Fun and games – playcentre on the move again
It’s been an integral part of the Queenstown community for almost 70 years, faced with many a move in earlier days, but last week Queenstown Playcentre launched in new digs, right beside the Queenstown Primary School.
Required to vacate its long-standing home of 43 years in the old high school buildings in Stanley Street, the Playcentre now has a permanent new home leasing two old classrooms on primary school land.
Playcentre Committee spokesperson Vanessa Harwood says it’s been a team effort transforming the site to be age appropriate for pre-schoolers and even the national Playcentre CEO and staff from around the country pitched in.
“It’s a nice bright, sunny space, warm and welcoming,” she says.
The hard work now begins and while they have an awesome sandpit, Harwood says they’ll be fundraising for much-needed play equipment – a mud kitchen to get dirty and creative in, and they hope to create a bike track around the perimeter. The sunny site also requires shade sails.
Local kaumatua Ned Webster blessed and opened the new site and officially closed and blessed the old one at a special ceremony just before the move with many happy memories shared.
Queenstown has public health and Plunket nurse Mona Hood and Queenstown Borough deputy mayor and councillor Nancy Williams among those to thank for the playcentre, according to a 1981 history compiled by Queenstown schoolteacher Jenny Dudfield for the 25th anniversary.
Hood first pushed for a local playcentre in 1951 amid concerns there was no preschool education in the area. In 1956, the first Queenstown Nursery Playcentre day was held in the old Garrison Hall in Beach Street, between O’Connell’s Hotel and Hotel Queenstown. Kids began settling into school more easily after increased social contact with other preschoolers. Session fees were one shilling and an apple.
In 1962 they moved to St Peter’s Anglican Parish Hall for 15 shillings a week and once the new Centennial Stadium was built on the Stanley Street high school site in 1968 Playcentre moved there. Referred to as ‘Siberia’, children frequently cried due to the cold with Playcentre forced to close one winter for three weeks because of the temperatures.
In 1974 Playcentre moved to the old Brecon Street Fire Station for a rental of 50 cents a week. Pam Maclean’s mother Hannah Green was a fellow founder in Garrison Hall days. Playcentre operated in two garages out the back, one cold tap in the kitchen and one in the toilet, Maclean recalls.
In 1980 after a long saga of meetings and consultations Playcentre moved into the old Stanley Street high school complex. Then mum of three preschool boys, Kirsty Sharpe recalls Queenstown Primary teacher Neil Clayton organising fumigation of the Playcentre after an outbreak of nits among the children.
