Api Solomon, a schoolteacher at one of Tokoro's two high schools, describes her grandparents' unlikely journey from Aitutaki.

My grandfather, my maternal grandfather, he and my grandmother and my mother and her siblings, they were still sleeping in a hut on a dirt floor and they just didn't want that anymore.

So they came here with the intent to raise enough funds to build them a home.

But they moved here and just realised that they could have a better life here in Tokoro.

Api attributes her family's fortunes to the enlightened policy of New Zealand Forest Products and the Scotsmen who funded it.

When you talk to our grandparents, they attribute a lot of that to David Henry, who was the, I think it was the manager or CEO of New Zealand Products at the time.

This town was built because of the Kinleith Mill.

I suppose the first thing they did was they brought people here.