Whanganui schools reflect district’s rich heritage - Rob Rattenbury

The Dublin Street Bridge is the gateway to Whanganui East and Whanganui Girls’ College, one of the oldest single-sex state schools in the country. Photo / Bevan Conley

OPINION

One of the many things that are great about our town is the different parts of it.

There is no part of Whanganui I do not enjoy being in. They are all wonderful, from way up the top of Aramoho to right out at Castlecliff. What a spread-out town we have.

Every place has its own unique charms and history. The old zoo in Aramoho. The trams taking beach-goers out to Castlecliff Beach in the old days. The garden suburb of Durie Hill built in the 1920s following the design of Samuel Hurst Seager which, in conjunction with the then-new elevator finished in 1919, provided a suburb close to the city centre with its own transport system.

Gonville, with its streets named after colleges at Cambridge University - Kings Avenue, Gonville Ave, Cambridge Street and Caius Ave. The suburb is named after Gonville and Caius College, founded in 1348. The names date back to 1898 when the Imlay Estate was broken up by an ex-headmaster of Collegiate School, George Saunders, who was also a surgeon. Saunders was educated at Cambridge, hence the names for his new suburb.

The beautiful tree-lined streets on St John’s Hill which still has many fine old homes from a time when life was slower and Whanganui was a place of many grand homes. The pearl in the necklace of St John’s has to be the wonderful Rotokawau Virginia Lake with its bush and birdlife.

In my days as a mad jogger, I used to really enjoy running around the lake as part of my daily trot - such a peaceful place to be. Sometimes I’d manage to have a stitch or a cramp so I could sit on a bench and just enjoy the beauty of the place.

College Estate with, again, fine old homes and the home of Whanganui Collegiate School, founded in 1854 and still going strong on its present site since 1911. It is a school that attracts students from all over New Zealand and overseas.

The campus is the heart of the suburb with playing fields over the road butting on to Whanganui High School, our town’s largest secondary school that regularly has a roll of about 1400 children.

Close by, near the city centre, is the Whanganui City College, a co-ed school since 1994. It is another historic school, starting life as Wanganui Technical College in 1911 and then becoming Wanganui Boys College in 1964. They are three excellent schools.

What is significant about Whanganui is the quality of its schools. Families are spoiled for choice from primary through to secondary school. As parents, we could not fault any of the schools our children attended.

Sadly, our daughter’s college, Sacred Heart, no longer exists. It is now the site of Ryman’s Jane Winstone retirement complex on St John’s Hill. It was a beautiful old school, dating back to 1880, with a great history and tradition.

Cullinane College, an amalgamation of Sacred Heart and St Augustine’s College, caters for boys and girls on its huge campus in Peat St - the site of St Augustine’s College. Luckily, Ryman retained the beautiful old Sacred Heart school chapel which can still be visited.

An iconic site in our town, the Dublin Street Bridge, is the gateway to Whanganui East. That dear old bridge is now approaching a well-deserved retirement from the days it carried trams and horse-drawn wagons. It is set to be replaced in the near future.

That will be sad. It has a beauty from a bygone time, again when life was slower. One can sit on a bench on either side of the river and look at the bridge, in one’s mind’s eye seeing it still with trams, horses and those new-fangled horseless carriages all making their way back and forth over the bridge, maybe with a riverboat below chuffing upstream full of Edwardian tourists.

I wonder if the powers that be could perhaps leave it there and build the new bridge upstream a bit. The old bridge could then be retained as a tourist attraction and a place for walkers and cyclists to safely cross the river.

Crossing that bridge towards “the East”, one sees the magnificent Whanganui Girls’ College campus, one of the oldest single-sex state schools in the country. At present 340 Whanganui girls are learning the traditions and history of their school, giving them pride in their own education that they will always remember.

Of course, Whanganui Girls’ has a place in our nation’s history other than for its fine education. In 1904 its then headmistress Mary Isabel Fraser returned from a visit to mission schools in China with some “Chinese gooseberry” seeds which were planted by local nurseryman Alexander Allison in 1906. The vines’ first fruit arrived in 1910, the forerunner of New Zealand’s huge kiwifruit industry.

Yes, it all started here in Whanganui East, an industry that is now worldwide and famous.