Tokoroa: the town that saw too much

The battered shop signs date back to long-gone glory years. On certain suburban streets, homes in gaudy greens, yellows and pink are a bleak testament to a town that has seen better days.

Here in Tokoroa, population 14,000, give or take a few hundred, there are no white picket fences, tree-lined neighbourhoods, cobblestone lanes, boutique shops or BMWs circling for a park in what passes for a central business district.

Instead, shoppers are out hunting morning bargains in their slippers, beanies - and occasionally even their pyjama pants - at cut-price locals such as The Meat Tavern and Mr Bo Jumble Used Clothing. In this enclave of decidedly average Joes, people have no time for pompous Aucklanders with tales of big city life.

Tokoroa's pace of life is slow - snail-like slow. Optimism is also in short supply - the cold calculus that went into the decision to lay off staff at the Carter Holt Harvey mill, once the town's lifeblood, put paid to that for many.

Jobs disappeared throughout the 1980s and 90s, gutting the town of its economic worth.

People still feel betrayed. Loyalty means a lot in Tokoroa.

Today the town bears a set of unenviable tags: one of the highest unemployment rates in the country; more families living below the poverty line than the national average; rock-bottom qualifications and expectations; and last week, the place where an adored elderly school teacher was brutally murdered in her classroom.

Dennis Ives has lived here for 43 years and, like many proud "Toko-roans", says despite the knock-backs, despite the past week of anger and fear, he adores the place.

He agrees it's a sort of Pleasantville meets Bro'Town place, but says few spots in New Zealand can match it for community spirit.

Put simply, it's one of those towns that when you get there, you never leave. "It's home. Always has been, always will be. There's no place like it."

Ives is a bit of a local identity - the hairdresser who has more than 600,000 scalps to his name.

He knows it isn't the charmed middle-class world of, say, leafy Mt Eden - and acknowledges that from afar, Tokoroa is one of those towns where the news is usually either bad, or very bad.

But even for Tokoroa, where residents have pretty much come to accept crime, unemployment and drugs as part of life, the news this week was very bad.

The vicious and apparently motiveless murder of Strathmore Primary teacher, 66-year-old Lois Dear, has left Tokoroa in a state of fear - and loathing. It's a crime the locals are taking personally. Between the cameras and queues of journalists and confused sobbing outside the school, there's talk among locals of vengeance and retribution.

"I'd like to string him (the killer) up by his balls," says Ives. "She was such a beautiful person. She used to come in here for a haircut. We can't understand why this sort of thing happens."

Aside from talk of payback, there are dozens of theories about who is responsible. Most believe it's someone local, or someone with strong ties to the community.

For the children at Strathmore, the last week has been one of jumbled emotions. Inevitably there's beensadness. But there's also a strong sense of confusion.

To many children, the concept of death is not foreign, but murder? "A couple of weeks ago my kids lost their grandfather. They understood that, but murder is a lot different," said Tua Vaeau, whose two daughters attend Strathmore.

Many of the students will not let Lois Dear's death pass without acknowledgement.

Taylor Taikato plans to write to her "in heaven". "She was a nice lady and we're going to miss her. I knew her well, she was neat."

Funeral director Robert Wehipeihana had the grisly task of removing Dear's battered body from the crime scene. All he wants is the killer caught.

As a frequent visitor to the school, he remembers her well, and bristles at the thought the person responsible is still on the loose. "You would never think this sort of thing would happen at a school. I'm used to death, but it was very tough bringing her out.She was a lovely lady and she'll be missed terribly."

But murder - even the murder of a friend, and well-known and respected local - won't make him change his mind about "Toke".

There's lot of people in Tokoroa who feel the same way. "I can't believe what has happened. This is an attack on our community, not just one person," said Tommy Kaye, whose6- and 8-year-old granddaughters attend Strathmore. "It's something we just can't understand."

Down at the Cossie Club - one of Tokoroa's favourite watering holes - Edith Onehi won't have a bad word said about the place she calls home.

She's been in Tokoroa for 33 years and reckons "it's a lovely little town".

She knows it probably needs a spit and polish - in fact, she says it's a town ripe for a complete makeover. She knows murder is not good for the town's image.

Like many locals, Onehi prides herself on her pluck and self-reliance. She works three jobs - all minimum wage - just to get by.

She worries about the "seedy underbelly" that has slowly infiltrated Tokoroa. "There's outsiders buying up the homes here. You hear talk of P and dogfights. You can't trust everyone like you used to in the old days," she says. "But I'm here to stay."

Tokoroa sprang to life as a forest town in the late 1940s, sprawling out across south Waikato.

It takes its name from one of the chiefs of Ngati Kahupungapunga, who was apparently killed during the siege of Pohuturoa as he fought off theBritish invasion back in the 1800s. Locals believe he epitomises the town's combative spirit.

Developed in 1948 as a satellite town around New Zealand Forest Products timber, pulp and paper mill at Kinleith, Tokoroa initially boasted a population of 1100.

At its peak in 1969, the mill employed around 4000 people - 10 times what it does now.

Before Forest Products began retrenching its operations in the early 1980s, the population had soared to 18,000. During the boom times, Tokoroa needed just another 2000 people and it could declare itself a city, something locals believed would finally put the striving middle-class town on the map. But the cavalry never arrived,and before long the recession took hold. Over 10 years the population fell to 13,000 and with it came a decade of economic downtown and burgeoning social unrest. But from that came strength, and the community spirit that many locals refer to again and again.

Evidence of better times is starting to emerge in the property market, where the average house price has risen considerably in recent years.

About 50 properties change hands each month in Tokoroa, most of them selling for around the $100,000 mark. A new 21-section rural subdivision is sprouting on the outskirts; another is in the planning stages.

John Eisenhut, born in Tokoroa in 1951, has lived there on and off since.

Once the place is in your blood, he says, it's impossible to shake.

"It's got a community spirit like no other town I've seen.

"It's a town where all the cultures mix, a town where everyone knows their neighbour. And it's a town that bounces back from everything."

On Lochmaben Rd - the quiet residential street on the rural edge of town where Lois Dear had lived for two years, - there is similar conviction, but not quite the marshmallow sentimentality you get from those less connected with the crime.

"We'll be locking our doors now, says neighbour Mata Tangata. "This is a shocking crime. I just hope they find the killer fast."

At the Amisfield Motel, owner Caron Graham says the brutal nature of the murder has shocked the community.

"But people will pick themselves up and move on. This'll take time. She was a nice lady. My niece went to her school and she's bewildered by what is happening. With teachers, kids get so attached - they are almost like a second mum."

Two doors down from Dear's comfortable three-bedroom weatherboard house, Kevin Buchanan is lamenting the way the justice system deals with criminals.

These days the rights of the offender are paramount, he says, and little is done for the victims and families of crime.

"The guy who killed the teacher will probably say he was on P and was beaten as a child and will be given the lightest of sentences,"he says.

"It doesn't make sense. But while this is a terrible shocking thing, things will carry on."

At Amisfield School, which backs directly on to Lois Dear's house,principal Brenda Watkins is still in a state of shock.

She knew Lois Dear as a grandmother of five and "wonderfully dedicated teacher who made her classroom so cosy and comfortable". Watkins had the grim task of explaining to her students how Lois Dear's life was so horribly snuffed out.

The crime would have a ripple effect throughout the country's schools with many teachers now more fearful for their safety, she says.

But in the face of it all, the children who had been taught by Lois Dear had shown amazing resilience, says Watkins. "We'll move forward. There is such warmth here, such heart. It is such a family place."