Waiouru

Transportation in and around Waiouru was made by walking or car. Participants felt that whereas in the past many activities were available in Waiouru, now you had to travel to them:

"There’s no public transport anywhere. A lot of people don’t have cars, either."
"You can’t even get off the train in Waiouru or Taihape."
"You can get the bus that goes from Auckland to Wellington, you can jump on that if you can get a seat, but you can’t get a bus that goes to Ohakune or Taihape or whatever."
"There used to be every conceivable group in Waiouru that you could want. But now if you want to do something you have to travel. Like if your girl wants to play netball, you have to travel to Taihape and try to join a netball team there, it’s those things."
"I used to say to my husband, oh we’re in the middle of nowhere, but he’d say, we’re on the road to everywhere. That’s how you have to look at it."
"Oh my god, that should be the slogan on our sign!"
"We’re only under an hour to Tūrangi, an hour and a half to Palmy, Whanganui."

Traffic density was not a problem in Waiouru, and the only concern expressed in this respect was that residents felt that the speed limit of 70km/h on the main road was too fast.

"It needs to be 50."
"If you say 70, they’ll do 80. Say 50 they’ll do 60".
"Especially the trucks. You hear them hitting the brakes eh. I hear them at night."
"They go 100 at night and quite often at night they will keep carrying on through doing 100. "

Around Waiouru, people who do not have cars rely on others to help them out. Grocery delivery services were increasingly used by residents:

"People who don’t have cars) can walk or rely on friends."
"People use the Countdown online delivery. Countdown is in Palmy and they'll deliver it. They go to the wrong houses. You see them on the community page. Did anyone get this box? It's got my groceries in it? Oh yeah, that got delivered to my house! "
"Mad Butcher, he used to do that too from Whanganui? I don’t know if he still does."

Groceries were also available from a local shop, though most people tended to do larger shops in Taihape or elsewhere:

"A lot of families will sort of do a trip once a month and sort of, stock up. Go to Palmy or somewhere like that. The Pak’n’save or Taupō. Maybe take the kids to something while you're in Taupō."

Participants felt that while electricity in Waiouru was expensive, internet was the same price as elsewhere. For many families, significant costs were incurred in travelling for things like sports or health service access.

Internet speed in Waiouru was considered reasonable on the main road but poor within the camp:

"Main road you can get fiber, but camp’s terrible. Your computer is always lagging."
"I would think that Defence would have all the latest Gucci stuff."
"You quite often have people when they’ve just moved in they’ll be on the community page, "What on earth is going on with the internet? Can anyone get anything faster?"
"Yeah, because they've come from Palmy or Trentham."
"I don’t think the school can tap into fibre because I don’t think they will go past the camp boundary at the moment and as soon as you come up that road, it’s camp?"