Rotoiti Lodge: A Policeman's Dream Coming True

Some facts about the lodge: valued at $80,000 (completed and fully furnished); accommodation for about 70 pupils and four supervisors; available on roster basis for Nelson and Marlborough schools in school weeks, other parties in weekends and holidays; overall floor area, about 11,000 sq ft; probable opening date, February 10.

When construction work on Rotoiti Lodge in the Nelson Lakes National Park commenced a few months ago, a 100-day target for completion was set. To all intents and purposes, the story of Rotoiti Lodge is bound up in these 100 days – but there is another story, a story which commenced nearly 11 years ago when the Nelson Youth Club failed to raise more than £3000 for a gymnasium project for Nelson youth. The club was run, primarily, by Nelson policemen. One of them, Sergeant Noel Oxnam, a man who had spent a great deal of his life in the great outdoors, conceived the idea of a youth lodge in the back country, where the men and women of tomorrow could be taught, as part of their school curriculum, something of bushcraft, mountain and bush safety and other subjects connected with nature. And so the money collected, and held in trust, was channelled into a project which was given the blessing of the National Parks Board Authority – Rotoiti Lodge, at Lake Rotoiti, a site readily accessible to the schools in Nelson and Marlborough. These are the bare facts of how the scheme was commenced. The planning for it is a story in itself.

And so, in April this year, Sergeant Oxnam saw his dream coming true. An initial setback was the high cost of building the lodge when the job was put up for tender, but this was overcome by deciding to build with voluntary labour and materials. The people of Nelson and Marlborough responded to an astonishing degree. Stands of trees were donated, felled, milled, dried and carted to the site; contractors donated the services of hundreds of thousands of dollars of heavy machinery for site preparations and heavy work; and from all over the two provinces, volunteers from every walk of life spent the weekends, under the supervision of a professional project manager, erecting the building and to date more than 600 man-days have been worked on the project. Space precludes us from elaborating on the work. Suffice to say that it is unique in New Zealand and is likely to become a pilot scheme for other centres. Only one thing more remains to be said. The project has reached the stage where it needs finance. You Can Help. Your Children Will Benefit From Any Donation You Make.

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Sergeant Noel Oxnam, a man with vision