Ngākuru Primary School

The following excerpts are taken from the Ngākuru School Jubilee 1933 - 1983 booklet edited by Nita Robertson, assisted by Pam Murray and the Ngakuru Jubilee Committee.  Any use of information from this page must be approved by the writer.

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School History

The Ngākuru School was originally the Guthrie School, a one-roomed school of 430 square feet for a maximum of 35 children.  The site for this school was by the corner of what is now State Highway 30 and Nicholson Road on the southeast side of the intersection on the property now farmed by Mr. Mark Keaney.  The land was purchased from Mrs. Parsons for fifteen pounds ($30.00). Although 19 of the 26 school age children living in the Guthrie - Horohoro area were Māori, the Minister of Education decided not to designate the school a Native School.

The school was built by Mr. C. R. Smith of Rotorua and consisted of a room, 20' by 21'6" (9.6m by 10.23m) together with a shelter shed, two earth closets (toilets) and 24 chains of fencing complete with gates.  Whether the gates were satisfactorily erected seems uncertain as a great deal of discussion appears on them in the early minutes.

The  school  opened  in  1928,  but  closed  again  in  1930  due  to  a  lack  of  pupils  after  the establishment  of  Horohoro  Native  School  to  serve  the  Apirana  Ngata  Land  Development Scheme in that district.

Mr. W. J. Parsons, who was the school manager, as there was no school committee until 1931, pressed to have the school reopened,  and after a request from the Education Department, the Auckland Education Board reopened it on April 27, 1931 with 13 pupils.

The original School Committee minute book reaches back to this reopening.  A householders meeting was held on April 27, 1931, with the school manager taking the chair.  The following committee was elected: Mr. F. S. Hutchings, chairman; Mr. G (Giff) Hutchings, secretary- treasurer; and Messrs W. J. Parsons, S. P. Parsons and P. C. Willoughby.

A social committee was formed to work in conjunction with the school committee and the proceeds of the first social, five pounds ($10.00) were donated for library books.  The school committee decided to provide cocoa free for the children to have a hot midday drink, and in May passed an account of 12 shillings ($1.20) for firewood, and 4/11 (50c) for a billy, cocoa and sugar.

The remaining minutes reflect the efforts of the settlers to bring pressure on the government to improve roading.  The teacher, Mr. Harre, who transported some of the children to school in his car, was paid two pound three shillings ($4.30) out of social committee funds for breakages to his car.... he had to travel over partly formed roads, so it was no wonder!  The last meeting of the Guthrie School Committee was on November 29th, 1931, and the school finally closed in December.

Mrs. Coates' School 1932 - 1933 

Early in 1931, the Director of Education decided that Guthrie School had been wrongly sited, but it was not until 1932 that Mr. Willoughby wrote to the Board asking to have the school resited at Ngākuru.  During the school's reopening in 1931, there was an average attendance of 19 children, 16 of whom came from the government block at Ngākuru.

The gap in education facilities resulting from the closure of Guthrie School was partially filled when in March 1932; Miss Isabel (Peggie) Coates got permission from the board to set up a school in her parent’s home.  The following abridged quote is from "Five Gardens" by Mrs. A. E. Coates - Rotorua Historical Society.

"Isabel had remarked that children were running around like rabbits, untaught, and that it must worry their mothers.  We soon had proof that it did. One day two mothers from a camp about a mile away called on me to ask if I could help them. They had applied for correspondence lessons but found the conditions too difficult, crowded into tents, one with a family of five, they found it impossible to get the children to concentrate on lessons.  Besides, said one, I can't do the lesson myself, so how can I teach them? And Ronnie drank the ink!   Ronnie was a lovely baby, a year old who certainly possessed nine lives though he fell only once in to the creek, during the four years that they camped by it.  Well, I promised to let them know my decision within a few days.  We talked it over, and it was decided that with management we could find accommodation.  Desks were made from kerosene cases on legs, covered with American cloth. They were not bad looking and provided a desk top and lower shelf for books etc.  We looked up all our textbooks and other properties and provided substitutes for those we did not possess. Isabel undertook to teach the older children and me the younger ones.

The parents were delighted to hear our plans and sent the children who came willingly enough. Some had been to school previously and others not.  They were of all ages from six to 13 years.  I said to them "if you are willing to learn we are willing to teach, but if you want to play the fool you can go home and stay there."   I told them they were not to go near the creek unless accompanied by Mary and then only after my permission had been obtained.  This was one rule I expected all to keep. They worked well and I was very proud of them.

