Fairfax

Living in Fairfax

Fairfax is a small Southland locality in the farming country northwest of Winton, carrying the English aristocratic surname that the Southland settlers distributed across the district's localities with the enthusiasm of people who had left England but retained a fondness for its naming conventions. The Lord Fairfax who inspired the name had no connection to Southland, but the word has a certain ring to it and the locality has been living up to it quietly ever since.

The farming around Fairfax is the western Southland plains model: dairy and sheep on the reliable, flat country that the district's rainfall and deep soils support. The Oreti River system is in the general vicinity, and the farming families in the Fairfax locality have been managing the land through the pastoral era's various economic iterations with the consistency that Southland's agricultural families maintain.

Winton provides the services and the schools, with Invercargill a further 20 minutes south for the full city range. The Fairfax community runs through the farming district's shared institutions - the school, the hall, the local rugby club and the A&P show connections that knit Southland's rural communities together without requiring them to be physically proximate to function.

Fairfax School anchors the local primary years. The aristocracy never visited. The cows didn't notice.

Schools & Enrolment Zones in Fairfax

Schools in zone for Fairfax

Children living in Fairfax have a guaranteed right to enrol at these schools, based on Ministry of Education home zones.

• Verdon College

  Secondary (Year 7-15) · roll 716 · decile 6

• Southland Adventist Christian School

  Full Primary · roll 123 · decile 4

Check your school zone

Fairfax Weather

Current conditions: 7.1°C, scattered clouds

Fairfax Community