The smell of fresh bark chip was still in the air as Ngatea Primary School celebrated the opening of its new $530,000 playground on April 10.
With an area of 1035 square metres, the spacious adventure space features multiple slides, climbing frames, huts, and other obstacles for the children to explore.
Its construction took only four weeks, helped along by hours of volunteer work from the school community to prepare the site.
“Andrew Williams led an incredible team of volunteers for two days to clear this whole site, lay new drainage, and prepare the middle base for our installation,” school board presiding member Shannon Burke said.
“It’s been a huge community effort to get to this point where we are now. I’m actually really proud of our little community pulling something like this off, this is massive.”
The grand opening took place on the school’s Grandparents Day, and was attended by a large crowd of students, staff, and friends of Ngatea School, along with the Board of Trustees, Hauraki District Mayor Tony Adams, and former school principals Len and Lucy Hay. The blessing was conducted by Normie Anderson.
Former student Donna Hoyle cut the red ribbon. Her company, Playground Creations, was the chosen vendor for the build.
“All of our playgrounds we create are special, but to do one where I went to school – it’s a privilege actually to have been here to help create this amazing new play space,” she said.
Principal Neil Fraser said the students were delighted to give the equipment a test run ahead of the opening.
“It’s been pretty hectic the last probably four weeks, the kids had to be on hard surfaces only,” he said.
“The teachers had a play this morning first, [and] each syndicate went on for a half hour – it was absolute chaos out there.
“The [old] one was probably around 50 or 60 years old and it no longer met health and safety requirements, and because we have such a big footprint we went big.”
The school received grants of $307,000 for the project, from the Ngatea Primary Kids First Committee, Lottery Grants Board, Grassroots Trust, Akarana Community Trust, Blue Sky Community Trust, and the Dragon Community Trust.