We never had less than nine, but could not accommodate more than 14 pupils.  It was in no sense a State School, so our rules were our own, also our hours of work.   It was all most unorthodox but it was great fun.

Some of the children walked five miles (8 km), on a frosty morning this was no joke. Two came bare footed and ice cut their feet, poor little boys. I found shoes to fit them and always had hot cocoa waiting for them.  It was a pleasure to teach them.  On Friday afternoons, I read to them, whilst they with pencils or crayons drew illustrations of the prose or poems they were listening to.  I found the results amazing, crude perhaps, but so intelligent.   Isabel returned to Dunedin and I carried on alone until there were sufficient settlers with children to warrant a school.  One was built and I closed down." 

Mrs. Coates' school was in the old flax mill where her daughter Mrs. Nancy Ellison lived before Lake Ohakuri flooded it.  The site is approximately 100 yards (110m) south of the intersection of Whirinaki Valley and Poutakataka Roads just off the point of land now farmed by Mr. John Ellison.    Isabel finally  got  paid for  her  services in  1933  after  some  wrangling,  due  to  an oversight; the Board had failed to grade the school.

Siting the New School

During this period the settlers in Ngākuru had been agitating very actively to obtain a school. There was considerable correspondence to both the Education Department and the Auckland Education Board.  A number of sites were proposed including the intersections of Nicholson and Poutakataka Roads, Whirinaki Valley and Twist Roads and Whirinaki Valley and Waikite Valley Roads.

Eventually a meeting called by the Board was held at Guthrie School.  This was probably one of the most heated meetings in the district's history.  In April 1933, Mr. Giff Hutchings offered four acres of land, an offer he had already made in the February when he had also offered to erect a modest school building.  The Education Board's advisory inspector made a very detailed report and map on the siting of the new school and because No2 block was almost ready to be settled, he recommended the present site on Mr. Garlick Martin's boundary.

Ngakuru School 1933 - 1983

In May 1933, Mr. Martin donated the original school site of four acres to the Department. Cabinet had earlier approved a grant of one hundred and twenty pounds ($240.00) for shifting the Guthrie School to Ngākuru. The school was moved in sections by Mr. Percy Willoughby on his own truck, probably about June 20, 1933.  Very wet weather made the re-erection difficult and Messrs Giff and Fred Hutchings helped position the pieces in the initial stages.   The roof was nailed down on July 20.  Mr. Willoughby was actually paid one hundred and forty-seven pounds three shillings and five pence ($294.65) for the whole operation, including 20 chains of fencing.  He employed three men, Jack Malone, Joe Colam and Mr. A. Barnet, a carpenter from Rotorua.

The school opened  with Mr. Dick Winn  as relieving teacher  and  the  first nine pupils were Edward Willoughby,  James Willoughby,  Francis  Willoughby,  Naureen  Saville,  Lucy Edwards, Robert Gill,  Athol Bretherton, Gordon Hutchings and  Douglas Malone.   These pupils either walked or rode to school.  Mr. Peter Willoughby became school manager at the request of the Board until the election of the school committee.

Mrs. Lucy Doust (Edwards) recalls that until she got a pony and went by road, she used to leave home on Mangatete Road, cross the Whirinaki stream on a foot swing and walk through Mr. Martin's property to school.

Mrs. Naureen Hooper (Saville) had recollections of Mr. Twist the cream carrier whose truck used to frighten seven devils out of the horses on Hutching's hill, and how they would stop on the shoulder of each corner and listen for him coming.  The horses tended to either bolt or jump over the bank on meeting the truck, usually on Giff Hutching's hill.  Evasive action was taken by going up a track through the scrub or through what became Lickfold's paddock.

Some horses carried more than one child.  Horses were let go in the horse paddock, that is the area between the play centre and the schoolhouse and beyond, which was then in low scrub. The number of horses never seemed to be more than four or five, as some children had bicycles.  Mrs. Joyce Stunnell (Thom) recollects pushing her bike up Hutching's hill crying from the cold on frosty mornings.

