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Photo Courtesy of Andrew Bishop

When I think about my days at St Joseph’s many names come to mind of great families who kept the school going for many a long year. Some of these names would be the Dohertys, Conneries and Rueggs from the Mill; the Lawns from Taneatua; the Coopers from Waimana, the Butlers, Williams, Meritos, Brosnahans, Waretinis, Keepas, Orrs, Delahuntys, Fogartys – all from town.

We were a hard bunch of kids and were fiercely proud of our school. We believed that St Joseph’s was the best school in Whakatane and proved it on the Rugby field, the Netball Courts and at the annual Athletic Sports day where we girls arrived looking spick and span with our blue skirts trimmed with gold brocade.

Many will remember the freezing cold winter mornings when we all warmed up by sliding from the front gate, past the spanking new hall (which our fathers had helped to build) and into the school grounds. Many were the grazed bleeding knees but who could resist it?

We always had good teachers at St Joseph’s and apart from, the fact that we were trapped inside on those beautiful, long summer afternoons when we would all have liked to have been down at the wharf or over at the Heads swimming, our school days were fairly normal.

We didn’t have PTA’s and School Committees to do things for us so at the beginning of winter the boys would head for the big field and the girls for the side paddock, armed with shovels and spades, where we would proceed to mark out our own netball (or basketball as it was called in those days) courts and the boys their rugby field.

We did things together and apart from the times when a fight erupted (and it was always the boys who started it) we all got on very well together.