The Prime Minister was dead and the country had been at war for 3 1/2 years before work started on the new school. And, in a time of wartime austerity, surprisingly the school was built of brick and tile. Or maybe it was not such a surprise - corrugated iron was at a premium and military endeavour had first call even on sawn timber, especially as New Zealand's focus had moved increasingly towards supplying American demand here and in the Pacific.
Brick seemed right in the little town as well. Over the road from the school the Presbyterian community had built the brick church of St Johns in 1925 on land given by the Duirs family. The Duirs, who were early settlers at Whakamara, had also chipped in handsomely to pay for it. Alongside the school the pretty brick Anglican Church of St James, a gift in 1905 to the district from Francis Charlotte Lysaght in memory of her husband James Richard Lysaght, was tucked in behind its attractive brick wall.
House of Worship: The little brick church of St Johns has stood at Mokoia for more than 75 years. Image: Provided by The Daily News
James Lysaght was one of the district's early settlers, taking up a 252-acre (102-hectare) block on the landward side of the road at Mokoia in 1876. By the time of his death in 1899 his holdings had swollen to 5000 acres (2023.5 hectares) and 30 shepherds were employed to muster his sheep for shearing in the waterwheel-powered woolshed he built near Hunts Rd.
On the seaward side of the main road and surrounding the village sections surveyed in 1867, George Bayley held a similar-sized holding. Bayley bred horses and cattle as well as sheep on his holdings, both graziers killing stock from their properties at an abattoir built near the railway line that had cut through the village in 1885. Fresh killed carcasses were then railed to Wellington for freezing and processing or rendered down on the site for tallow.
A condition of James Lysaght's will was that his farm be cut into economical dairy units and sold. The auction took place in 1904. Mitchell Fraser and his son Gordon now farm land that once was the Lysaght property, the site of the old homestead still marked by ancient trees.
George Bayley's holdings were bought by Mr O. Hawken and, despite part of the property being subdivided to provide farms for ex-servicemen after World War II, some of the original farm is still farmed by the Hawken family.
The industry of Lysaght and Bayley was nothing new to the district - a view from above will show the area studded with pa sites.
On opposite sides of the Manawapou River mouth the earthworks of Thacker's and Inman's redoubts can also still be seen and just south of the town the Okautiro redoubt. This was built during the survey of the district and abandoned in September of 1868 when Titokowaru swept all before him on his way to Nukumaru.
Moved now to the Patea Museum, the millstones are all that remain of a flour mill built and operated by local Maori under the instruction of missionary Reverend Woon. Maori were known to carry sacks of flour to Wanganui for sale to the early settlers.
The new century saw new industry in Mokoia. The Mell's creamery opened in 1904 to accept the produce of five suppliers. By 1908 it had grown to become Mell's Co-operative Dairy Factory with a capital of ₤3000 and "a commodious and well-arranged factory".
Its plant included a 17-horsepower Tangye boiler and a 10hp Tangye engine, a three-ton Humble and Sons ice-making machine, two 440-gallon DeLaval separaters, a Sabroe cream hoist and a Primus pasteuriser. Two 300-gallon vats, two half-ton churns, a six-feet Topliss butter worker, cool and freezing chambers and a testing room rounded out the facilities that employed four assistants as well as the manager and drew cream from two other creameries for an annual butter production of 150 tons. Later in 1913 the factory would expand for cheese-making and in 1923 would begin producing casein.
But it was not industry that on 26 November 1908, made Mokoia international headlines. The bulk of the meteorite that flashed across the night sky and exploded 5000 feet above Mokoia with a boom that was heard from Stratford to Bulls crashed into the sea off Wanganui, but Mokoia was showered with fragments including two large chunks, the size of a man's fist, which are now in the Wanganui Museum.
Other pieces found their way into other hands and, in the mid 1960s, Mokoia's meteorite again had the astrophysical world sitting up and taking notice when researchers believed they had found "complex organised micro-matter, some resembling unicellular organisms" hitchhiking in its carbonaceous chondrite crevices.
The knockers jumped pretty hard on that theory, bungling contamination, even fraud - but you never know!
What we do know is that brief international attention made little difference to Mokoia. The cows still had to be milked, now with machinery powered by petrol, kerosene, waterwheels, water rams and, on one farm, a horse whim. To keep old Neddy up to the job as he plodded his endless circuit, the farmer would take a pile of small stones into the milking shed ready to shy at him if his pace slackened.
The blacksmith set up shop on the corner of Beach Rd and in 1912 the village hall was built. They built changing sheds down at the beach that year too - and then watched them erode away out to sea. By 1919 the postmaster had spread his wings and opened a general store on the Beach Rd corner.
Life went on and Mokoia was subjected to all the ups and downs of a small rural community. The 1930s would see the building of the tennis courts and the swimming pool, the establishment of a branch of the Women's Division and the foundation of the Mokoia Social Club. Gymkhanas, wood-chopping, catching the greasy pig and race meetings enlivened summer carnivals.
In the 1940s there was the building of the new school. Wartime saw trenches dug and logs piled on the side of the road ready to be dragged across as road-blocks in case of invasion. The butcher from Manutahi still made his rounds, his van powered by gas produced from the coke burner mounted on the running board. At school, Mitchell Fraser and his classmates practised air raid drill in the slit trenches in the field below the school.
"After the war, Dad was mowing that paddock with two horses pulling the mower and one of them went into one of those trenches, just lay there quite comfortable, making no effort to get out. Dad pulled an armful of carrots from the teacher's garden and bribed it out of there."
The '50s introduced the bowling club. High school students still went to school in Hawera by train and a road trip to New Plymouth shopping was a day-long event only possible when the cows were dry.
In 1960, the dairy company re-amalgamated with Whakamara and in 1961 the first tanker replaced the trucks and trailers that had carried milk cans to the factory. In 1962 a light-hearted community staged a Seldom Anygood quiz show as a fundraiser for the school.
Slow Death: Mell's dairy factory opened in 1904 and became a victim of amalgamation in 1970. Image: Provided by The Daily News
In 1970 the factory closed - the little community it had supported drifting away, the decline in population reflected in a falling school roll, the closure of the village's clubs. The old factory began a new career serving as a workshop and storage shed. By 1990 the general store went too, transformed into a pet shop. With the store went the post office and petrol pumps. Two years later St James Church was dismantled and shifted to Hawera, to be reassembled as an entrance/reception area to St Mary's Church.
Over the road, still on its own site, St Johns became a private home. Only a few months ago the old hall, beyond its use-by date, was demolished.
December 1999 saw the beginning of a new era. Down almost at the end of Beach Rd, 5026 metres beneath the pasture George Bayley had sown more than a century before, the Rimu A1 well struck oil.
By February 2002 a further eight wells connected to Swift Petroleum's facility were flowing 1525 barrels of oil and 4.8 million cu/ft of natural gas per day.