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One Man’s Goldfield: the story of the Horseshoe Bend Diggings, William Rigney and Somebody’s Darling

Schooling

Despite having a church, stores, hotels and post office, Horseshoe Bend did not have
a school.

From 1868 to 1886 Horseshoe Bend children attended the Moa Flat School, near
Ettrick. This required that they cross the river, walk over the hills to the main road,
and from there several miles to school, returning by the same route each evening.
The Chinese miners who lived in huts alongside the road would give the children hot
drinks as they passed to help them on their way on cold winter mornings and
evenings.

The original wooden school building at Moa Flat was replaced in 1879 by a stone one
which still stands.

Figure 11 Moa Flat School

There are a few references to schooling at Horseshoe Bend. Alexander Don refers to
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the church being used as a school and it is possible that some lessons were taken
there between the time the church was constructed in 1867 and the Moa Flat School
opened in 1868.

Link to site of Moa Flat School in Google maps

R T Stewart, in his story of the Lonely Graves, refers to the funeral of Somebody's
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Darling being conducted by Mr Harrison the school teacher. It seems likely that
Stewart's story is confusing Harrison, the miner who discovered the body of
Somebody's Darling, with James Orr, later a teacher, who with Rigney erected the
fence around the grave. Education Board records contain no references to a teacher
named Harrison in the area.

20 Don, Alexander "Memories of The Golden Road, A History of the Presbyterian Church in Central Otago" Reed. 1936
21 Stewart, R.T. Original manuscript op cit

© Jeff Robertson 22