History – Wharehine school days

In Wharehine, as in most of Albertland, schooling was initially held in one or other of the settler’s homes. The first school with Mr Steventon as teacher was built near the southern end of Wharehine. However, as bachelors in the district married and had families, they asked for something closer.

After discussions about a suitable site, a compromise was made and the offer of an acre of land from David Smith was accepted. Though fairly central, as far as the population was concerned, the site was not an ideal one for a school. On a bleak hillside, with scarcely half a dozen square yards of level land on it, the place had to be extensively excavated and levelled before the new building could be erected. The school was completed in 1879 either opening that year or very early in 1880.

In the late 1800s, there were no trees about the school grounds except a heavy growth of tea-tree and manuka in the hollow below, and a small amount of short scrub in the grounds and around the top piece. The school ground was encircled with a post and rail fence of split timber and some of the boys took great pride in walking round the top rail for the entire length without once falling off. A flag-pole was erected in the top corner about 12 or 14 feet high, made from a small kauri sapling about three or four inches in diameter. Being composed chiefly of sap, this didn’t long survive rough treatment from the boys.

Initially, the teachers were all men. Then after the Christmas holidays of 1884-85, a young widow, Flora McLean, arrived. She was rather attractive but had a fiery temper and was not overly patient, as many of the children found out. Early in 1885, a photograph was taken of the school, showing 34 children present. The photographer, a son-in-law of Mr and Mrs Cray, was John Blythe who, the following year, figured prominently in the great volcanic eruption of Mt Tarawera.

Mrs McLean bought a pony to ride to school, a wicked little brute that would frequently bite the children when they were catching and saddling him. On one occasion though, the joke was on the pony because when one of the boys was saddling him and he made a vicious grab at the boy’s leg, he got hold of a pocket of marbles instead!

Wharehine School had women teachers for the following 35 years, with most leaving to marry. In 1918, Dorothy Morton was in charge and about that time, a circus passed by, much to the delight of the children. As the late Bess Farr (nee Marsh) remembered: “Long before there was anything unusual to see, we could hear men shouting and whips cracking. Then, up the steep mile-long hill between Wellm’s Bridge and the school, the first of the wagons appeared round the bend, the horses and ponies straining with bended knees and bodies nearly touching the ground, as they struggled to drag the heavy wagons and caravans through the soft boggy patches on the road round Stott’s Pa. To get the vehicles up the steep incline, as they approached a particularly deep patch in the road, they would un-hitch some of the ponies from the last wagons, bring them forward and re-hitch them to the front ones. When these reached the top of the hill, they would un-hitch the whole team and take them back to the next, and so on, a very long drawn-out process. Even the tiny performing ponies were roped in to add their weight.

“While all this was going on, a youth came riding up the steep banks outside the school gates on a ribbon-bedecked piebald pony, performing intricate tricks with a long length of bright red ribbon. Although the circus didn’t put on a show in Wharehine, but was just passing through, it was the first circus I had ever seen.”

The Wharehine School served the district well, but like so many others, was eventually closed and pupils travelled by school bus to Wellsford in 1940. In 1948, the building was given to the Wharehine Hall Committee and continues to provide a venue for many social functions in the district.