Past students of Te Awamutu College drive 100-year commemoration

Friends through seven decades, after meeting at Te Awamutu College, enjoy a meal out at their annual gathering.

The Te Awamutu College Reunion in Easter 1989, celebrating 50 years on the Alexandra St site, was a major occasion, with some 3000 people on campus for Saturday's celebrations.

This also was a year of major educational change — when every school, large and small, was required to have its own board of trustees.

Parent representative Judy Parlane was part of a most energetic reunion committee — and she ensured a really good attendance from classmates who had been third formers in 1956.

These positive connections led to ongoing contact — starting with the small group who had stayed on to 6A in 1960, then eventually growing to include an entire cohort who had begun school in 1948 — just before the national closure caused by the polio epidemic.

Although there has been no whole-school reunion since 1999, this class group with several expat members has continued summer meetings throughout the new century — gathering in Auckland, then in Te Awamutu and environs.

After staying in Pukeatua and enjoying Maungatautari in 2018, the group decided that advancing years meant biennial gatherings made sense — so the February 2020 rendezvous was at Raglan, with Kakepuku the mountain challenge.

Te Awamutu College schoolmates from the 1950s on their annual summer get-together - taking in the sights on the Raglan Sunset Harbour Cruise.

Follow-up to that happy occasion brought a belated realisation that 2020 was the centennial year — and that the initial Te Awamutu College reunion in 1970 had actually marked the first 50 years of secondary education in Te Awamutu.

This year's summer rendezvous at Raglan saw 30 of the group walking over the footbridge from the holiday park to the restaurant at the bottom of town, where other patrons were very tolerant of our singing the old college song — Sons and daughters of town and of countryside.

Next day brought a picnic by the famous surf at Manu Bay, then the absolute highlight of a sunset harbour cruise, with fish 'n' chips from the wharf.

The group of friends for seven decades were instrumental in having the centenary of secondary schooling in Te Awamutu recognised, albeit in a small way.

This includes the exhibition curated and displayed at Te Awamutu Museum, now relocated to Te Awamutu College Library, and a gathering with some of the staff and students at Te Awamutu College last Friday.