New Zealand - Petone - Petone Central School - Room 1 - 1972 Do you have more information about the school or the people in this photo? Please use the comment section below to share. To search for other photos from this school, please type the schools name in to our search engine. Petone - Petone is a large suburb of Lower Hutt, in the Wellington Region. - The name, from the Māori Pito-one, means "end of the sand beach". - Petone was first settled by Europeans in 1840, making it one of the oldest settlements in the Wellington Region. It became a borough in 1888. - For much of the 20th century, Petone was a thriving, largely working-class town and the location of several large industrial sites, including two car assembly plants, a meat processing plant, a wool processing plant, a tobacco processing plant, a soap factory and a toothpaste factory. - The majority of these closed in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in gradual economic decline. - Petone Borough amalgamated with Lower Hutt as a result of the local government reform in 1989. (Reference; Wikipedia)