Waurn Ponds National School

The first schools in Victoria were denominational schools run by the different churches. They were usually situated in the more populated areas. In the country where there were not enough children of one denomination to make a school viable, national schools were established. This account concerns the national school established at Waurn Ponds after the denominational schools lapsed from lack of support.

Early schools

According to Hugh Culling Eardley Childers, Inspector of Schools, settlers at Waurn Ponds¹ had the opportunity to have their children educated “as early as 1849”. There was a Church of England school near David Pettavel’s “Millambete” vineyard—the Venerable Archdeacon of Geelong, Dr. Macartney, preached a sermon there in May, 1849, after which there was a collection to assist in defraying the cost of the schoolhouse. About the same time there was a Wesleyan school run by Mrs. Burrows, possibly in the room of a private home. There was also a Catholic school, probably attended by French-speaking Swiss; early teachers were James Dillon and William Kinane.

A considerable problem

It is doubtful whether these schools lasted long and probably Waurn Ponds was without a school until February, 1859, when James Gleeson was appointed by the Commissioners of National Education, Melbourne, to establish a school. Today’s teachers who think they have problems should consider the difficulties Gleeson faced.

When he arrived the only convenient, empty edifice he could procure as a schoolhouse was a dilapidated, one-roomed, wattle and daub hut, which had previously housed some indigent person. Judging from its position, it may have been the out-station (shepherd’s hut) of Anderson’s squatting lease.

Little local support

The Commissioners of National Education gave no aid towards the school building but expected the local community to provide it. Gleeson complained that the neighbours, whom he considered could have afforded to help, would not trouble to do so. So he found, to his dismay, that he would have to bear the whole expense of repairing the building “so that it might outlast the Winter”. He also desired to add an extra room as his own residence.

Need for a reserve

He was reluctant to undertake this project because the building was situated on a parcel of land then designated as a reserve—82 acres and 3 perches in Section 9 on land than was needed for a schoolyard so he importuned the Commissioner of Lands and Survey to set aside a definite area—he suggested one acre—for the school, lest the whole section might be granted for some other purpose. In that case the improvements he made to the hovel, for which he had to pay, would be lost to him. Who can blame Gleeson for being concerned?

A site reserved

His application was supported by the National Education Office and the land was officially reserved on May 8, 1860, by the Governor-in-Council. Two roods (half an acre) was reserved, bounded on the west by Loutit Bay (now Anglesea) Road, and on the north by Boundary Road (now Hams Road as Boundary Road has been deflected to run parallel to the Colac railway line). An extra acre and a half was set aside for a further extension “if deemed desirable”. The site was quite some distance from the main part of Waurn Ponds.

Closure of the School

Unfortunately, in the 1860s, there was no compulsion for citizens to send their children to school. They were shamelessly kept at home to help at busy times on country properties—or in the towns, for that matter, in times of family stress. School attendances declined at the Waurn Ponds National School until the school eventually closed on December 31, 1866. By that time it would have become a Common School under the new system introduced in 1862. John Gleeson demolished the lean-to on the back of the mean, mud hut which had been his home for seven years. He subsequently recycled the building materials into the kitchen of his house in Ghazeepore Road.

In 1920 the Education Department advised the Lands Department that it still required the land for school purposes, though there had not been a school there for 50 years. The Lands Department then granted an annual grazing licence for the block to Joseph Baum of Waurn Ponds. He purchased the land in 1939 after the school reserve had been revoked on October 6, 1937.

A local tradition

A local tradition that the National School was erected to educate Aboriginal children has been discounted by the research of Mr. Donald Caldere². The belief may have been triggered by the fact that the Duneed Aboriginal Reserve of one acre was set aside in 1861. The site was less than a kilometre away on the Ghazeepore Road, just south of Andersons Creek. It is a fact that there were no children among the sad six males and one female who still survived at that date. Nor were there any children in a photograph of the Aborigines who camped at the Doolie Beal Reserve, in Stewarts Road, Mount Duneed, at an earlier date (about 1856). There can be little doubt that the school was a conventional Government school intended for the white children of the district.

A new school

Waurn Ponds was without a school of any kind until 1870 when a new vested school, with a teacher’s residence attached and built of the local freestone, was erected “near the old Victoria Hotel” on the Colac Road. The total cost was £350, of which the Government contributed £175, leaving the other half to be contributed locally. Mr. Lewis Walter, formerly of Leigh Creek School, Bannockburn, was appointed to teach the 41 prospective pupils.

This school was replaced by a new building in 1922 but today Waurn Ponds is once again without a school. It closed in 1979 from lack of pupils.

Footnotes

¹ The earliest settlers called the creek, which flows from near Mount Moriac to the Barwon River, the Waurn Chain of Ponds. Wurrn means a cluster of Aboriginal shelter-humpies; traces of Aboriginal occupation are to be found along the stream. The Aborigines are said to have called the area Euroke because of the sandstone through which the creek has carved its course. They used the sandstone for grinding the Ceres greenstone, epidiorite, into hatchet blades.

² The writer owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Caldere, project officer, Aboriginal Lands Group, for the trouble he took in answering a query on this particular point.