The Public Works Department is ordered to build barracks at Waiouru to house two battalions for territorial defence. On the 2nd of June 1940 this order is increased to buildings for training seven battalions of expeditionary forces.

200 Public Works Dept engineers arrive at Waiouru. They survey the swampy site with the Waiouru Stream flowing through the middle of it, then begin removing the swamp with land-scrapers and replacing it with sand and gravel.
Each day they bring hundreds of tons of building materials to the site from the Waiouru railway station, unloading everything by hand.

1st July 1940

Another 800 men working for private building contractors begin erecting the first of the new buildings. Some workers are accommodated in the artillery’s 20 barrack buildings built a couple of years previously, but 600 of them are sleeping in the army’s bell tents ( in mid-winter, in Waiouru ! ) This is a great incentive to get more weatherproof barrack rooms erected ASAP.

The work goes on 20 hours a day, in two 10-hour shifts. At night the work is lit by dozens of kerosene flares. The camp resounds with the banging of hundreds of carpenters’ hammers and the roar of the 70 motor-trucks and 35 bulldozers, carry-alls and diggers that are constantly on the move.Further afield, dozens of gangs of other men are upgrading the narrow, winding roads from Taihape, Turangi and Ohakune to military standard. All the old wooden trestle bridges on these roads are being replaced with heavy-duty concrete ones.

1st August 1940

25,000 tons of building materials are now on site. The workmen have completed 40 buildings in their first 30 days. They move into them as each one is finished. Work continues on removing muddy topsoil and filling swamps. A huge mound is growing (between today’s wash stand and the Sgt’s Mess) as 130,000 tons of swampy earth is removed and replaced by the same amount of drained volcanic sand and gravel. Eventually 60 hectares of firm, level land will be created to site more than 360 buildings. Excavators remove another 40,000 tons of soil to make a trench that diverts the Waiouru stream around the camp site.

September 1940

An 180,000 litre reservoir is taking shape on what will become known as Tank Hill. Two dams are being built to feed it. 9 km of water mains are being laid to distribute the water, and similar lengths of stormwater and sewerage pipes. There are now 1,200 workers on site. The First Echelon of 2NZEF arrive for field training, sleeping under canvas in the snow.

May 1941

The camp is finished. As well as barrack buildings for the battalions and the camp HQ, there are two rifle ranges, 30 explosives magazines, a motor garage, a 100-bed hospital, a dental clinic, a nurses home, a 1000-seat picture theatre, a fire station and five recreation Huts, each with a café, lounge, library, billiard saloon, concert hall and letter-writing room.

But there are no bars. Most of the soldiers are 17-year olds, and the drinking age is 21. The camp is dry. So the boys write letters instead: approximately 60,000 sheets of paper and 30,000 envelopes are issued over one three-day period.

Every day the camp bakery with gigantic twin ovens is turning out thousands of loaves and the butchery is cutting up tons of meat, while warehouses at the end of the railway siding are distributing dry foodstuffs, clothing, ammunition, petrol, coal and thousand-and-one other commodities. Opposite them, near the main gate, is the guard house, with cells and a prophylactic building nearby, for soldiers who have over-indulged in various ways while on leave.

The only inadequacy is Waiouru’s tiny post and telegraph office, which has to deal with letters, parcels, telegrams, toll calls and savings accounts of 7000 soldiers (There were no courier vans, emails, cellphones or eftpos cards then), and the PWD workers are now completing a much bigger Post Office.