WAIOURU CAMP

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXI, Issue 90, 12 November 1940, Page 2

WAIOURU CAMP

MODERN MILITARY TOWNSHIP

HIGH STANDARD OF

COMFORT

Nearing completion at Waiouru is the most modern of New Zealand's military camps. It will accommodate more than 7,000 men and could without difficulty take up to 10,000. Half .a mile square, it is set in the lee of 'hills, with Mt. Ruapehu 15 miles away. Of necessity established in lonely country, the camp has been carefully designed and equipped, almost as a model township would be under a town planning scheme, and the troops will find no lack of comfort. There is a 100-bed hospital, a picture theatre is being erected to seat 850 and a V.M.C.A. building, now almost finished, will be the largest of its kind in New Zealand. There will be a complete post and telegraph office land Savings bank and, in course of construction, a special branch railway line, which will have a 1,000 feet platform to take a doubleengined full train. The station is only 200 yards from the camp.

Miles of Paved Roads

The roads will total 6| miles. They will be paved and 25 feet from kerb to kerb, a foot wider than the average main highway. Two roads in the camp will have double lanes, each of 25 feet, with a 30 feet central lane set apart as a "lung" to be planted with shrubs and grass.

The camp streets have already been named—Karamea, Moerangi, Kaikoura, Ruahine, Waitakere, Ruapehu, Maunganui, Ngaruhoe, Kaimanawa, Hikurangi, Tauhara, Aorangi and Pirongia.

Giant plants are already generating the electric power for the camp. The "water supply comes from a specially constructed dam in the hills. There is modern sewerage for all purposes. j Many Permanent Buildings j There are seven battalion areas. Each will take 192 tents, more if need be, or a grand total of 1344.' The tents will take comfortably six men apiece. There is reserve land prepared for five more areas. The areas are in squares, each completely self-contained. The permanent buildings fornl the outsides of the squares; inside there is the area for the tents and inside that the parade ground protected by buildings and tents from the winds. The grounds, in common with the rest of the camp, are to be tarsealed. Thirty thousand trees have been planted in fourteen rows to form a shelter belt right round the camp.

The permanent buildings for the outer of the battalion squares are the boiler house, laundry, showers, and drying-room block, the ablution stands and conveniences block (one on two sides of the square), officers and n.c.o's. cubicles, showers, bathrooms and conveniences block, ordnance depot, company stores (five), battalion store, men's mess block (kitchen, two messrooms, vegetable store, pantry, serveries and other offices), fuel store and officers' and n.c.o's. mess block with similar accommodation to the men's mess block.

These mess blocks are in the form of three sides of a rectangle. The messrooms (men's) will each seat 450, and take up the two sides of the rectangle. At the built end of the rectangle is the kitchen block with the serveries, adjacent to the messrooms and connected by long slides. The camp is equipped with its "own fire station with engine and accommodation for a brigade of six.

Provisioning is a big item. The ration store resembles a big city warehouse. It is now being stocked. Already it has 15 tons of sugar, 4i tons of rice, 400 cases of jams, 10,OODlbs of tea and hosts of other foodstuffs in "wholesale quantities." There are freezing chambers for meat, butter and milk, the meat freezer taking ten tons of meat. The refrigerating machinery came from the wrecked steamer "Port Bowen." In the main butchery are various types of modern machines, power driven mincers, electric choppers, sausage machines. Three thousand pounds of meat can be pickled at one time.

The 100-bed hospital block, fully