Private schoolboy to ‘monster’: How Tom Phillips honed his bushcraft at St Paul’s Collegiate’s outdoor programme
This was one of the NZ Herald’s top stories of 2025.
Slain fugitive dad Tom Phillips spent several months outdoors learning bushcraft and survival skills while attending one of New Zealand’s most prestigious private schools, the Herald can reveal.
The award-winning outdoors programme included “firearms and range shooting”.
It remains in action today at Hamilton’s prestigious private St Paul’s Collegiate - the fugitive’s alma mater.
Phillips’ nearly four years on the run with his children ended in a deadly shootout with police in September.
Since then Marokopa locals have spoken of how he was a “born hunter and survivalist” and “would have no trouble finding food out in the bush” while evading police.
Phillips boarded at the elite school in his teens. Its annual fees for boarders currently range from $26,895 to $48,370.
While there, he spent several months at its Tihoi Venture School: a 12-week course for Year 10 students, most aged 14 and 15.
The course fee, in addition to school fees, is $2230.
Phillips completed the course while in Year 10 in 2002; the same year he won a religious studies award at the school.
St Paul’s Collegiate describes the course as “New Zealand’s most significant outdoors programme”.
Its remote campus is based on the western side of Lake Taupō, on the edge of the Pureora Forest in what was once the Tihoi timber mill.
A typical week at Tihoi has students in the outdoors for three full days.
Phones and other devices are banned, with students encouraged to “enjoy a digital detox”.
“They live and work together, taking responsibility for their own housekeeping, preparing their own meals on wood-burning stoves, and meeting a range of personal and social challenges,” the school’s website says.
Students have only “the bare essentials with minimal furniture and no refrigeration”.
St Paul’s Collegiate Headmaster Ben Skeen did not respond to Herald approaches for comment on Phillips’ time at the school.
St Paul’s says one of the programme’s goals is to see students “become independent, resilient and self-managing”, “learn to meet challenges and work with others to achieve goals” and “learn to appreciate the outdoors”.
Activities include kayaking, abseiling, rock climbing, tramping, mountaineering and “firearms and range shooting”.
The Tihoi Adventure School also challenges its students to complete a six-hour and a 44-hour solo trip into the outdoors around Pureora Forest.
Children who attend the camp have a 55-piece checklist of items to bring with them; including multiple sets of wet weather and thermal clothing, snow goggles, at least six different pairs of footwear, a wetsuit and a sleeping bag able to provide warmth in temperatures down to -6C.
The checklist adds: “Please note that cellphones, smartwatches and spray deodorants or aerosols of any kind cannot be taken to Tihoi.”
Phillips – who Police Minister Mark Mitchell described in the aftermath as a “monster” - vanished with his children in late 2021.
Before being shot dead by police, Phillips critically wounded a Waikato-based police officer by firing several shots at him from a high-powered rifle.
It is believed for much of the time he evaded arrest he was hiding in bush around the wider isolated Marokopa area.
Photos of one of his camps in the bush show a large bivouac built on a hillside and trenches for sleeping.
The roof of the campsite blended well with the ground, with thick ferns and trees covering it from all sides, which would have made it difficult or impossible to find from above.
In 2024, Phillips and the three children were spotted by pig hunters tramping in the area.
During their extensive manhunt for him, Police repeatedly spoke of how he was known to have excellent outdoors and survival skills.
Marokopa local Clive Morgan – who lives near the site where Phillips was shot dead – also spoke of the fugitive dad’s outstanding bushcraft when talking to the Herald in September.
He had known the Phillips family for most of his life.
He and his wife Sandra described the dad of three as a “born hunter and survivalist” and someone who would have no trouble finding food in the bush.
As a youngster, Phillips would have arrived at Tihoi Adventure School with good pre-existing skills: as a child he went on many pig-hunting expeditions with his father Neville and his siblings.
That would likely have included trips on some of the land Phillips hid in while avoiding authorities with his three young children for nearly four years.
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 33 years of newsroom experience. He has spent time in Marokopa during the lengthy police hunt for Tom Phillips and his children.
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