Children at Tūtira School climb aboard the Tractor Trek convoy during Monday’s launch of the 10-day wellbeing tour. Photo / Rafaella Melo
Jessica Turnbull was six months’ pregnant and caring for a 2-year-old when Cyclone Gabrielle swept through rural Tūtira.
She remembers waking to “water everywhere”, her family scrambling to save livestock, and the anxiety of what each hour would bring.
Three years on, Turnbull joined dozens of parents and children at Tūtira School on Monday as a convoy of about 10 tractors rolled in to launch the Think and Be Me Tractor Trek 2026.
The 10-day mental wellbeing tour will visit 20 rural and cyclone-affected primary schools across Hawke’s Bay, delivering a free neuroscience-based anxiety show and leaving behind classroom resources worth nearly $4000 per school.
Turnbull said the launch brought back memories of the days after the cyclone, when the school became a community hub, and she found herself coordinating people, helicopters and essential aid.
“The first days were all about survival,” she told Hawke’s Bay Today.
“We were really worried about our stock … we’d lost a lot of lambs, and we didn’t know what the next days would look like."
With no communication for days and no power for nearly a month, families relied heavily on each other.
Her eldest daughter Charlotte, now 5, spent those weeks roaming between adults, nurses, council workers and neighbours.
“She was so little, so for her it was a fun time ... But for older kids it was a different story.”
Parent Samantha Mcclinchie, who also lives locally, said anxiety had been one of the lasting emotional impacts for her three children, now aged 12, 8 and 7.
“If we have real bad weather or real bad rain, I can see the trauma on their faces ... they worry something’s going to happen again,” she said.
Mcclinchie said the Tractor Trek programme felt uplifting.
“The kids were interacting and loving it. It was good to see locals get involved as well”
Her eldest daughter, Zoe, said the programme was “exciting” and highlighted one key lesson she took away.
“If someone or something made you angry, just calm down and isolate yourself if you need to,” Zoe said.
Tūtira School has just 23 students, and principal Simon Yarrall said the cyclone’s impact remained visible.
“Being a small rural school, we’ve got to go into town to join sports teams and events. Pre-cyclone it was about a 25-minute drive, and now sometimes it’s an hour and a half with all the roadworks,” he said.
“Also, with our bus run, some days the bus is on time, some days it’s late. It just makes things really challenging for children.”
Yarrall said the Tractor Trek’s message was essential.
“Nationwide, we’re seeing an increase in mental health struggles in children, and this gives them a starting point,” he said.
“Understanding their emotions helps them explain what they’re feeling, which makes it easier for teachers and parents to support them.”
Each school visit begins with an interactive show using puppets, humour and simple neuroscience to teach children how anxiety works in the brain and body.
They learn to notice and name feelings, calm their bodies, and challenge unhelpful thoughts.
Afterwards, students climb onto the tractors and explore the machinery that brought the programme to them.
Think and Be Me founder Cat Levine said the Tractor Trek blends fun with mental health education in a way that resonates with rural communities.
“Statistics say one in four children will struggle with mental health before 18. Half of those concerns begin before age 14,” she said.
“So, this is really a preventative mental health education, and we want to take these lessons out of the counselling room into the classroom.”
Levine first toured with tractors in 2020 and later delivered a four-year mental wellbeing project in Northland funded by Rotary.
This year’s Hawke’s Bay tour is free for schools, supported by donations including $5000 from Hawke’s Bay Children’s Holding Trust and $10,000 from an Auckland donor. Volunteer tractor drivers also pay for their own fuel and accommodation.
“It costs about $4000 per school for the resources we leave behind,” Levine said.
“But this community is special to us. We didn’t want them to miss out because we’d missed out on so much funding. We still wanted to do it.”
After Monday’s launch at Tūtira, the Tractor Trek will continue throughout the region, visiting schools from Eskdale and Westshore through to Flaxmere, Haumoana, Lucknow, Omahu and others before finishing at Sherenden and Districts School on March 6.