page_title: Little Wanganui
section_title: School, hall, and hotel
hierarchical_section_title: Little Wanganui / School, hall, and hotel
caption_attribution_description: English: Community Hall at Little Wanganui, Buller District, West Coast, New Zealand; opened in 1954.
context_page_description: Little Wanganui is a dairy-farming village on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, on the Little Wanganui River. It is 77 kilometres north of Westport and 21 kilometres south of Karamea, at the opposite end of the Karamea Beach. The settlement has a pub, community hall, and volunteer fire brigade, and in 2013 the population was 207. There is a surfing beach, and the Little Wanganui River is popular for whitebaiting and fishing for brown trout.
context_section_description: The first school in Little Wanganui was a room in the Rasmussen farmhouse, and a government-sponsored schoolroom opened in 1894; the first teacher, Miss Julia Curtin, was on a salary of £20. A school building was constructed at the beachfront in 1902, and replaced in 1907 at the cost of £225; the roll gradually increased to 23 in the 1920s. After the Murchison earthquake the schoolroom was threatened by erosion, and was relocated in 1931 at a cost of £189 to the middle of the settlement, beside the main road to Westport. The school closed in 1946 when Little Wanganui was integrated with Karamea: a teacher-driver took the pupils the 12 miles to Karamea, and the school building was sold and dismantled.
  In 1953 locals agreed to raise the funds to build a community hall on the site of the schoolhouse; the old hall and hotel were located next to the now-closed port. Rimu and matai trees donated by a local farmer were felled in Wangapeka and milled at Granite Creek, and a team of locals volunteered their time and skills to build the hall and wire it for electricity. With yellow pine pilings and matai flooring, it opened on 17 December 1954. In 1955, the Little Wanganui Hotel was also relocated 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the former port to the Karamea Highway; the timber from the old hotel was used to build the new pub.
caption: Little Wanganui Community Hall
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