Collingwood Area School celebrates 150 years
Organisers of the Collingwood 150 celebrations, left, Cheryl Win (deputy chair of the organising committee and Collingwood Kids book author) and Tessa Gillooly (chair and main organiser). Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
It was founded in 1859 during the height of the Aorere gold rush. Then it was just called Collingwood School, and it stayed that way until 1937, when its name was changed to Collingwood District High School. That name lasted until 1978, when it became Collingwood Area School, and it’s been that way ever since.
This Easter weekend, the school on the hill with arguably the best view in the Bay turns 150 years old, and some 300 ex-pupils, teachers and their partners will converge there to celebrate its sesquicentennial.
The official opening, complete with speeches and the cutting of six exquisite cakes, all decorated in utter secrecy, will happen on Saturday 11 April.
However, a wine and cheese “get-together” starting 7pm the previous evening at the Collingwood Memorial Hall will see the launch of a new book, Collingwood Kids—150 years of learning. Written by Cheryl Win, with Sandy Isbister on production, this book of stories and photos combines the early school history with the modern story and encompasses the 10 other schools in the Collingwood area that have now closed—at Bainham, Rockville, Aorere, Kaituna, Dalls Creek, Mangarakau, Rakopi, Puponga, Pakawau and Ferntown. In those early days, students from these “feeder” schools would more often than not come in to Collingwood for one day a week to undertake their manual training lessons—woodworking for the boys, and cooking and sewing for the girls. Things have certainly moved on. The first students of Collingwood wrote their lessons on slates. In 2009 they routinely do their work on computers and download videos.
Since woodchopping competitions were traditionally held over Easter weekend at Collingwood, the celebrations this Saturday will also include woodchops on the school field in the afternoon, while on Sunday at 11.15 the Collingwood Fire Brigade will hold a motor vehicle crash demonstration.
The chair of the reunion organising committee for the celebrations is Tessa Gillooly, who started attending Collingwood School in 1959, the year it turned 100. She says that present-day CAS students will be taking reunion visitors on tours of the school throughout the weekend.
“It’s a completely different place now from when many of them were at the school. Some of the attendees simply won’t recognise it.” The most distant registrations are from Finlay Oates in the Netherlands, who attended both Rockville and Collingwood Schools, and Jacqueline Barnett (nee Beattie), who now lives in the United States. Most, of course, are coming from within Australasia, with many from just up the valley. Doreen Grant of Rockville has two reasons for attending: she was first a Collingwood pupil, then became a teacher there.
An indication of the widespread community involvement in the celebrations can be seen in the new school sign erected just inside the entrance to the school. The huge macrocarpa flitch panel was donated by BJ White, prepared by Brian Cooper, and Graeme Miller cut out the letters and assembled it.
Tessa says the whole experience of arranging the celebrations had been incredibly fulfilling. “Just the way it brought everyone together for a genuine Collingwood experience, like it’s always been around here when something big happens. The response has been just fantastic.”
Casual visitors are encouraged to pop up to the school during the day on the Saturday or Sunday to check out the open exhibitions, photographs and old-time sport competitions that will be held out on the field. “They don’t have to be registered or to have attended the school,” says Cheryl. “This is an event we are encouraging the whole community to come up and have a look at.”
Cheryl Win says it had been both fun and thoroughly fascinating to go back through the archives and find out all the facts for her Collingwood Kids book. “The project followed straight on from the Collingwood to Waitapu book so we only had 11 months from start to finish. That made it a pretty full-on project too.”
The book will be available for purchase on the weekend, and later from the school office and Take Note in Takaka, cost $50.
Gerard Hindmarsh
