A reproduction of an Otaki Children's Health Camp photo owned by Steve Gilbert which he calls his Sound of Music photograph.
A reproduction of an Otaki Children's Health Camp photo owned by Steve Gilbert which he calls his Sound of Music photograph.
"It's going to be a good solid record of a facility that Otaki should be inordinately proud of."
Di Buchan was describing her book Sun, Sea and Sustenance - The story of the Otaki Children's Health Camp which took two and a half years to write.
She became interested in writing a book about the health camp, which is 85 years old, after attending an Otaki Historical Society guest speaker event featuring a newly appointed health camp manager who had expected to talk about health camps in general.
But the meeting was packed out with many upset people who had become aware of plans to relocate the health camp to Paraparaumu - those plans are still in motion.
"I was sitting there listening to all these people talking about when they were children at the camp, when they were working there, and I thought if this camp is going to move, who has got all this history?
Di Buchan has written a book about the Otaki Children's Health Camp.
"So I volunteered to go and interview people, I had just retired, and used to be a social researcher, and we would put it in a transcript in a ringbinder in the Otaki Museum and at least we would have some record of the camp.
"But I ended up doing so many interviews that I thought this is much more than a ringbinder thing and I started getting fascinated with the camp.
"Then I realised it needed a context and that's when I started writing the book."
The book comprises 47 interviews of people who stayed or worked at the camp, and lots more.
"One guy called me from the United Kingdom, several from Australia, others from Auckland, Tauranga, Dunedin...thousands of kids went through that camp and they're all over the world now."
Children arrived at the camp for a variety of reasons from malnutrition, overcoming health issues such as tuberculosis and whooping cough to getting away from violence.
"Some of the stories will make you weep. Not the stories of what happened to them at the camp, as most of them had a really cool time, but just the circumstances that led them to being there."
The health camp offered respite for many children.
"They got food, they got love, they got fresh air and a beach.
"And I think Otaki Beach was a perfect location for what they were trying to do with the children."
Di was especially thankful to Heather Gay, a former matron at the camp, and Barbara Vincent, a former teacher at the camp, who kept very good scrap books.
"They had a lot of newspaper clippings and a whole lot of photos that no one else has seen."
Di's hardest challenge was backgrounding the camp's reduction from 28ha to its current 4ha.
The sale process started in the early 1960s, because of pressure to sell surplus land, and led to Otaki Borough Council taking a big portion of land which has been subdivided into residential development.
"I'm sure that what is in the book is actually what happened to the land...that was the hardest bit to write and I knew I had to get it right."
Di said the camp could have had a steady income if an idea in 1939 by Byron Brown [who originally gifted the land for the health camp] had been pursued - subdividing surplus land along Marine Parade into residential sections and collecting lease money.
But World War II erupted, the idea didn't gain traction, and eventually council took the land, subdivided it and now collect rates off it.
"It's an income in perpetuity for council [Kapiti Coast District Council]."
Di said the health camp movement in New Zealand was started by Elizabeth Gunn during World War I.
"When she was running it they were outdoor camps. From there Ada Paterson came in and she argued the need for permanent health camps.
"She met with Byron Brown who knew Truby King, who had already started the idea of taking children, feeding them up and getting them healthy.
"Those four really pulled it all together."
Brown gifted 28ha of land to establish the Otaki Children's Health Camp which opened in mid February 1932.
The book, funded by the Philipp Family Foundation and the Donald and Mary-Annette Hay Family Trust, will be launched on September 2 in the Gertrude Atmore supper room by the Otaki Memorial Hall.
There will be a health camp exhibition in the Otaki Museum, starting at the same time as the book launch, with the exhibition going until after Christmas.
And there will be a health camp reunion, at the camp, on September 30; to register phone Cathy Woods on 04 472 0101 or email cathy.woods@standforchildren.org.nz by September 11.
