Waiwhare Wire 1987 04

Dec 87

Waiwhare Wire

Special Christmas Issue

8th December,

Members of the Community,
This, our last wire for 1987 hopefully will be of interest to everyone. Now that that has been said what are we going to put in it? Firstly I’d like to congratulate my wife Jill in her exhausting effort of giving birth to our second son, Daniel. (Oh for a good night sleep,) and for looking after him so well while I exhaust myself at the club (or shouldn’t I say that).
Secondly my sincere thanks to all those who helped so well at the Schools Working Bee. Those who pruned the trees at ground level and those who put a lot of thinking, planning and muscle into moving the fort in preparation for the new room.
You’d probably be happy to know, therefore, that we still don’t know when the room will be here. But hopefully we will see it before the beginning of next year.
The Schools trip to Camp-Kaitawa was very successful despite all the rain. The children had quite a demanding yet enjoyable time doing everything wet through. Thanks Liz Kay for organising the food supplies and cooking that lovely Tomato soup.
The School is presently practising hard for the School’s Prize Giving, Pam and Marion are putting in a lot of effort to “get it right”. We are all keeping our fingers crossed hoping that it will be as good as last years.
So on behalf of the Staff and the children of the School, may I wish you all a
VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Tony.

Swimming Pool:
The School pool is now ready for use for those people who are game enough. If you need a key please see me for the master.
The pool fee is 7:00 a year to those people who do not have a pupil at this School. For those who have, the pool fee is covered in your School Fee.

School Holidays:
School will finish for 1987 on Friday 18th November [at] at 2p.m. School begins again on Monday 1st February 1988 at 9a.m.

Recipe Books:
Linda Ward has done a fantastic job on preparing and publishing a recipe book to raise funds for a computer for the School.
At present she is working to fullfill [fulfill] quite a large order. If you would like one or could sell

some for us please contact me.
The present price is 4:00 each.

Cricket:
A number of gentlemen are very keen to start a cricket team, and to play in a semi serious/social grade of cricket for a number of Saturdays during the summer. They would like to hear from anyone who is interested in joining them to play.
At present there are six guys who have formed the nuclease [nucleus] of the team but they would like as many players as possible from the district.
Cricket gear is available but if interest continues the team would have to begin building up a “club set” sometime in the future.
Home games will be played on the Sports Ground and a wicket will have to be prepared in the near future (a roster system may be needed for this task). The team must also be prepared to travel to some venues for games. Two games have already been organised. One on Sunday 17th January at 11a.m. at the Okawa Domain against Okawa, and one on February 7th against Sherenden at Sports Ground Waiwhare.
There are other teams wishing to play us in February but these games will not be arranged till we have some feedback on how you feel about playing more games and whether we are prepared to play against more able teams.
There are a number of rulings that will have to be discussed among those people wishing to play. For example do we wear whites or casual gear. Do we allow alcohol on the pitch? How many games a year should we play? Should we form a [an] offical [official] club? Is Dave allowed to wear his “hobnails” in the gully? etc etc.
So if you would like to have a game or two this summer could you please let me know. I would also welcome any ideas/feelings to the above questions and any other points that you may think of regarding the forming of a semi permanent team to play Saturday Cricket. If you would like more information please give me a call.

Piano Tuning:
We would like to get the School piano tuned sometime during January. Perhaps some members of the community may like to get their instruments tuned at the same time. If you would like the piano tuner to tune up that odd flat note or two please give me a ring.

Jump Rope for Heart:
The children raised $555:31 for the Heart Foundation when they complete the “Jump Off” on November 16th. Many thanks to those of you who sponsor a child and to those parents who also participated in the “Jump Off”

Sports Day:
The date for the Waiwhare Sports is on Saturday 27th February.
Postponement day 28th February.
The next Sports Committee Meeting will be on Monday 22nd February 8p.m. at the School.

