling it Jack in the Box, it was basic but at least it was still flying the flag. He dumped a couple of truckloads of sand out front for customers to stand on and he was away.

Slowly, he rebuilt the business up and around that that Jack in the Box, ending up eventually selling that container to Aitutaki where it still operates as a bar for the Fishing Club there.

Everyone congregated at Jacks. At least one commentator attributed the origins of “the Winebox” inquiry there, Winston Peters a regular customer during that time.

Jack could never resist having politicians on - Prime Ministers in particular were always fair game to him. One evening he rarked up Sir Geoffrey Henry so bad that the Cooks PM threatened to get him thrown out of the country. Sir Tom Davis would well hold his own, one night firing back to him: “How come you be so god-damn stupid sometimes Jack.”

Jack’s interactions with patrons and friends have been well recorded, the practical jokes, mercilessly “taking the piss” as he called it, and of course his legendary drinking.

I had to ask him what the most intoxicated night he could recall? His reply: “Thirty-seven bourbon and cokes, but I still managed to drive home!” Jack enjoyed shocking people, and he could swear too, “sentence enhancers” he referred to them. Bombay Sapphire gin became his preferred tipple towards the end.

There were many defining incidents in his career, like the crazy naked visit to Trader Jacks one night from All Black Zac Guildford, which made headlines around New Zealand. Then there was the impromptu Neil Finn concert which nearly brought the house down. The Crowded House band members had all been holidaying in Rarotonga, and just obliged, Raro-style. No wonder he loved the place.

Trader Jacks provided the venue for so many events, even once hosting a function for Hilary Clinton and her visiting Fifth Fleet mates. He knew everyone, and everyone at least knew of him.

Of course, he had a few Cook Island girlfriends over the years, but it was Rosa Tauia who became his live-in mainstay to the end. Just as Chris Douglas became his business partner in the fish processing and pickle business which they founded in a big tin shed on the Ara Metua backroad.

A man with the calibre and business network which Jack built up does not stand alone, and no one appreciated this more than him.

Jack Cooper, proud to have met you, prouder still to record all your stories.