Page 52 - Volume 1

Group photograph taken at a Huntly Primary School function.
From left: Janet Holland (Neil), Hazel King (Neil), Robina Fleming, Florence Russell, Lissie Watson.

Huntly and caught the Taneatua express to shovel and kerosene tin with handle,
Ngaruawahia once a fortnight and caught it back at got through the wire fence and into
night. They left the Kimihia school at 10am and were the ti-tree bushes where I knew
landed back at the Huntly station at 4pm and still had to Copestake's draught horses did the
walk home. One year three girls rode one bike to and biggest heaps! Two shovels full and
from Huntly to catch the train. the tin was full.
Mrs Ivy Farmer (nee Kilburn) recorded in the "Dear Miss Brown was delighted
Huntly Press (16 June 1987) some of her thoughts of the and used to give me two pence
early days of the school: (tuppence) a tin. What a lot of
money, two big pennies in a small
"I remember Gleghorn's house with girl's hand, after being poor in
the verandah (in Russell Road) where England where farthings and
Mr Gleghorn used to sit so contentedly halfpence were used."
smoking his pipe with a lovely view of
the then gem of a lake, Kimihia Lake, Arbor Days at the school were
with a small island. remembered as a highlight of the school year when the
"Kimihia folk used to love to Chairman spent the day with the pupils in the local bush.
go to 'The Point’ for picnics and a The girls, conducted by the teacher, always returned to
swim in the lake. There were huge school by 1pm, but the boys invariably became lost until
eels and bewhiskered catfish in the 3pm!
lake, and many wild ducks and An annual event was the cross-country paper
swans, and beautiful long-legged chase. This was another great opportunity for the
bitterns - a bird we do not seem to boys to lose themselves in the bush until 3pm. The
hear of these days. We children loved clearest memory of one of the smallest boys of the time
to walk on the lake edge to Kimihia was the statement “If you say you heard the bell, you’ll
School to see them in the raupo get a hiding!”.
bushes at the edge of the lake. The depression years presented problems to
"There are more happy memories school-children wishing to make gifts for the teacher.
of my Kimihia school days. We One group overcame this by presenting their teacher with
children loved elderly, prim, strict and a live rooster, ready plucked. They were “warmly”
energetic teacher Miss Brown thanked.
and she encouraged any of During these early times one of the Waugh
us who liked gardening to have a brothers, who had incurred the ire of the teacher, was
wee plot of our own. I look back sent outside to get a stick and he returned with one three
and think, oh dear, they must have inches long! Sent for a bigger one he came back with one
looked like a row of graves along ten inches long. He was then sent for the biggest one he
the wire fence line of our playground. could find and was gone for an hour. His return was
"But Miss Brown could get no one heralded by a bump, bump, bump up the path and through
to gather horse manure for the wee the porch. He arrived with a strainer post!
gardens. No one would oblige,
except me, Ivy Kilburn, because I
used to collect it for my Dad's
garden. So off I went, armed with