Kaweka Hall:
The Conservation people based at Kaweka would like to announce that the use of the hall for community functions will now be free of charge. If anyone would like to use the hall could you please contact Harry at Kaweka Headquarters.

Pony Club:
Sunday 13th December, beginning at 1:30p.m.
Any enquiries phone Christine Goulding phone 871

Squash Club:
A squash getogether is to be held at the court on Saturday 12th Dec beginning at 4p.m. Games will be played for those who would like a match.
Otherwise a few drinkies followed by the Club’s A.G.M.

Hay for Sale:
Quality Meadow Hay for sale in January.
Inquiries to Jeremy Smith Ph 415.

Large Dolls Cot for sale
$10:00 phone Adrienne McCaslin 486

Swimming Lessons:
John Beaumont’s Swim Centre will be holding it’s annual Christmas swimming lessons again this year. The course for country children starts on Jan 4th, two half-hour lessons per day (two hours approx between lesson for five consecutive days. Course fee $50:00 per child. For more information phone L. Ward 419.

Playcentre:
Our roll is now 32 (21 families) a big increase on last year. We are comfortably settled into our new venue in the old Otamauri School Building and the children, especially, seem to enjoy the extended play area. At present we are in the throws of getting the H.B. Playcentre Association to take over the old building and grounds as a permanent playcentre.
Due to large numbers, a Thursday morning playgroup has been established and is held every 2nd and last Thursday of every month. No organised supervision or morning tea is arranged prior to these sessions, so is a relaxing morning for the Mums.
Our Progressive Dinner was a great success and enjoyed by us all. Many thanks to our hosts and hostesses who provided very comfortable venues and who were left with the dirty dishes!
Keren Wallace.

Congratulations:
To Andrew Gordon who is presently in Brisbane representing New Zealand in an eighteen strong High School athletic team.
Andrew has just competed in the New Zealand champs in Hamilton where he won the Senior mens 200metre event. This is the first time a junior athlete has won a senior event.
Congratulations Andrew. We wish you all success in Australia.

FANCY DRESS BALL
On Friday 29th August Waiwhare School had a Fancy dress ball. It was held at the Kaweka Hall. Both Parents and children dressed up. Spiderman (Mark) had a big chest and little legs.
The kids of course had to show the parents how to perform some of the dances. Sometimes they had to show them twice. Some people didn’t watch the first or second time so they hadn’t a clue what to do. (eg. Andrew Gordon) “Coming Round the Mountain” must have been the funniest dance. Half the parents couldn’t do “Alamancle [A la manche] left your corner.” Some groups just stopped at that part and carried on. Next year they might watch.
Mr Simons and Nicola Lawernce [Lawrence] stole only roll of loo paper out of the girls loo. The Scarecrows left half their behind and some boys need to learn to waltz.
Elizabeth.

“The big move”
By the time this photo was taken we had reached plan “U”.
Thank goodness we never had to go beyond plan Z. I didn’t know what we would have done.

INVITATION.
You are all invited to attend the school’s breakup and prize giving at the Kaweka Hall on Thursday 17th December at 4.00pm.
Afterwards a barbeque and drinks to be held at the school.
Bring own meat and drinks. Also a salad or plate that can be shared.
Everyone welcome.

COMMUNITY COMMENT.
In this issue Helen Arthur gives some insight into what life was like at Waiwhare in the days when life was a little different to what it is now.
Many thanks Helen for taking the time to write such an interesting and entertaining passage.

Pets
Excitement [Excitement]
Terrific
Dogs
Animals
Yelping

Kathryn

An ‘Acrostic’.
An acrostic is a type of poem. To read it first read the letters vertically. This tells us what the poem is about. Words then had to be found beginning with each letter of the “Key Words”. Each word had to relate to the meaning of the key word. Here is how one pupil got on.

1.

I was born at Waikonini but my father was drowned when I was two and we moved to Havelock North where I started my schooling.

