Wallingford

Wallingford School.




As I sat inside the small Anglican Church that had once served as the second site of Wallingford Primary School. The Reverend Warner Wilder, a former student and my father’s best mate, reminisced about his days at the School. “When I started at Wallingford, it was the last year that the church was being used as the school building, and the new school was being built on the present site.” Warner pointed behind him and carried on. “I remember George Hunter was a bit of a cheeky bugger back then, well he still is isn’t he? But anyway, on this particular occasion he was sitting at his desk over on the right over there and he had said something stupid. So old Mr Findlay told him to pull his socks up. And George being George leans down and pulls his socks up!” The whole congregation of about eighty people in the church erupted into laughter. I was at the Wallingford school reunion/closure; I had come back to this small rural community seventeen years after my family had left it. In the first term of 2005 the old school closed after 125 years. I had been the last of three generations of my family to attend this school and the memories were flooding back in waves of emotions. I was happy, I was sad, I was scared, I was overcome in joy. Wallingford School and its district was and still is my home and I here I was paying my final respects to it.



Wallingford School is named after the Wallingford station that back in the 1880’s encompassed 40,000 acres, but now is a much more manageable 3,000 acres. It is situated 20 minutes drive south from Waipukurau on the way to the coastal settlement of Porangahau. Originally the school was situated at the homestead of the station on the main road. It had a small class of around 20 children. In the early 1900s the school was shifted to Bird road, which is a two minute walk away from the homestead and the present site of the church today. This is where my grandfather first attended the school around the 1920s. Back in those days, everything was done by horse and I remember the tales he used to tell about the school. “I used to have to ride the five miles down Bush road and another two miles south to the school, everyday day. We would put our ponies on what is the sports field to graze for the day. Then we would have to ride home again and do all our chores!” In the early forties when my father and Warner Wilder had attended the school, it was moved a little up the hill to the present site. New classrooms were built to cope with the expanding role. This site remained relatively unchanged up until its closing. Sure the odd building may have been redesigned and new one put in. Like the pool that went up in the 1950s. It had leaves in it today; it just didn’t feel right, not for this time of year. The pool had always had water in it, whether it was green or a crystal clear blue. And the kids, we had had so much fun in it. I can remember climbing the fence and perching precariously on the top of the fence before leaping like a chick going for its first flight and doing a massive bomb in the deep end of the pool. Then resurfacing quickly to do another one before the teachers, my mum being one of them, caught us! The landscape had definitely improved over the years. But essentially the school remained the same.



I pulled up beside the gate to the school, the brown sign with the words in white indicating Wallingford, stood as still as it always had, with the old tree, I never knew what type of tree it was but its leaves were small and these brown little seed cones hung from it. To the left of the sign was the old metal gate that hung low to the ground after years of children swinging on it. I’m sure its “hinges were almost gone, but nobody bothered to replace them, and why would they now. A little further to the left stood the old bus shed that also housed the Wallingford fire unit. I walked past these and up the thin concrete path, that as kids we would ride our plastic skateboards down. And turned left between two white buildings into the big open court yard.

It seemed just like yesterday when I was a kid playing in this yard. It had massive squares in it. And there the whole school would play four square, except it was more like forty square. The youngest kids were always down the very end waiting for the older kids to hit the ball down to them, except inevitably when it was hit to them they would always go out. Thus the younger ones would hardly get past the twentieth square. It was here I bumped into Mr, sorry Yurech Wypich. My old teacher who had taught me from when I was in standard one to standard four.

“How are you Paul?” he had said.

“Sorry mate, who the fuck are you?” I had replied.

Yurech laughed at me. “That’s no way to talk to your old favourite teacher!” He replied.

I went bright red. "Oh shit I’m sorry, has it been that long?”

Mr, I mean Yurech Wypich and I parted after a short catch up, promising each other that we would have a good talk later that night at the school dance.



It sure felt strange calling my old teacher by his first name. I couldn’t help but feeling like that eleven year old when I last saw him. I hoped I looked well. What words could I say to impress him, to impress all these old faces here about what I was up to and what I had done with my life? I had rehearsed it so many times but would I remember the lines when the situation happened? The thought of returning home a man and not a boy captivated me so much. Would they like the real me or would I have to plastify myself and accentuate the positives and keep the trap shut about the negatives, the part of me that everybody in my real world knows true and well.



It was while I was kicking the stones on this huge court, a quiet tear resting in my eye when I bumped into Janine Mclean below the garden covered embankment which was one of the last major changes done to the school when I was there. Dad had been the chairman of the committee and they had put a big garden up on the hill overlooking the school. I think because they were sick of the mud scars the kids left on it when we raced down the hill when the bell rang to go in for class. Janine was on the reunion committee and it just so happened that her family had brought my old family farm. We had farmed it for four generations. With my dad being the last of our clan to farm it. Janine was having trouble raising the New Zealand flag. So I did my duty, paying my respect to the old school. I tied the flag, and eventually hoisted it up.



After the church service, I mingled with a few of my old mates, and the people who used to be Mr and Mrs, but were now just John and Jane. Everybody started to disappear down to the homestead for a late morning tea. I looked around and couldn’t help thinking, was it better to be this adult I am now, knowing what I know, or would it be better to be that kid, who used to eat his lunch while his mother kept a watchful eye from the staffroom. I had one final hug. Then got into my car. They had said one of the classrooms was going to Gisborne, but what of the rest? What of the school that was the glue of the community for so long? How would it survive now without the working bees, the dances and sports days that got everybody involved? So I left, returning to my real world far away in Palmerston North, yet knowing that in my heart the school and its district would live on.