WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2023
Wairarapa’s locally owned community newspaper
I N S I D E : S A N TA’S S E C R E T S L E I G H P 6
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Keen children head for the pool in 1980. Do you recognise them? PHOTO/WAIRARAPA ARCHIVE
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Douglas Park pupils check out their 100-year-old pool on the first day of summer 2023. From left: Mila-Kay Paku, Willow Matthews, Carter Heberley and AJ Setu. PHOTO/JULIA MAHONY
Century of splash Julia Mahony
julia.mahony@age.co.nz
The school pool is a symbol of the summer term. While Douglas Park School [DPS] has a brand new roof, a refurbished administration block and is winning awards
for modern sustainability, its school pool has just turned 100 years old and is still going strong. The pool was officially opened on November 11, 1923, at what was then Masterton West School. Pupils lined the poolside
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in celebration of their new facility. Over a century, the pool has had thousands of children pass through its waters, giving them basic water skills and the joy of swimming in a group. Last Friday, all pupils at DPS walked out to the pool
on the first day of summer, to sing happy birthday and inspect where they will be swimming in February. “Every day, for six or seven weeks, every DPS kid gets to go into the water, from their first day in Year 1,” principal Gareth Sinton said.
“It’s mainly about water confidence.” Masterton resident Harry Shackleton [89], was a pupil at the school during WW2 and remembers swimming there. “It lightened the day a bit during the war,” he said. Continued on page 4
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