In 1922 my Mother remarried and we returned to Waikonini. My brother and sister, Peter and Gwen Sheild, with Dick and Pat Ensor and I were taught by Miss Blake in a classroom off the verandah of the Waiwhare cookhouse which was in the exact spot where David Ward’s house now stands. There was no garden, just bare paddock. Miss Blake had spectacles and wore his hair in a bun. She was very strict but a good teacher. She had been a governess devoting her life to several South Island country families and she had already taught the two Ensor children who were at boarding school.

There was no school bus and anyway there were no other young children in the district which then comprised five large stations: Glenross, Mangawhare, Waiwhenua, Waikonini and Waiwhare plus the Konini Farm. These stations were all cut up into a smaller blocks after the Second World War.

We rode to school, wet or fine or blowing a gale. Never were we taken to school and in the Winter it w as very miserable with the rain running off our oilskin hats down our oilskin coats into our gumboots. The chilblains on my feet used to itch as they warmed up in the school room which was heated by a very old-fashioned kerosene heater designed like a big lamp on legs with a handle on top.

There was no electricity in the district until 1952.

The gales were a nightmare as our ponies were often with the station horses and they would gallop up and down the paddock when we tried to catch them and then they would stand snorting until they took off again.

It was easier to catch them at school because they were keen to go home and they would gallop flat out all the way.

Barney was my shetland pony and he had lots of tricks such as rubbing my leg along the barbed wire fence or squashing me against the gate post or sweeping me off under the branch of a tree. He could also open some gates which made me most unpopular when stock got mixed up.

Although we did not have many playmates Waiwhare was an exciting place to go to school. At morning break or lunch time there was always something happening. There were about fifteen single men on the station and they slept in a long whare where Fred and Lorna now live, just bedrooms opening onto a long verandah.

They all rode horses as there were no farm bikes or jeeps. The old stable, which is still standing housed the great teams of draught horses and the Ensor’s hacks. It was spotlessly clean but it had a nice horsey smell as the horses stood contentedly eating their chaff or being groomed.

Horses were of prime importance as they were used for ploughing, pulling drays, wagons and sledges with fencing materials, firewood etc. So horses were bred on the station and the most exciting lunchtimes for us were when the young ones were being broken in. We would watch while we ate our dried up sandwiches of jam or mutton which had been sitting in our saddle bags since early morning.

2.

As there were so many horses there was a permanent blacksmith who was either making shoes or shoeing horses or repairing farm tools or machinery. The blacksmith shop is still there standing not far from the woolshed.

In the Autumn the oats were cut and the old chaff-cutter chigged away filling up bags of chaff for all those horses. A lot of field mice lived in the oats and we caught them. I even took one home in my saddle bag but it did not last long when it met my cat, poor thing!

The cook was a very important man because it was his job to feed the fifteen men and keep them happy. Most of them went to town only once a month for a weekend and some only three or four times a year. A hawker with a horse-drawn wagon kept them supplied with working clothes, needles and cotton, soap, tooth paste and razor blades etc.

The food supplies came in bulk and lasted several months. The currants and sultanas were in great, tin-lined wooden boxes and the cook would put them in the sun on the verandah to kill the weevils which had multiplied with time. Somehow we forgot all about that when the cook offered us a hot currant bun which was delicious.

He also baked bread in a real baker’s oven which was in the shearers’ whare. First he made a fire in the oven and when he decided that it was hot enough he scraped out the embers and filled up the oven with the loaves he had been kneading and letting rise until that moment. He gave us pieces of hot bread when it was baked and I guess his other meals were just as good judging by the wonderful cooking smells that wafted into the schoolroom.

At shearing time the shepherds were kept busy bringing in enormous mobs of sheep to the huge Waiwhare shed. The Maori shearers brought all their families and stayed sometimes for weeks if it rained. It had a holiday atmoshere [atmosphere] and the mothers and children all seemed happy.

In the twenties, one of the stock and station firms sent out calendars with a photo of the Waiwhare wool clip on four or five lorries on the Taihape Road not far from Sherenden.

