The Military Camp
When the Government needed a training area in the North Island for its Territorial Forces in the 1930s, the Waiouru sheep station was ideal, with vast areas of cheap open land, and with ready road and 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 the declaration of World War II in 1939, most of the leasehold Waiouru run was taken back by the Crown.
Read more about this topic: Waiouru Army Camp
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or camp:
“There was somewhat military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subject for Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)