Otaki health camp, 1940s

I went to Otaki Health Camp around 1962 when I was 7 or 8. I was so scared when I got off the bus as I didn't understand why I was there or who these people were. I wasn't eating well and when I wouldn't eat they put me in a small room and locked the door until I had eaten my food. I found a small hole in the wall and used to shovel my food into it. They discovered this though but I can't remember what happened about it.
I told them I couldn't eat because I felt sick. One of them would drag me to the toilet and push my head down into the toilet while yelling at me " be sick then"!
My Mother told me years later that when I got home I was black and blue. She wanted to complain to the police but for some reason she didn't.
I have obviously forgotten a lot but it was a hell hole and when my mother once threatened to send me back there one day when I was naughty I never forgot that. I never forgave her for it either.

I was 8 years when I attended health camp with my older brother in 2004, I don't know how it was back in the old days but my time there was great, really great staff friendly peers had a few fights here and there with opposite dorms but overall was a good experience, it does make you miss home a lot, but I went there with a bad anger issue and came back home better than I left, food was great and they even celebrated the kids birthdays often taking the whip camp to see a movie or go to porirua to swim at the pools, don't know how it is now but my time there was a good eye opener and experience.

Well I am just starting to address my imprisonment in the Roxburgh Health camp where I was sent as a nine year old in 1959 and was there for 2.25 months wondering the entire time would I ever see my family again. Supposedly some idiot believed I was undernourished and I was force fed with food, supplemented with endless amounts of cod liver oil, skimmed milk and maltexo by the tablespoon. The confinement has left me with a legacy of weight problems that have caused me low esteem, anxiety problems, inability to sleep in the dark and most of all an extremely bad temper all from the legacy of being held down each day and force fed and imprisoned in a strange place with no family or friends. Despite my mother being a registered nurse they decided to play god and ironically they now have a contract to treat 1000 children who are obese yet do not want compensate all of us abused children. I have had to pick the scab and address this background as I have been a tough parent and my lovely children have all such bad memories of my parenting ir lack of because of my quick temper and I need to right the wrong before I die. I also intend to take this matter as far as I can and our voices will be heard so watch this space. I accept the current management of childrens affairs are not responsible but that does not mean someone else is and whilst we are happy to address abuse of treaties and church and state wards this is no different and to think some child can be plucked out of a family environment and wake up in an unknown prison for 2.25 months and not have any long term effects on that child is simply failing to face up to the harm they have caused.

Hated the place. Worse than prison. Went there because my mum was solo and sometimes in hospital. Was made to eat orange peels, pumpkin skin and apple cores.
Was hell for me, used to stutter and wet the bed because of my alcoholic father. I was bullied by the whole dorm.
Went there a few times. My sister escaped from there.
Wouldn't believe that was 1970s and happened New Zealand.
Only bad memories of that place.

I was placed in the Otakt Health camp for stx weeks around 1943-1944
I came from a poor working class family, I was a bed wetter and very skinny
I cannot say it was wonderful but in the six weeks I stopped wetting the bed, meals were regular and the dose of cod liver oil and cup of cold milk every morning at ten oclock I fought against but learnt the easiest way was swallow it quick.
Swimming at the beach was great, went home brothers could no longer call me pee pants, nearest holiday I was ever given, Matron was firm but fair lot of the children were naughty, It gave our folks a break cost was nothing , my photo was on the front page of the Women's Weekly with Lord and Lady Newall??, following February. we lived in a hard world but weren't we fortunate.

My brother and I were sent to Austwitch in around 1975. 6-7 weeks of hell. We were not molested but it was run like an army camp and we were just little kids. I cried my eyes to sleep each afternoon and night. There were 1 or 2 caring teachers, the rest were pigs. Still haunts me to this day!