When there was nothing else to do we went bird nesting or catching rats with a fox terrier down at the killing shed. In the very hot weather, Mrs Ensor would take us down to Willowford in her car with a canvas hood. It was a great picnic spot and we all learned to swim and dive there. There was an easy path down to the pool which is now overgrown. The boys undressed behind the old water wheel which was the only remains of the boarding house which was built on the flat near the road where the coaches changed horses.

When I see the beautiful Waiwhare School of today I wonder how many of the present children would like to go back to those days?

Helen Arthur

KAITAWA

Journey on the bus.

Day 1. We left school at 10:30. It just happened that all the girls were sitting up the front and all the boys were sitting at the back. We picked up the Puke [Pukehamoamoa] kids at 11:00 and started off for camp. Our bus driver’s name was Wally but we called him Uncle Wally. We had lunch at Lake Tutira, It was raining but then it had been raining all day. We saw lots of swans and the lunch was late because it was on Mr Ayre’s ute and he was later than the bus. When we got to Kaitawa we couldn’t find the key but we did in the end. We all ran inside to check our beds and so began our week at camp.
by Rachel.

Day 2.
When we went to the Green Lake, we walked past the Kaitawa Power House and went over a bridge, but some of the children had trouble with their camera’s and were taking photo’s, so they were left behind. We went through the bush for a while.
We went past another track and some of the people behind me went down it and got lost. But they soon found out that they had taken the wrong track and caught up with us again. When we saw the Green Lake we couldn’t get to it because it was surrounded by bush but it did look green. I think its green colour was caused by the reflection of the bush. We walked on and came to the road on which we ran each day.
by Kathryn.

At the power scheme the man that showed us around didn’t have any teeth. The man who didn’t have any teeth showed us the control room. There were lots of buttons and switches. The buttons and switches controlled the gates and the flow of electricity.
Another man showed us the other half of the power station. When we went to see the turbines we couldn’t hear him and anyway he only talked to the parents.
Outside there was a big pool of water which was called Lake Mangamerino [Whakamarino] and the man said they fished in it. I can’t remember how much it weighed.
by Jessica.

On Tuesday morning we went to the National Park Headquarters. First we went in and Fiona Henesey (the person who showed us around) told us how Lake Waikaremoana was formed. She told us the Maori legend of how the lake was formed by a Taniwha. Then we went into another room that had a lot of Maori artifacts in it. In another room there were pictures of Maori chiefs and Maori people who used to live in the area. It also had a big pig’s head, a big deer’s head and a dog trap. After we went to see a waterfall we had a look at a video that was about Waikaremoana.
by Craig.

Waterfalls.
After the N.P.H.Q we went to two different water falls. One of them was called the Bridal Veil falls. The Bridal Veil falls weren’t very high but long. It looked like a series of little falls of about metre each.
We went to Papakorito falls. They were fifteen metres high. We had lunch there. When we stood close to the falls the water vapour sprayed us.
by Mathew.

Lake Waikareti.
I woke up on Tuesday. It was the day we had to hike to Lake Waikareti.
I hiked up with Mr Reston. While I was trying to rearrange the plants, I could’nt stop talking, Elizabeth kept saying “keep quite [quiet] Nicola”. On the way down I did’nt talk as much because I was trying to do the three legged with Mr Simons until he slipped and started sliding down the hill, I caught him half way down. Then we came across a group of people telling us to be quiet. They were getting their cameras ready, no wonder; There was a morepork in a ponga fern. One person got a photo. This was unusal [unusual] because

we don’t usually see Moreporks in daylight.
by Nicola.

The Caves.
On day four we visited the caves and walked inside them. In the first cave there was a big ledge that we had to crawl under. When we came out a girl from Pukehamoamoa was crying because she got scared of being in the dark even though we had torches. But I thought it was “choice”. We assembled up in a line and waited for the last people to come out. Then we headed for the next cave. That one was’nt much fun. There were five caves altogether. The last one was the biggest and muddiest. When we got out there were two ladders to climb. We assembled once again to wait for the last cavers. Then we headed back to the bus.
by Peter.

