Pukerua Bay Plunket Room
Opening of Pukerua Bay Plunket Room, June 1938. Photo Coveney Albums, Pataka Art+Museum.
In 1930 a sub branch of the Wellington Plunket Society was formed for the townships between Tawa Flat and Pukerua Bay. Pukerua Bay Plunket was a local branch of the Coastal Towns Sub Branch with Mrs Elizabeth Gray as president. At the 1939 annual meeting Mrs Gray was again elected president with Messrs C Gray, A Lindsay and J Scott as vice presidents. 22 committee members were also elected.
Minister of Health the Hon. Peter Fraser opening the new Plunket Room at Pukerua Bay, June 1938. Photo Coveney Albums, Pataka Art+Museum.
In June 1938 the Pukerua Bay Plunket Room was opened by the Minister of Health, and future Prime Minister, Hon. Peter Fraser. Mrs Gray remarked the building was, “free of debt, made possible by the gift of the land and by the whole of the work being done by the men of the district”.
“At the present time very keen interest is being displayed by the public as a whole in the subject of nutrition, and there is a great deal of talk—some of it obviously not particularly well informed— about food and diet,” said the Minister of Health (the Hon. P. Fraser), when opening the new Plunket room at Pukerua Bay this afternoon. Evening Post, 25 June 1938.
The Plunket meetings held in the Plunket Room provided a time and place for the women who lived in the bay to gather and socialise. Meetings often closed with a “daintily served tea”. The committee met regularly to organise fundraising events such as children’s fairs and carnivals in Mrs Gray’s Garden followed by evening dances.
The original building on the corner of Highway 59 and Beach Road was the base for the Plunket Nurses until the mid-1970s when it was sold to become a private home. New rooms were built on the reserve in Wairaka Road.
