📍Te Pahu, Waikato, New Zealand
1950 – 1967“Helen Clark grew up on her family's sheep and beef farm at Te Pahu, on the slopes of Mount Pirongia in the Waikato, the eldest of four daughters of George and Margaret Clark. Her father was a third-generation farmer and her mother a former teacher. Life on the farm meant mud, animals, long distances and hard physical work, and the girls were expected to help. Helen was a bookish, serious child who read widely while the farm went on around her. At thirteen she was sent to board at Epsom Girls Grammar School in Auckland, where she found a wider world of ideas and politics. Her family were conservative National Party supporters, but as a teenager she was drawn to the opposite side: she protested against the Vietnam War, against apartheid in South Africa, and against foreign military bases in New Zealand. These arguments were not always welcome at home, but she held her ground. She studied politics at the University of Auckland, lectured there, and entered Parliament in 1981. In 1999 she became New Zealand's first elected woman prime minister, serving three terms, and later led the United Nations Development Programme. She has kept a keen interest in rural New Zealand and in the outdoors, climbing mountains and tramping in her spare time. The girl from Te Pahu, who grew up with the farm's practical common sense and a mountain on the horizon, never lost her love of open country.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today