I know it is now Drouin Primary school, but it has had several names and to many of us such places are still called “state schools”.
Next week’s story will be about Drouin High School, which is now called Drouin Secondary College by everyone. In our memories, fond or otherwise, it will always be Drouin High School.
Drouin High School was really born at the Drouin State School when “central classes” were created there in 1954, with three classes, forms 1A, 1B and 2. These were all students who would otherwise have gone to Warragul High School, already starting to suffer serious overcrowding.
The name Drouin was used at one time for the school at Drouin West, which has also been called Brandy Creek and Buln Buln, though I would have thought Whisky Creek was more likely, given the location. The one we are talking about here is the one that sits proudly atop the hill in Drouin, facing the old Princes Highway, on the best real estate for miles.
According to Vision and Realisation, Vol 3, Thomas Callinan wrote to the Education Department on 11 February 1876 seeking a new school, and using the address “Railway Station Reserve, Whisky Creek”. There were about 50 children of school age in the area but as most of them were the children of the men building the railway it seems odd that the department counted them. They would, quite obviously, be moving on within two years at the most.
Nonetheless, they were obviously included in the count, or perhaps there was someone in there clever enough to know that a village would grow here. If there was such a person, they have long since left.
Richard Skewes was the first head teacher and he opened the school in July 1877, only 18 months after Callinan’s letter. Surprisingly, there were 80 pupils enrolled at the start. The site, still in use, was a blessing as it stayed dry in even the wettest winter and the Gippsland Road ran past the door.
The site was soon too small, as so many were. In 1918 four blocks of land at the back of the school were bought from J.J. Winters to provide some play area. I gather this gave the school a frontage onto Grant St on its north side, and school road ran up the east side.
It seems likely that school was first named Drouin Junction, and that would have been because the road south from Drouin met the new alignment of the Gippsland Road and the road north to Buln Buln and the Old Sale Rd. It was a roads junction, not a railway junction.
On February 18, 1936 the school was completely destroyed by fire but it was rebuilt almost immediately. The new building is still the public façade of the school and in its slightly post-art-deco styling it does have important heritage value.
When the school was rebuilt in 1933 it had four classrooms and it managed until 1949, when a hut from the Darley army camp was brought in and rebuilt, 0ccupied in October. The ‘luxury’ of electricity came in May 1950, when the summer heat was gone. It must have been a lovely experience sitting, or standing, in a meta hut through the heat of February without even a fan. Some say this was a Nissan hut – those huts like a horizontal half-tube – but I’m unable to spot any of those in the photos of Darley camp. In any case, it was erected in 1949 and its sixty feet by eighteen space was divided into two classrooms.
The Darley camp was 8km out of Bacchus Marsh, one of three major training camps in Victoria. It was started in July 1940 and in September, with the place far from completed, the first troops arrived. Eventually there was 4000 soldiers on site, including many Americans. In true army fashion it was opened after heavy rain had made it a quagmire and the first troops to arrive were put to work as builder’s labourers to complete the camp.
In 1955 mains water came to the school but the highlight would have been the provision of multiple septic tanks at the end of 1961. This was replaced by town sewerage in June 1972.
The school grew again in 1956 when the post-war baby boom meant doubling the size with six new rooms. In 1965 another one was added, with another in 1967. The library was added in 1968.
In 1952 the enrolment had been 360, with 456 in 1960 and about 500 in 1970. These figures are from Visions and Realisation, the Education Department’s official history prepared for the 1972 centenary of state education in Victoria.
Surprisingly, this potted history of SS 1924 Drouin (Drouin Junction) makes no mention of the Central Classes created as a forerunner to the building and opening of Drouin High School. In 1953 it was announced that Central Classes (Years 7 and 8) would be created at Drouin State School and the official announcement said this was to relieve crowding at Warragul High School and to save Drouin children from the bus trip to Warragul. There was no mention of those west of Drouin, either, or out on the swamp, who would have had to travel even further.
Warragul Tech was still some way into the future and the announcement made no mention of Drouin High School though first seventeen acres of the High School site were bought in that same year.
In his history of the Buln Buln Shire Butler tells of six new ‘Bristol’ classrooms being sent to Drouin and erected for the new central classes. These buildings that came as aluminium kits, made in England and assembled on-site.
The planning for them was timely. They were ordered in 1950, in Australia in 1952 and assembled on the Drouin site by June 1952. They were ready for classes at the start of 1953 and the primary school was allowed to occupy two of them to relieve its own crowding. The situation was difficult. With classes being held in the scout hall, the mechanics institute and the Methodist hall. There was a walkway from Grant St to the scout hall on Victoria St and it was not far.
Some reports say that children went to the high school site in 1956 but my recollection is that it was opened at the start of 1957. That was a while back, of course, and my memory might have lost a sharp edge or two. If so, I’m not admitting it.