Mr F

Pupil at Campbells Bay School 1949 – 1956

Distance to School

I used to walk to school every day because it was just over 1 km. Aberdeen Road was sealed and East Coast Road was sealed up to the golf course.  But most of the other roads were just dirt roads.

To walk to school we used to take a shortcut through a couple of properties, one of which was owned by my aunt and she didn’t mind the school children walking through as long as I was with them.  So we walked through my auntie’s place which came out at the top of Aberdeen Road.

Special Memories

Well there’s lots of memories I have of Campbells Bay School. It was a very happy school in those days and I still see some of my friends that went to the primary school that I still see now, and that’s quite interesting.  I’ve got some photos to show you and some badges too, and they’re rather special.  My favourite year without a doubt was when I was in Year Six and the reason was that we had a very dynamic teacher that year and his name was Mr Bob and he was from the West Indies.

School milk

Well, we had to have school milk because of health reasons and we weren’t allowed to miss it or pretend we had finished it. It came every playtime and it was in glass bottles. Generally I quite liked school milk, I thought it was very nice, but when it had been sitting in the sun for a long time it became quite yucky.

Play Area

Well I suppose I was a typical sort of boy.  I liked to run around the field, kick a football around, play cricket, things like that.  The playground looked pretty much as it does now but it seems to be better now the football field is exactly the same as it was.  I think the asphalt up the top is all very similar to what it was.  I seem to remember the netball courts up there as well.  There was sports equipment to play with, though not much because I don’t remember a sportshed, but we must have had somewhere to keep the sports gear.  I think in those days the only gear was footballs, cricket bats, cricket wickets and maybe a few tennis balls.  I can’t remember where they were kept though

Principals and Teachers

I think the Principal when I came was Mr Moffet and when I left it was Dr Dale.  Some of my teachers were Mr Bob who I had in Yr 6, Mr Mills who I had in Form 2, Mr Ryburn, Miss Bishop who was the infant teacher, Miss Wilkens and Mrs Thorburn.

Sports Day

The main event I think, when I was here was sports day.  We didn’t have a lot of equipment so we only did sprints and shot-put, things like that.  But we had four houses and each child was in a house, I think they were called Rutherford, Grave, Par and Fryberg.  There was a big competition between the houses and that was a lot of fun

Andrews Shield

I got a little badge in my last year here for winning a shield called the Andrews Shield. It has a torch with a flame coming out the top.   I think I just got it for being a good all round pupil.

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