School’s rock stars set mark for future
AN ‘‘URBAN myth’’ has been circulating at Palmerston’s East Otago High School this year.
In the 1960s, 47 pupils stood atop one of the landmark Moeraki Boulders — or so the story goes.
Deputy principal Keith Fleury took 56 juniors and eight year 13 pupils to the beach near Moeraki yesterday morning to have a crack at the ‘‘record’’, or at the very least document a new standard.
‘‘It all came about because someone said there was a record, and we couldn’t find one, so we decided we would set one,’’ Mr Fleury said. ‘‘I can’t see how you get 47 people on a boulder.’’
The plan, he said, was to make the trip to the nearby boulders — about 20km from the 150pupil school — an annual fixture during the school’s ‘‘fun week’’, in the penultimate week of term 2.
The children, mostly year 7 and 8 pupils, had no trouble getting up to 26 pupils interlocking arms standing on one of the spherical boulders. And, in a lastgasp effort, the pupils set the standard of 32 for next year’s cohort to take on.
Year 8 pupil Abigail Paton (13) said she had trouble believing 47 people could fit on top of a boulder unless there were ‘‘a few babies included in there — because there was a maximum of 32 we got on there’’.
The key was to get ‘‘strong, stable people’’ in the middle and outside and to ‘‘pack as many small people as you can around those strong people in the middle’’.
‘‘There were so many people, the people in the middle got quite claustrophobic,’’ Abigail said. ‘‘Because everyone was just holding on to them packed in there.’’