Waiwhare Wire 1992 04

WAIWHARE WIRE

SPECIAL 40TH BIRTHDAY ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 1992

It gives me great pleasure to introduce this special edition of the “Waiwhare Wire” to celebrate forty years existence of our school.
This issue will hopefully illustrate the many changes that our school and particularly education has gone through during this time, as attitudes change and as requirements to live in our modern society need to be met.
I hope you enjoy perusing through these pages. I hope they bring back pleasant memories, and they will give you a chance to reflect on the time that you spent at Waiwhare.
Tony Simons
Principal Waiwhare School 1992

A NOTE ABOUT THE “WAIWHARE WIRE”
The “Waiwhare Wire” was introduced to our community by our present principal, Tony Simons, in September 1986.
In his unique style, Tony kept us up to date with all the latest gossip in the district. When “tomorrows schools” became a reality and Tony found it too time consuming to continue regular issues, “The Wire” was taken on by five enthusiastic “Reporters” and with Tony’s help continue to churn out local news, views and calamities.
For our special 40th issue we have collected stories and snippets from locals who have attended the school or been involved with it in some capacity. We have also taken extracts from the original log books, the Waiwhare history books and past issues of “The Wire”.
We hope you enjoy this edition of our local “newspaper”.
Carol Ayres

Holy Cow 420 children 36 teachers in 40 years.

Page 2

1950’s

1952 – the beginnings of our school.

The following extracts are taken from the diary of Clifford Tolley, 1952.

6th February 1952   MAY
[…] fence […] shifted […] sheep & cattle over the road and spent the rest of morning on wood, self cut up load of wood for […].
Then meeting with Education Bd re school near the corner looks like being established very quickly. Also discussed telephone power & rural delivery matters. Took the […] and crawler tractor down and flattened burnt grass alongside […] but in dip paddock.
Not a bad day but too windy for topdressing.

11th Thursday 1952   Sept.
Drizzly rain in morning but ceased after dinner. Maurice & S also Power board officials came up in afternoon. Meeting of settlers. Hope to have power within 12 months. Our guarantee might be £75.

31st Sunday 1952   Sept.
Left Hastings after lunch. Called in at […] & Takapau. Brought […] & Mrs Devine back. Raining a good bit of the way. Arrived home about 7pm. Had tea then went up to the school Meeting re establishment & the taking over of the bus. Nearly everybody there.

Page 3

8th Sept. 1952

Waiwhare School was opened with eleven pupils on the roll. Ann Sheild, Chris Sheild, Tim Sheild, Jane Sheild, Paul Sheild, Peter Arthur, Margy [Margie] Arthur, Dennis Goulding transferred from Otamauri School. Darryl Marshall from Raureka, Tony Drummond from Correspondence & Peter Kyle a new entrant. Relieving teacher appointed until the end of 1952 is W.G. Lowe on leave from Otamauri School.

School stands on Waiwhare property owned by Mr. Bernie Ward. The name of the school comes from the property. The building was transferred from a site across the Tutaekuri R. & used to be called Ngaroto School.

Two school commissioners were appointed by the H.B. Education Board until the next election of school committees. The commissioners are Mr. Owen Marshall & Mr. Frank Fountaine.

All children are transported in a school bus owned jointly by seven owners (John Sheild, Peter Sheild, Geoff Derbridge [Derbidge], John Tough, Owen Marshall, Jack Kyle, Bill Drummond) & driven by the teacher. A daily mileage of some 42 miles.

W.G. Lowe.

Page one of the first log book kept for Waiwhare School. The school opened on September 8th.   The official opening was held a week later on September 15th 1952.

Page 4

MEMORIES OF A FOUNDING PUPIL OF WAIWHARE SCHOOL
(Now so decrepit that not much is remembered)
My first teacher was George Lowe, Sir Edmund Hilary [Hillary]’s climbing mate on the successful ascent of Everest in 1952.
George Lowe and Hilary had made several reconnaissance trips to Mt. Everest and Nepal and an easy way of distracting George in class was to ask him about Gurkhas, Kathmandu, Kukris or India.
We all learnt a lot about this part of the world and George instilled in me a driving urge to visit these countries which later I did. After the successful ascent he went on a world-wide speaking tour and eventually became the Headmaster of an elite private school in Chile. This job, in turn being replaced by one of Her Majesty’s School Inspectorate in Britain.
Ken Foster, (brother of John at Richmonds) took over from George. His speciality was freewheeling the school bus from Barry Wallace’s gate down to Waiwhenua. We sometimes made it but more often ran out of steam not far from Dampney Road. The bus was a small Fordson ‘Puddle Jumper’ van with minimum power. Ken drove it with maximum vigour, and the rides were often exciting.
Ken had the extra very pleasant duty of coaching me in maths after school hours and I am sorry to say he was not much of a teacher; my maths is still terrible! (Although that is probably hereditary).
Peter Arthur

1953 Friday 20th   Woodhams came out and finished T.D.6, Maurice spraying blackberry over the road. Brian helped Woodhams Harry helping with decorations & getting woolshed ready for school dance. Self went up & finished up rails at gate between rape & stubble & clover. Got dragon spray pump ready & walked around lambs. Betty’s baby born at 11.30pm on the 19th.