The walk to the Onepoto Redout [Redoubt] was very muddy. On the way we saw water siphons that are used to supply water for the power scheme. Then we walked to the Redout [Redoubt]. There we saw the remains of a stone wall and that was about all. Then we walked down to the graves, surprisingly there were only three. One of them belonged to Michael Nownons [Noonan]. Michael Nownons was a soldier who got shot by the Maoris.
by Nathan.

Lou’s Lookout.
We got dropped off. We took off up the track. It took about qaurter [quarter] of an hour. On the way up we saw three big caves. We had to walk over one. It was about thirty metres straight down. Finally we got to Lou’s Lookout from where we could see Onepoto, and the other side of Lake Waikaremoana and where we had lunch. We could just see the bus on the road.
by Gavin.

At the camp cookout we had to be in our duty groups for the cooking. Our group the “Kea’s” got our fire lite [lit] first. We were making Hunters Stew but we called it “Kaitawa Kak”. The girls prepared the vegetables and when Jenny came to do an onion she made a mess of it. So I had to do it. When we were cooking, Nigel kept putting grass in the stew and we kept taking it out. We were second to get ours cooked. It tasted nice when we had finished, but it tasted different from the other groups.
by Kathryn.

Day 5.
We did’nt have to go for a run that morning because we had a five hour hike ahead of us.
We put the survival pack in the back of the bus and then piled in. Then Uncle Wally started the bus and drove away. When we were just about there Uncle Wally picked up the C.B. and tested it with a couple of blows and said, “This Is Where I Leave You”.
We got out and filled up our pockets with raisins.
We had been walking for about twenty minutes when we came to a sign saying “Rata tree in five minutes”. Then we came to the sign that said “five minutes to the top”. Then finally we came to the trig on the top of Namoko [Ngamoko]. We were not on schedule. Mr Simmons [Simons] set up the C.B. from the survival pack and called up Mrs Kay. Her talking was really clear.
We had half an hour for lunch, then we started to go back down to the bottom.
by Mark.

Kaitawa Concert.
Thursday afternoon we were asked to think of a skit to perform in the evening. We told Mrs Kay who was our compare [compere]. She wrote it down on a pad. The first skit was the mystery boxes which had three boxes sittings on a table. Three people had to lift a box each. The third box Elizabeth Gordon lifted up. She was scared out of her wits, because there was a head between two tables. It was the bus driver’s head. The next item was the grocers store. Next was Miss Universe. That took ages. A girl from Pukehamoamoa (Miss France) became Miss Universe. Mr Simons and Mr Dorward were picked on. Mr Dorward got soaked. Mr Lawrence acted out two stories. They were very funny.
by Tony.

Coming Home.
On Friday we were going home. We had to sweep and mop the dorms. The kids from Waiwhare put their bags outside the boys showers. The Puke kids put their bags outside the girls showers. Then Uncle Wally (the bus driver) put them on the bus. Then we left. We left a bit late because we were supposed to arrive at school at 2:30 but we arrived at about 3:20. On the way we stopped at the Mohaka Viaduct to have our lunch.
by Craig.

The Ghost Michael Noonan.
We first heard about Michael Noonan at school before we even went to camp. Mr Simons had a bet with us that he would appear because some children did’nt believe him. When we got to camp we could’nt wait till Thursday because that was the day he was coming.
We first saw him when we were having our tea. He looked like a sack on the end of a broomstick because that’s what it was.
The next time we saw him was during the concert. The light’s went out and the same thing past the window outside. After the concert we went to bed. We would’nt go to sleep until we saw Michael Noonan, so finally he raced through the boys dorm. All the boys jumped out of the bunks and chased him through the fire exit outside. It was Mr Stitchbury [Stichbury] dressed up. And that was the last we saw of Michael Noonan’s ghost.
by Robert.