CHRISTCHURCH When Isobel Childs and Francesca Miller put on their uniforms and headed off for a new year at Villa Maria College, it was nearly 90 years since their great-grandmother did the same. Colleen OMalley was 15 and the second eldest of six children when her parents sent her to board at a new Sisters of Mercy school in Christchurch.

Her parents owned a hotel in Kaikoura and thought the environment unsuitable for young ladies. Her two younger sisters, Gwen (Sr Corona) and Joyce (Bunting), joined her later.

She was one of 14 pupils at the new school, says Colleens granddaughter, Susan Gordon, who also attended Villa Maria. She often talked of how kind but firm the nuns were and described how boarders slept in semi-enclosed verandahs which were often quite cold.

Susan attended as a day pupil and remembers her first day. I was 11 and had already been to four schools. . . . I was sitting on a stair crying when a nun came and sat next to me and told me to pull myself together, as Id never make friends that way. It turned out to be good advice!

A fourth-form class trip down the West Coast through the new Haast Pass to Wanaka and back offered major excitement seeing a nun in trousers!

Susan and her three sisters, Jane, Mary-Anne and Louise, all attended Villa Maria. The tradition continues with Susans daughters, Isobel and Philippa (now a past pupil), and Mary-Annes daughter Francesca.

Villa Maria celebrates its 90th anniversary this weekend.