Photo Recall: Freedom at school of rough knocks

Tewai and Clive as 5-year-olds at the Foundation for the Blind. Photo / NZ Herald, Photo Researcher / Emma Walter

Blind children at boarding school learned everything from typing to rollerskating. Half a century on, as they prepare to celebrate Blind Week, friends Tewai and Clive say this set them in good stead for life.

It's hard to believe these two 5-year-olds are still friends almost 50 years on.

Tewai Halatau (nee Skipwith), 54, remembers that day at the NZ Foundation for the Blind in Parnell, with her classmate, Clive Lansink.

The photo was taken for a New Zealand Herald story about Braille Week that was published in 1962.

"We'd only just started school," Halatau says. "We have remained firm friends right from day one."

Now Halatau and Lansink meet regularly for dinner with their partners to reminisce.

They were at the Parnell school for two years, before moving to the school's new location at Homai College in Manurewa.

The two were always in the same classes: Lansink always topped the class and helped Halatau with science and maths. "I thought he was pretty brainy," she says.

Both were boarders, Lansink weekly because his parents lived nearby, and Halatau full-time, going home to Rotorua in school holidays.

There wasn't much education choice then. "That was the only option for blind kids to get an education. They had to be packed off to that school," Lansink says.

They learned braille, typing - they could both touch type by the age of 7 - sports, science, maths, music, woodwork for the boys and cooking for the girls.

"We were kind of pushed to the limits you could push blind and low-vision kids," says Lansink, 55. "We had so many freedoms to do things as blind kids which we would not be able to do at other schools."

He's not sure if today's blind and vision-impaired children have the same opportunities. Back then, children would rollerskate and cycle, unguided, in what he called The School of Rough Knocks. "You needed to have a certain toughness to enjoy it."

Now, Halatau and Lansink work to help others like themselves. Halatau and her husband help people who are blind or vision-impaired to find support services they need to live independently. Lansink works on software for improving access to technology for blind and low-vision people. He is also president of the Association of Blind Citizens of New Zealand.