The Oldest Old Girl Beryl's In A Class Of Her Own

Avonside’s a Special Place to the Centenarian.

- Fleur Mealing

At 101 years old, Beryl Newman has experienced plenty of change in her life. From war and rationing to the shortening of netball uniforms, there have been plenty of things for the Cantabrian to reflect on.

However, there is one change Beryl never thought she’d live to experience in her life. On May 1, 2019, Christchurch’s Avonside Girls’ High left its earthquake-damaged site in the city’s red zone to relocate to a new purpose-built school 10 minutes away in North New Brighton.

As the longest-surviving old girl of the public school, Beryl was devastated to see her alma mater leave the original site.

“The Avonside site was very attractive,” Beryl fondly recalls. “I used to love going up through the gates – you just felt you were entering into another world. It was just special, the school by the river.”

On March 2 this year, the school’s Old Girls’ Association held a farewell for the site on which the eastern suburbs school had sat for exactly 100 years. As with most Old Girls’ events, Beryl was there.

“It was a bit sad, really,” laments Beryl, who attended the school from 1931 to 1935. “It meant a great deal to me being there. Not everybody went to secondary school and it was a struggle for my parents to get me there.”

It was only eight years earlier that Beryl had attended another farewell for the school.