Southern View: February 26, 2019

10 Tuesday February 26 2019
Latest Christchurch news at www.star.kiwi
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SOUTHERN VIEW
Local
News
Now
Fire rages, homes at risk
End of an era for Avonside old girl
• By Matt Slaughter
PATRICIA TURNER made
some of the best memories of her
life during her time at Avonside
Girls’ High School.
But now the 77-year-old
Linwood resident is getting ready
to say goodbye to her former
school when it shifts from its
Avonside Drive site to a new
shared campus with Shirley
Boys’ High School at QE II Park
next term.
It has been 100 years since
Avonside Girls’ first opened.
Mrs Turner is the secretary
of the old girls’ association and
attended the school from 1955-
1958.
Mrs Turner’s sister Ruth
Aitken (then Turner) also
attended Avonside Girls’, starting
two years later.
Their mother Hilda Batson
was in the first class of students
who started at the school when it
opened in 1919.
Mrs Turner remembered
cycling to school every day from
her house in St Martins
and the “very tall trees that
turned beautiful colours in the
autumn.”
She also made friends that
have lasted a lifetime.
“It seemed to be a happy time
for all of us at that stage . . . A lot
of the past pupils of Avonside,
we meet for lunch every three
months and we’ve kept in touch
and we’re very loyal to the
school.”
She said she had a great
education, a love for English
and history and a strict but fair
headmistress.
Mrs Turner went on to have a
successful career as a shorthand
typing teacher and said her time
at Avonside Girls’ set her up
“extremely well for the market
that existed then.”
When the school was badly
damaged in the February 22,
2011, earthquake, Mrs Turner
said: “It really was heartbreaking
because the writing was more
or less on the wall that they
wouldn’t rebuild on the site.”
When the gates of Avonside’s
old site close for the last time,
it would signal the end of a
significant chapter in the lives of
its former students, she said.
“In normal circumstances, I
suppose the school could have
continued for another hundred
years, so it does mark the end
of an era and it means that
everything that we remembered
about school will be gone,” Mrs
Turner said.
“They were some of the
happiest days of my life and I feel
it’s now like the closing of a book
on that period.”
An event will be held at the
Avonside Girls’ old site on
Saturday from 1.30pm until 5pm
for past and present students
to reconnect, say farewell and
celebrate the school’s 100 year
anniversary.
Mrs Turner said the event
would have a post-World War
1 theme to recognise the huge
impact that the war had on its
first students.
She said her mother used
to say Avonside Girls’ was an
escape for many of the
school’s first students who
had fathers and brothers who
returned home from the war
traumatised.
“My mother always thought it
must have been a bit of a refuge
for these girls, where they could
just let themselves be teenagers
and they didn’t have to worry
about making a sudden noise or
waking up and hearing their big
brothers screaming,” Mrs Turner
said.
The farewell would include
a performance from a band
playing wartime songs and they
would be serving Anzac biscuits
HISTORY:
Avonside
Girls’ High
School old girl
Patricia Turner,
alongside
current
students,
showing off
her class photo
(below, circled)
from more
than 60 years
ago.
to pay tribute.
Mrs Turner said hundreds of
former students of all ages would
attend the event, including its
oldest former student, 101-yearold
Beryl Newman.
Current students of Avonside
Girls’ High School will have
their last day at the old site in
mid-April before moving to the
new QE II campus at the start of
term 2.