1953 Saturday 21st   Brian & Maurice spraying blackberry down road & over the road. Henry & S [Self] helping clean up woolshed after dance last night. Dance a success profit of about £18 made. Elsie & S to town to see Betty’s baby.

More from the Tolley’s diary. This time relating to a fund-raising dance held at Mangawhare.

Page 5

10th August 1954: Electricity connected to the school.

Above: The school in 1960. Tenders for the building of the school house were asked for in April 1956.
Building of the house commenced on June 18th 1956.
The school house was completed on October 15th 1956.
A new classroom was erected in October 1957.

TO BUILDERS:
SEALED TENDERS will be received by the undersigned at the Board’s Office, Browning Street, Napier, up till 4 p.m. on Monday 30th April, 1956, for the erection approximately 100 sq. ft. of a NEW SCHOOL RESIDENCE at WAIWHARE comprising approximately 1100 sq.ft.
Plans and specifications may be seen on application to the Board’s Office, Napier.
Lowest or any tender not necessarily accepted.
P. MERCER,
Acting Secretary – Manager.
H.B. Education Board.
NOTE: Waiwhare 36 miles from Napier, 31 miles from Hastings; on the Taihape Road.
HERALD-TRIBUNE 16-4-56.

KEN FOSTER’S TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY
Ken Foster, who later became assistant Director-General of New Zealand, celebrated his twenty-first birthday at an hilarious party held at Mangawhare. During the evening, Ken, in high spirits grabbed a stuffed pig’s head from the wall and roared around the house with it on his head, to wild applause.
At the end of the party the ever-polite Ken made a speech of thanks. So that he could be seen he stood on the Tolley’s coffee table which gently crumpled to the floor to Ken’s dismay and the cheers of all the guests.
Helen Arthur

Page 6

LOCAL HISTORY

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 a 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 her 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 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 was very miserable with the rain running off our oilskin hats, down our oilskin coats and 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 gatepost 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 any 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 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, wagon 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.

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

In Autumn the oats were cut and the old chaff-cutter chugged 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!

Page 7

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, toothpaste 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 shearer’s whare. First he made a fire in the oven and when he decided it was hot enough he scraped out the embers and filled the oven up 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 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 down 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 today I wonder how many of the present children would like to go back to those days?

Helen Arthur.

Fri 13th September (1957)
Michael Barnett entered hospital for an appendix operation.

1958: Waiwhare School is connected to the outside world. A telephone is installed.

1959: Padder Tennis courts are laid.

Page 8

David Ward.   6.   1959.

Joanna Ward   6. 1992

Page 9

1960’s
It must be a while since I started at Waiwhare School, for one of the first lessons was Miss Ising [Eising] or was it Mrs. Boyes explaining how the five changed to a six at the change of the decade.
Walking to school was trailing behind my sisters, kicking stones and hoping Mrs Barnett would stop the bus and pick me up, or maybe Ivan Gordon or Bernie Ward in the Landrover or even the odd sheep truck or car which was passing, until I was too close and had to hurry not to be late.
Tuesdays I rode my pony down to Pat Tolley’s for piano lessons. I won that one, didn’t I Pat? Still can’t play a note. Ponies were left with the Comrie ones in the pony paddock.
Lunch was under the prickly tree with Tony Ward, Leslie Buckley and Roger Tough where everything from procreation to gunpowder was discussed. I think I learnt more about gunpowder. Uneaten lunch could be hidden under the tree.
Sometimes my mother was the relieving teacher which kept me on my toes and revealed some of my secrets about not ruling lines under my sums etc. and a general ribbing from some of the boys.
My Dad and Lyndsay [Lindsay] Smith welded the reinforcing steel for the swimming pool and Dad had to go to hospital with welding flashes in his eyes. The first swim was bobbing up and down on one toe to keep my head above water. A bit like farming in the last decade.
With Mr. Brown we had eeling trips, kite days and a trolley derby on the hill where the parents came along and Dad and Fred Ward rolled their trolleys in the father’s race. The anti-climax was all the written work afterwards.
Teresa Ward was head girl one year, a very responsible position, and these girls had the highest, biggest and best tree house up one of those gums I have ever seen. A real honour to be invited up the rope ladder and through the hatch.
Happy 40th Birthday Waiwhare, see you at the centenary.
Graeme Fountaine