I was incarcerated in a health camp, probably Otaki during the Christmas and New Year of 1965/66. I should not have been there. I was five when I arrived, but mum had been carted off to the Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital and my father was not able to look after my younger brother and I My younger brother I believe stayed with relatives and my baby brother was placed in the Karitane baby's hospital in Wellington.
My father tricked me into getting into the car, that morning, we drove out to a bakery we often went to and he bought me two of my favourite fruit buns with pink icing. I ate one as we drove to a supermarket car park and saved the other for later.
When we arrived at the carpark, there was a bus there and a crowd of kids who he told me were going off to health camp. Then he asked if I would like to go to health camp. My answer was no way. I was dragged kicking and screaming onto the bus and cried all the way to health camp.
My clothes were forgotten in all the confusion, I believe dad had some in the boot of the car for me and when I spent the whole six weeks wearing ill fitting lost property and clothes that the nurses provided.
It gets worse; I was molested for my birthday and molested for Christmas. The nurse and the Sister, whose names I remember, but will not disclose here, threatened me with hidings and paid special attention to my genitals and the interior of my anus when I was washed by them. I was always showered alone. The other , older boys in my dormitory would go off to the showers first and then I would be taken when they returned, wearing their pyjamas. I was sodomised. Impure and simple, by adults who the state and my father trusted.
I had my two front teeth accidentally knocked out by a swing, at some stage and it was the worst six weeks of my life.
To add to the psychological abuse I suffered, I was not told why I was there, how long I was going to be there, nor whether I would ever see my family again. I felt like I had just been dumped there like a little piece of unwanted rubbish.
My family left New Zealand in 1973 and I have never returned. I have no desire ever to return. Any country and government that can sanction child abuse of such a degree, doesn't belong on this planet.
I have had many ups and downs in my life, but nothing even comes close to the dark days I suffered in that Concentration Camp.
I was scarred for life. The pain is still there, until this day.

i went here when i was a child now only in my mid 20s i have some memory of my time there it was hell no place for anyone i was put on a plane one day shipped off and from the moment i got there was bulled i remember running away a bring brought back don't think i got to far

I was around age 8 or 9 when sent to the Otaki Health Camp, along with my oldest sister. I don't know who was responsible for sending us there but remember being told it was because we were too skinny (same as previous poster). I spent an extra week there due to contracting Mumps a day or two before we were due to be sent home. I remember being very homesick and crying in the first few weeks. It was run like a military academy - except we were just kids.

I have been trying to get copies of my records, both the case file and the educational file.

The Ministry of Education in Wellington did answer my letter and I think I will be able to get copies of my education file. But, it is the case file that I really want to get a copy of and the Corporate Records Manager, Ministry of Health, P.O. Box 5013, Wellington, has not replied to my letter. Probably just tossed it away. It is my file and I have a right to view it. I doubt that it is going to happen though without hiring a lawyer or flying back to NZ to deal with it in person.

Oh what a horrible place the Otaki Health Camp was. I was born in Upper Hutt in 1948 and attended Silverstream School. When I was about 7 years old a woman from the dept. of health came to school ( she looked like the flying Nun). She told me I was too skinny and looked under nourished. A few weeks later I was put on a bus from Senio Road Trentham and sent to that rotten place in Otaki. I came to hate this place, was treated badly, was so homesick. every day we had to endure cod liver oil liquid, were disciplined, endured afternoon sleeps in that dormitory. I hated this place I ran away twice, only to be brought back again kicking and screaming!
If those in charge thought they did good then they were wrong. My mother was wrong to allow me to be taken away. To this day I still recount the most unpleasant times I had at this institution.
Now in early retirement and living in Perth, Western Australia I often reflect how cruel the "do goddess were" and that this place of evil still exists.
Shame on those who thought they knew best, shame on my Mother for going along with the "flying Nun".
Some may think this is a rant, but some who attended that 6 week hell-hole may also have similar views.
Still today, when I tell of my experience at Otaki Health Camp ( and I recall vividly) people are unbelieving.
I have much much more to reveal about what happened to me there.

Wayne Burley
Ravenswood. Perth WA 6208.