Sepia Saturday 43: My First School..

This is where I started my school life.
Matakawau School, Awhitu, on the Manukau Peninsula.
My brother Richard, aged 12, was a senior pupil when I started school in 1949.
One teacher and about 20 children.

The first school at Awhitu Central was opened in 1869
and there were six small schools dotted around the peninsula
by the time Matakawau school opened in 1935.

Our school was built from corrugated iron.
It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
There was a wood stove in the corner that sizzled and smoked, with a halo of warmth around it.
Those were the days of frosts and cold toes and fingers and huffs of breath in front of faces.

As a five year old I remember us 'littlies' playing with blocks
in the tiny porch area inside the door,
while the teacher taught the 'big kids' in the classroom.
There was a glass panel in the door and the teacher could keep an eye on us.

I was a good little girl, but one day I banged on the glass with a block.
The teacher opened the door, pulled me into the classroom
and sat me in the big double desk beside
Hugh Walker... a big boy! I thought I would die.

Richie and I walked to school.
It seemed a very long way to me but was probably only a mile or so.
If we were lucky we got a ride with the cream lorry,
standing on the back of the truck with the cans carrying cream from the farms.

The 'lavatory block' was down the back of the playground.
I can still smell it. Enough said.
I remember a huge puddle that grew outside
the door to the girl's 'lav' during the winter.

Notice how the big girls have a little one sitting on their knees.
This is how it was. The big girls 'mothered' us and fussed over us little kids.
There was probably a bit of favouritism going on.

In September of my first school year this little school along
with all the other little schools, was closed,
and we all went to the brand new consolidated school in the village of Matakawau.
It was so wonderful. We had three teachers and three classrooms.

The school was used at first as a Boating Club,
and the local storekeeper and his wife lived in it for a time.
It was decided in the end to tow it onto a reserve down by the beach,
but as it was being towed away the roof ridge hit power wires
and the little school "went out in a blaze of glory."
That was the very dramatic end of our little school.