Puketeraki Lookout - Sir Truby King
#99 Do - check out the view from Puketeraki Lookout over Karitane on a stunning blue sky day. It was from Puketeraki Hill where Sir Frederic Truby King took the first baby into his care in his Karitane holiday home (a wee Māori boy called Tomas Mutu Ellison) to try to improve his health in 1906. Dr. King was the medical superintendent of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum at the time and had a special interest in nutrition and infant care. He organised a public meeting in 1907, gaining support of influential Dunedin women, which led to the creation of the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children. A Karitane Home for Babies was opened in Dunedin followed by other centres opening around New Zealand. It became known as Plunket after Lady Victoria Plunket, an early patron of the Society (her husband was then Governor of New Zealand and she was a mother of 8). Dr. King wrote manuals for mothers in 1916 and these were given to every applicant for a marriage licence. He went on to receive a knighthood for his work in 1925.