A householders' meeting was held in the school on April 23, 1934 and the first committee was elected: Mr. J. Langdon, Chairman; Mr. H Bretherton, Secretary; and Messrs G. Hutchings, R. Twist and W. Gill.   The chairman and secretary were to be joint treasurers.   Fund raising got underway immediately and just four days later a dance netted two pounds three shillings and six pence ($4.35) for school funds.  In May, a lamp and timber to make forms were purchased and in July with the onset of cold weather, there were purchases of "half axe" a coal shovel, cocoa, sugar and a billy, and materials for a coal shed.  The first of a long record of tree planting is seen in a request  to Mr. Twist to purchase sufficient trees to go round the school grounds, the price not to exceed one pound ($2.00) per hundred.

A new committee was elected in 1936 by a meeting chaired by Mr. Don Nicholson: Mr. Giff Hutchings, Chairman; Mrs. J. McLean, Secretary; and Messrs. F. Saville, W. Edwards and A. Lickford.  Thus, Mrs. McLean became the first woman elected to a Ngakuru School Committee, a position she appears to have filled very competently.

In May 1936, a dance was held to raise funds to insure the school as the insurance policy had lapsed. Admission was gents 1/6 (15c) and ladies 1/- (10c) or a basket (not just a plate mind!) and door takings came to two pounds eight shillings and six pence ($4.85).  A donated turkey was raffled for one pound eight shillings ($2.80) and a trout for eight shillings and three pence (83c), while on the debt side the music cost 7/6 (75c), benzine 2/3d (23c), the Monte Carlo 3/9d (39c), and the spot waltz 2/9d (29c) resulting in a net profit of three pounds eight shillings and six pence ($6.85)

On King's Birthday that year, a most successful working bee was held to form a tennis court; a later working bee completed it.   July's meeting accepted 1000 two-year-old pine trees and records that Mr. Bunny Abbott was now teacher.

What happened to those 1000 pine trees?   No wonder it took so much effort in later years to remove them if even half survived!

In late November 1926, the school was closed because of a polio epidemic.   The planned "Christmas tree" function was cancelled and presents given out on the morning of dismissal.   A children's dance planned for March 1937 in lieu of the Christmas function also had to be postponed because of the epidemic. 

Ngākuru

On looking at the fertile farmland of the Whirinaki Valley today, it is very hard to remember or imagine what this virgin country was like just over fifty years ago when those first farmers arrived.  They had little else but their keenness, determination and a pair of hands to start to convert their piece of 'wilderness' into a farm and a home for themselves and their families. This was the only possible way for them to ever get the chance to own their own land.   For those others who came a little later, in the 1930's after the farms had been partly grassed, life was still hard.  There were no houses for them, very few fences, farm prices were very low and the farms were 'money hungry' as they still needed so much development.  Their houses, when built, were barely adequate with just the bare necessities and no mod cons.

Much can be said for the calibre of those early settlers, many of the wives helped with the milking and farm chores, raised their families, made their homes as comfortable and attractive as they could afford, and established flourishing gardens.   Money was very scarce, roads and communications were difficult but they remained cheerful, extremely hospitable and were ready to organize a social gathering or outing for the district when the chance arose.  These few simple pleasures were eagerly looked forward to by everyone and must have provided some small relief from the otherwise very hard times.

Today we are fortunate to still have a similar situation where some womenfolk, although they help on the farm, are keenly interested in the welfare and social activities of their families. Elsewhere in this booklet, some of these activities are briefly recorded.

Unfortunately, we have very few records of what happened in those early years, so we have had to rely on the memories, shared by the folk who are still nearby.   We are deeply grateful to those who so willingly gave of their time to chat to us and who obviously enjoyed telling their life in those early days. We have tried to put the various events as accurately as possible, but forgive us for any errors that may have crept in.    We hope you will enjoy reading and reminiscing over this brief account of happenings in the last fifty years.  To the present day folk, maybe you will gain insight into the life of the early pioneers.

Early History

Little is known of pre-European times in the district.  There are no known pa sites nearer than Horohoro and the newly discovered one at Hapurangi, so possibly the only use made of the area was for hunting.  Apart from the abundance of Koura and watercress in the streams, the flat areas would have offered little else for food.  Birds would have been available only in the bush areas of Tumunui, Paeroas and Puaiti.  There were well-known tracks used by the Maori to give access to the hot springs at Orakei Korako but these were through Waikite Valley and Te Kopia Road.