Hawke's Bay and Chiefs rugby player Tyrone Thompson swamped by Eskdale School pupils in the post-Gabrielle setting of their temporary school base at Petane Domain. Photo / Paul Taylor
Hawke's Bay and Chiefs rugby player Tyrone Thompson swamped by Eskdale School pupils in the post-Gabrielle setting of their temporary school base at Petane Domain. Photo / Paul Taylor
Eskdale School is the oldest primary school in Hawke’s Bay and one of the oldest in New Zealand – established in 1859.
But it was on the way to becoming the newest, until Cyclone Gabrielle’s anger spewed down the Esk Valley on the night of February 13, nature’s inclemency not only stopping a 10-classroom rebuild in its tracks but also shutting the school down for at least two months.
The next morning the only people around at the school were rescuers and rescued.
But the school will be back, hopefully by the start of term 2 on April 24, says principal Tristan Cheer, in his makeshift office at the Bay View Tennis Club, at Petane Domain.
The school, including temporary rooms in place for the planned two-year rebuild, came through largely unscathed, but flooding from the river normally 500m away dumped silt half a metre deep on the playing fields and ruined the septic tank system.
Thus it was at the Domain that most of the school restarted on March 1 – new entrants in the Playgroup centre, years 1-2 the football club, years 3-4 the Eskview rugby club, years 5-6 the bowling club, and years 7-8 years accommodated at Westshore School, a return to their own grounds governed much by the installation of temporary ablutions facilities and clearing of the site as safe for the pupils.
Maintaining some normality the full roll – over two-thirds of them bus pupils but currently missing some still isolated by storm damage and some who had to leave because of the loss of their homes – does get together each day with a 10-minute assembly before home time.
Today it was over an hour, when Chiefs Super Rugby players and Hawke’s Bay Magpies Brad Weber, Brodie Retallick, and Tyrone Thompson dropped in, on what should have been a rest day in the run-up to the unbeaten table-topping Chiefs’ game in Hamilton on Saturday – the pupils of the school, including Retallick’s own daughter, setting the scene waving the flags.
"The kids are happy," says Eskdale School principal Tristan Cheer, in his makeshift office at Bay View Tennis Club. Photo / Paul Taylor
Cheer said there were pupils who “clung to rooftops and fled over fences” in the flood before being rescued.
From his isolation at home for two days near Puketapu he feared the worst, that the school would have to deal with loss of life among its pupils.
“We are incredibly fortunate that we haven’t had that,” he said, “but here are pupils whose families have lost their homes, it’s been very traumatic.”
Proud of the way the school community, sports clubs and Westshore School united to get the children’s schooling going again, he wondered last Friday amid another storm as they boarded their buses to go home if life could ever properly return to normal.
But all in all one of the targets had been reached. “The kids are happy,” Cheer said, even before the Chiefs arrived.
