Waiouru

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Waiouru is a small town in the centre of the North Island of New Zealand. It is on the North Island Volcanic Plateau at a height of 815 metres above sea level, 25 kilometres southeast of Mount Ruapehu. It is in the Manawatu-Wanganui region.

North of Waiouru is the section of State Highway 1 called the Desert Road. This runs for 35 km through the Rangipo Desert to Turangi, at the southern end of Lake Taupo. Waiouru is a military town that has grown up in conjunction with the New Zealand Army Training Group (ATG), which is responsible for the training of recruits and other soldiers. The Desert Road immediately north of Waiouru runs through the 870 km² army training area, which lies mainly to the east of the road. The Navy's Irirangi communications station, with its huge directional antennae is just 2 km north of Waiouru.

The main attraction of Waiouru is the Queen Elizabeth II Army Memorial Museum, which features static displays of New Zealand's military heritage. The rest of the township consists of a small cluster of two garages, two petrol stations, a panel beater, two motels, two taverns, an internet cafe and 7 cafe/restaurants spread along the highway. Also nearby are the yards of a roading contractor and a maintenance contractor. A small supermarket is in the Army housing area two kilometres away.

Waiouru Army Museum

Seven kilometres to the west of Waiouru is the small settlement of Tangiwai, the site of New Zealand's worst railway disaster. On December 24, 1953 the overnight express between Wellington and Auckland passed over the Tangiwai railway bridge. The bridge, which had just minutes earlier been weakened by a lahar from Mount Ruapehu, collapsed, sending the train into the Whangaehu River, killing 151 people. Many army and naval personnel were involved in the rescue of survivors and the recovery of bodies. Sister Mortimer of the Waiouru Camp Hospital, "The Angel of Tangiwai," worked non-stop for three days tending the survivors and laying out the bodies. (Gregory)

[edit] History

[edit] The sheep years

Merino sheep had a big part to play in the siting of an Army training camp at Waiouru.

In 1855, missionary Tom Grace brought merinos from Taupo to graze on the tussock lands in the Waiouru area. The flock was eaten by Te Kooti's warriors in 1869, and 4000 more merinos were brought over the mountains from Hawke's Bay.

By the 1890s there were 40,000 merinos on the tussock lands between Karioi bush and the Kaimanawa Ranges, and pack-tracks (first formed in the 1870s, after traces of gold were discovered in 1869, 30 km NE of Waiouru on Mr. Lyon's run at Kereru) were used to get the hundreds of tons of merino wool to Napier (The Gentle Annie track), and later to Lake Taupo (The Desert Road) or down to Wanganui (Hales' Track and Field's Track). These tracks were later developed into roads for wool wagons. By 1897 there was a coaching house at Waiouru for mail-coach passengers on the Napier-Taupo run.

The North Island Main Trunk Railway came through in 1907 but not much wool was sent by rail as overgrazing by the sheep at this time had led to a plague of rabbits, and by the 1930s no sheep at all could be grazed on Waiouru sheep station.

In about 1904, Alfred Peters set up a Post Office, store and accommodation house for travelers and for the 500 men who were digging the huge railway cuttings west of Waiouru. His descendants' are still farming just east of Waiouru 100 years later (2007). Wally Harding began farming and developing Waiouru sheep station in 1939, and in 1951 began aerial topdressing his farm with a war-surplus Tiger Moth. This project expanded into Wanganui Aero Work Ltd. Wallie's grandson Lockie still farms at Waiouru (2007).

[edit] The military camp

When the Government needed a training area in the North Island for its Territorial Forces in the 1930s, Waiouru sheep station was thus ideal, with vast areas of cheap open land, and also ready road or rail access to all the North Island coastline.

Artillerymen were the first soldiers to use Waiouru. In 1937 Waiouru farmhand, Cedric Arthur, wrote:

The Military (artillery) Camp is here again for its annual big shoot, so Waiouru is exceedingly busy with huge lorries, tractors, guns and horses, not to mention soldiers galore.... It has been rumoured around here that the Minister of Defence has bought 15 miles of Waiouru to make a permanent Camp here. (Arthur 1984)

The rumour was correct. A month after war was declared in 1939, the majority of the leasehold Waiouru run was taken back by the Crown.