1961: Staffroom built

1962: Baths opened

1963

Page 10

Opening of School Baths
1962
On Friday when I woke up I ran to the window to see how good the weather was it was raining and I thought we wouldn’t be having the opening. When I got to school I watched the bigroom people put up the decorations and I knew that we were having the opening. We all helped tidied up the place. Soon it was lunch time. The people started to come. And Tony Ritchsin [Richardson] told the people where to go. Peter, Gavin, David Ward and Tony to when there was a car. There were 60 children and 70 grown ups. When they had all come we had a swim and after a while the bell went and we got out. When I got out I was going to have a turn on the mouth to mouth but I didn’t. We had afternoon tea and the next day we saw some photos in the paper.
John Comrie.   1962

When the baths opened I didn’t have a swim because I had a cold. I liked the lolly scramble and I got 6 lollies. Daddy threw all the lollies out.
Paula Tolley.   1962

You’ve taken great strides in life Tony Ward – from school boy to school board!   1963

Page 11

1968
November 23   Pupils performed ‘Pied Piper’ at Queenswood School garden party.
School donated $20 towards library.

Rob Comrie has memories of carrying John and Linda across a flooded Willowford Stream to get them to school.

1970   Senior boys woodwork project – bridge building

1974   Last 3/4 mile of road to school was sealed.

Page 12

When I started school 30 years ago at Waiwhare (check your own hairline before you call me a wrinkley) things were somewhat different.
There were two classrooms, the present library and a smaller prefabricated building where Room 2 is now. The only other buildings at the school were the woodshed-sportshed and some old long drop toilets. I have a vague memory of the senior boys chopping up big rats, caught in these old toilets, with the school axe.
Swimming lessons, what there were of them, were held in the Willowford Stream and, I think, the stream at Pukehamoamoa, and the dreaded once yearly trip to the swimming sports at Twyford School.
Every week, for an afternoon the girls did sewing while the boys collected pinecones with the inevitable pinecone fights, for the classroom fires. These old cast iron stoves were hard to get burning and I remember one Headmaster loosing [losing] his luxurious eyebrows and alot of composure when he poured a large quantity of Gestetner printing fluid into one, in an attempt to get some heat. He got considerably more than he had reckoned on.
In these early times wool was so valuable (a pound per pound at one stage) that we kids were sent out after school to pluck any strands of it off fences or trees and of course off dead sheep. A few years later it was worth so little that we were sent out to pick mushrooms for sale instead. The mind boggles at the thought of receiving so much money, inflation adjusted, for wool today.
The school buses were not overly endowed with glamour or power in those days, and our driver, Mrs. Barnett (30 years on the buses eh Jill?) was not very impressed when we would all rush to the back of the bus as she was grinding up Fountaine’s hill in low gear, only to have it stall and have an awkward restart on her hands. I don’t know how she put up with us.
The parents did a tremendous amount of work, as they still do today, building the swimming pool, the volley board and concrete playing area etc.
It is this tremendous community support that, over the years has resulted in the school as we see it today, a modern well equipped unit wanting for very little to keep it at the top in the education business.
Roger Tough   Roger Tough

Otamauri Playcentre
1967 – 1992
25 years of family pre-school

James Simons 6. 1992

Page 13

THE “CAPTAIN COOK” EMBROIDERY
This work, designed and executed by the senior pupils, went on display at the chief Post Office in Hastings, Napier and Gisborne.
Photographs of the embroidery appeared in the “Hawkes Herald Tribune”, the “Daily Telegraph”, the “Dominion”, the “Gisborne News” and “National Education”.   1969
Pictured with the embroidery are:
Front: Kirsty Smith, Grant Tolley, Tony Sculpher, Sally Smith, Janice Moult, Allison McPhail, Warren Sculpher, Wendy Kyle, Lance Tolley, Neville Moult, Patrick Ward, Anne Whyte.
Rear: Robyn Drummond, Angela Botzen, Paula Tolley, Donald Whyte, Jane Redman, Stuart Comrie, Barbara Ward, Helen Richards, Kay Lawrence, Lynda Comrie.

This shield was designed in the latter part of 1970, and first used in 1971 as a badge sewn on to sports and blouses.
Later it was printed on Waiwhare School T-Shirts.
There is also a wooden representation attached to the front of the school.

