Location: Timaru Girls’ High School, 68 Cain Street
Access: School grounds/interior, by permission
Associated years: First World War and Second World War memory, school founded 1880, split into girls’ and boys’ schools in 1898
Associated people/groups: former pupils on active service, nurses, women’s auxiliary and home-front workers, Nora Dickie Hall
Timaru Girls’ High School is essential because women’s service belongs in this story. Aoraki Heritage records the school’s “On Active Service” honours board in Nora Dickie Hall, listing previous students who served during the Second World War. The same Aoraki Heritage school page records Timaru High School’s foundation in 1880 as a co-educational school, and the split into separate girls’ and boys’ schools in 1898.
This stop connects local women to a national and international war story.
Women served as nurses, auxiliary workers, clerks, drivers, signallers, medics, fundraisers, teachers, mothers, widows, workers and organisers.
The Caroline Bay panel for the Marquette also helps bring women into the story because New Zealand nurses and medical personnel died when the ship was sunk.
Find a WuHoo: As well as learning about which men served?, ask which women served, nursed, worked, organised, waited, grieved and remembered?
Timaru Girls' High School Hall. On the Wall by the main entrance hangs the On Active Service Board. - Photo Roselyn Fauth
Inside the Timaru Boy's High School Memorial Library. The Doors were a gift from Timaru Girls' High School. Photo: Roselyn Fauth