The isolated community of Wharehine, set high on the hills and ridges on the eastern side of the Kaipara Harbour, has two memorials of the First World War. In 1919 the Wharehine Patriotic Society compiled a framed roll of honour which included photographs and biographical and service details of the 17 old boys of the Wharehine School who had participated in the Great War. The school was closed in 1940 and the building was converted into the local hall in 1948. It is unclear what happened to the roll of honour at the time, but the original is now held at the Albertland Museum in Wellsford, while a replica hangs in the hall.
Sometime after the war, the Wharehine war memorial, a plain grey, granite obelisk, was unveiled on ‘Prospect Hill’ (at the top of Shagadeen Road). This was inscribed on one face as follows: “In / grateful memory / of the / Wharehine soldiers / who fell / fighting for freedom / in the Great World War / 1914 – 1918. / - / Erected by the residents / of this district and / other friends.“ The other faces bore inscriptions in honour of Private Frank Stables, who was killed in action at Flers on 27 September 1916, Private Henry Sefton, who died of wounds received at Messines on 23 June 1917, and Private Alfred Moffatt, who was killed in action at Passchendaele on 3 October 1917. After the Second World War, an inscription in honour of Private I.E. Blackburn, killed in action at the Sangro River, Italy, on 7 December 1943, was added.
The memorial was relocated to the grounds of the Wharehine hall during the 1950s.
See: Michele Frey and Sara Newman with Anna Rogers, On a Saturday Night: Community Halls of Small-town New Zealand, Christchurch, 2012, pp. 18-25; Elizabeth Farr, Albertland: The First 100 Years, 2nd ed., Auckland, 2012, p. 111.
Main image: Jock Phillips and Chris Maclean, c. 1986
Other images and text: Bruce Ringer, 2018