Page 14

COMMUNITY COMMENT.
KAWEKA FOREST
As early as 1956 pine plantings began around the Blowhard and Kuripapango areas. These were overseen by the N.Z Forest Service with most planting carried out by Justice Dept. trainees.
Pine plantations for future production were established in 1964 on land previously leased from the Crown by Mangawhare Station. The first forest ranger resided at Willowford cottage. Shortly after this four single-man huts and a small office were built on the present H.Q site.
In 1965 the first two houses, the first of the single-man units, workshop and fire store were built. Original plans for up to twenty houses never eventuated. Over the next eight years two more houses, extra office space, single-man units and a social hall were added to finally accommodate 22 single and 4 married men. The environmental side of the Forest Service also had bases at Kuripapango and Puketitiri.
Large planting programmes were carried out in the 1970’s, the majority of this through winter employment programmes. During this period three bus loads of W.E.P workers travelled out from town daily.
Planting and tending continued through until the mid 1980’s, although by this time the programme was more evenly distributed throughout the year and a regular workforce employed. One gang bus travelled from town.
In the early 1980’s there was a large permanent staff of 8 forest officers, clerk, office lady, mechanic, loader, metal truck and bulldozer drivers and a gardener. There was a fleet of about 20 vehicles.
In 1987 the Forest Service was corporatised and Timberlands created. Staffing levels dropped drastically leaving four people living on station and running the forest. Vehicles and buildings were tendered, two houses, the office, fire store, single huts, six bay garages and the hall were sold. Very little planting occurred during this time and all work was contracted out.
In November 1990 Timberlands ceased to exist and the crop and assets sold to Carter Holt Harvey Forests Ltd., the land was retained by the Crown. CHH Forests then sold the crop and management rights to Oji Sankoku. Two staff are currently employed by CHH and living on station. Logging commenced in November 1991 with the 1964 pines being the first to be felled. The programme commenced at 150ha per year and will level out at approxiamately 300ha/yr by 1995. Under sustained yield management, this logging planting cycle will continue forever. Residents at the forest village have had a long association with Waiwhare School, 21 children having attended through the years.

In 1974 the old prefab was removed and the new classroom (now 2. seniors) arrived.

A time capsule was located then also.

Page 15

Waiwhare School
25th Jubilee Dance
Admit One
Saturday 8th October
8.30 pm – 2 am

In 1977 the school celebrated its 25th Jubilee. The formal addresses were followed by a helicopter drop of sweets for the children. A dance was held at Matapiro Hall in the evening and about 180 people attended.

Although I didn’t attend the school as a pupil for very long, my association has been mainly through driving the school bus in more recent years.
Driving the bus was very entertaining at times, what with the latest of jokes, and especially some of the stories that were told, it was better than morning talk at school. If only some of the parents knew – no domestic stories were left unrelated – with a little bit of help from the bus driver.
I remember one time the children were all so very quiet and this driver was so intent on getting home that we sailed straight on past the school, forgetting to drop them off. Then having to turn at fountaine’s [Fountaines’] gate and return to school, amidst a hoard of protest.
Mike Barnett (Or was it Jill)

Mark Barnett – Remembers building a rope bridge in preperation [preparation] for a school camp. Lots of time and effort was put into [to] it only to have it collapse the moment somebody set foot on it.

In February 1978 Waiwhare School officially closed due to lack of relieving principal. Pupils were bused to Otamauri School for several weeks until the school re-opened when an Acting Principal commenced.

Amanda McCaslin f.1

Page 16

1980’s

Maori village comes alive
A group of school children were transported back in time to a small Maori village hidden beneath the Hawke’s Bay Art Gallery and Museum yesterday.
If they were to survive the morning they had to quickly learn how to make fishing lines out of flax, how to carve with adzes, how to drill with string-powered wooden drills and how to cook kumara and Maori bread.
The twenty-nine children and several parents from Waiwhare School, 55km from Hastings along the Taihape Rd, were the first group take part in the museum’s main education activity programme for this year.
The museum’s education room has been painted to resemble a Maori village and school and groups will live there for half-a-day at a time.
Mrs Ceri Coles, a main organiser, said this programme followed on from last year’s colonial history in action programme.
She said the museum believed children learned more by doing things but in this case the parents were learning as their children.
The children were using artifacts straight out of the museum and replica tools and examples of work.
Two Maori women had agreed to help teach fax weaving and the museum had called on many people in the Maori community to help get things right Mrs Coles said.
Photo caption – Lesson one . . . Eight-year-old Peter Shields [Sheild] gives Marcus Schaw, five, an original interpretation of a traditional Maori moko. He is watched by (from left) Mark Worsley, 5, Arron [Aaron] Wallis, 7, Deon Holgate, 7, Vicki [Vicky] Barnett, 5.