At the beginning of winter 1940, 800 construction workers from the Ministry of Works started building a camp at Waiouru for training 7000 Territorals at a time.

[edit] Wartime camp

At the beginning of winter 1940, eight hundred construction workers from the Ministry of Works laboured 20 hours a day building a camp for training 7000 Territorials at a time. Within six weeks 25,000 tons of building materials arrived at Waiouru Railway Station. 450,000 tonnes of earth was shifted to make a flat area for the camp.

While this was still going on, hundreds of soldiers camped under canvas in the snow and completed extensive field training.

By Christmas 1940, there were 230 buildings erected, served by 20 km of streets, and 8 km each of water mains, power lines and sewers.

By mid-1941, seven regimental camps housed 7000 soldiers. There was a bakery, a hospital, two movie theatres and 5 "Institutes," each with a concert hall, library, writing room and tearooms. But there were no bars: the boys had to go to Taihape to get a beer.

In August 1941, it was decided to establish an Armoured Fighting Vehicle School and also a Command and Staff School at Waiouru. (Croon 1941)

By the end of the war, 1.2 million Pounds had been spent on developing the camp, and 340 square kilometres had been acquired for training. (Brief 1987).

[edit] Postwar

By 1949 an urgent need arose to acquire much more land. The track across the desert through the middle of the artillery range was going to be upgraded into a major State Highway, and a line of high-voltage power pylons was planned for up the Moawhango valley.

Also, the Army Schools at Trentham were to be transferred to Waiouru, and Compulsory Military Training was about to commence. Furthermore, with defence responsibilities shifting to SE Asia, the Army also needed forest land for jungle warfare training.

All these pressures eventually resulted in another 250 km² of land to the north and east being acquired. And in 1955, the 1st NZSAS Squadron started jungle training in some of this newly acquired land, in Paradise Valley. (Brief 1987)

[edit] Waiouru's busiest years

Compulsory military training was carried out at Waiouru from 1950 to 1958 and balloted national service from 1962 to 1972.

In 1978, the Queen Elizabeth II Army Memorial Museum opened at Waiouru, and in 1985, the Officer Cadet School of New Zealand.

These were Waiouru's busiest years; there were 100 recreational clubs active in the 1970s and 80s, with 300 members in the Ski Club alone. Waiouru had a population of 6000 people, including 600 children.

[edit] Declining use

In the 1980s some training was discontinued, and some army units began to be transferred to Linton. By 1990 Waiouru’s permanent population had fallen to about 3000. However several hundred additional service personnel were in Waiouru on course at any one time. In 1991 nearly three thousand soldiers were trained in Waiouru on 275 courses. (Newspaper 1991)

With the reorganisation of armoured force personnel in 2005, and their departure from ATG, Waiouru’s population dropped to about 2000. But with its central location, and 600 km² of varied landforms, it was still a much-used training area. The 1400 beds in the barracks were frequently full, with others using the satellite camps or sleeping in the field.

As for the Army’s future at Waiouru, Maj Gen Jerry Mataparae stated (Army News 13 April 2004) that Waiouru was a strong factor in defining the Army, with the majority of courses, especially the more challenging ones, run there.

[edit] Navy and Air Force

The Royal NZ Navy's Waiouru W/T Station was commissioned in July 1943 and at the peak period of the war had an establishment of about 150 personnel, of whom more than eighty were women. Tens of thousands of code groups were handled each day, mostly for the British Pacific Fleet in Japanese waters. A dozen or more circuits were manned simultaneously and teleprinter land lines fed the signals to the Navy Office. In 1951 it was designated HMNZS Irirangi.(Waters) It is now manned only by a small contingent of Naval maintenance staff.

From WWII to 2001, the Royal NZ Air Force used the Army's artillery target areas in the Rangipo desert and east of the Moawhango River as bombing and rocket ranges. The air force continues to maintain Jameson Field for its helicopters inside Waiouru Camp, and it also practices landings its Hercules aircraft on the sealed Waiouru Airfield to the west of the Camp.