ADVENTURE FORT/PLAYGROUND
As a means of further extending the activities related to our fort complex, a “free construction” concept would prove recreationally and socially educative.
Main materials envisaged in this concept materializing would be a resource of regular shaped (square) fence battens.
Should any of you have surplus stocks of these battens, or warped, or irregular length types, these would be very useful in allowing children the freedom to construct and play in the various innovative ideas they express.
Please contact any school committee member, or drop off at the school whenever convenient.
1984: Newsletter from school. Do you think he ever actually got what he wanted?!!

1981: Room One arrived

1982: The fort was built.

Page 17

PAST PUPILS REMEMBER
David Ward – Making roads under the trees. There used to be a big pine tree where the Junior Room is now.
School bus went into a ditch coming home from a school trip.
Jumping into the pool when it was opened.

Peter Ward – Playing “Dangerous Rounders”. He eventually found out it was “Danish Rounders”.
“The Young Ones” with Gavin Sparkes, Mark Barnett and Deon Holgate. They sang it to a group of elderly ladies and also at the Music Festival.
Photo caption – “THE YOUNG ONES”

Otamauri School closes for good
Otamauri School on the Napier-Taihape Rd was permanently closed by the Hawke’s Bay Education Board yesterday.
The school has been temporarily closed during this year because of a lack of pupils.
Parents of the district’s nine school-aged children had opted to transfer them to neighbouring Sherenden and Waihare [Waiwhare] Schools.
In recommending the formal closure, board general manager Mr Charles Bell said there had been total acceptance from the district for the school to permanently close.
Board members supported the idea that the original 1924-built classroom become a playcentre.
Mr Bell said the local playcentre group intended approaching the Hawke’s Bay Playcentre Association for support in acquiring the building, which had been written off by the board along with the land the building stands on.
The remainder of the school site would be declared surplus and returned to the Crown for disposal.
Herald Tribune 10.10.87

The old Otamauri school building was transferred to Waiwhare and became our third classroom in 1988. Waiwhare became a three teacher school for the first time in 1987.

The school fort was moved in 1988 to its present site to make room for the new classroom.

Elesha Purcell Room 1. 1992

Page 18

Well, I arrived at school with all the others wondering what camping (never been there, done that before) with 24 kids was going to be like. (Cubs are quite different.) As for the poor teacher, with his padlocked tent!! Who was he trying to kid?
One of the high points for me was the walk up the Maraetotara Stream, never expecting the size of the terrain the water covered or the fact you could actually run all over it and choose deep pools to swim in if you so desired or slide down on your backside. Well worth the wading and walking.
I also enjoyed listening to the singing and diary readings in the evening. You were guaranteed of a smile or three there.
The early mornings I could have done without, although Liz made it easier with an early morning cuppa. She seemed to have a built in alarm clock saying it was time to get up, the sun’s about to rise!!!!
Cathy Worsely [Worsely]
(camp parent 1986)

Cyclone Bola in 1988
caused much devastation in the district. Willowford bridge was washed out, Glenross Rd closed between Kyles and Lawrences and the school closed early.

Otamauri & Districts Squash Club
Celebrates its 21st birthday this year (1992)

GREETINGS TO ALL AT
WAIWHARE SCHOOL
FROM ALL IN ROOMS
1 and 2

SCHOOL SLIDE
The school committee has installed a new slide at the school. This has been constructed against the north end of the Fort. Initially the children wanted the slide to leave the top story of the fort, shoot over the dressing shed roof and end up in the pool, but we finally persuaded them that the present site will have to do.   1988

Page 19

Rebecca Ward Std 4

Robert Ayres – Going on camp to Kaitawa with Mr. Simons, Mr. Stitchbury [Stichbury] and the kids from Pukehamoamoa School. Mr. Simons had a bet with us that Michael Noonan’s ghost would appear on Thursday night. It did, looking like a sack on the end of a broomstick (because that’s what it was). Next time we saw him was during the concert – the lights went out and the same thing went past the window outside. We wouldn’t go to sleep that night until we saw Michael Noonan’s ghost, 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, of course, Mr. stitchbury dressed up.

1986 – Forms I & II begin Manual Training at Flaxmere Intermediate.

1992 – School downgraded from 3 teacher to 2 teacher.

Vanessa Fountaine Std. 4

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

WAIWHARE