High school and social change

Yes, the name has changed, as have so many other things.
Let me start with the school song of Drouin High School. "Set on a hill on the Main South Road, the High School of our youthful days…Carry on, Drouin. Drouin, carry on ", etc. I wonder if they ever sing it today and, if not, then how many people remember it.
My mother wrote that song, trying out various versions as she milked cows on the Longwarry farm. During the day she was a teacher at Drouin High, and later at Neerim South High School. She also provided the motto Finem Respice, or "look to the end'.
In 1953 a long fight for secondary school education in Drouin came a step closer to victory when it was announced that central classes – years seven and eight – would be added to what was then Drouin State School. At the same time 17 acres (6.87 hectares were bought for a new secondary school.) Ten acres, or just over 4ha, were added in 1956.
In the short term, it was decided that Drouin State School would have what were called central classes, essentially forms one and two as we called them then, or years seven and eight as we call them now.
Drouin State School became Drouin Central School. Six new classrooms were added to the Drouin School but two of them were immediately taken up by primary-school classes.
This was partly a response to the Drouin district's post-war baby-boom growth and partly a response to school crowding at Warragul High School. Warragul Tech was still to come.
Busses brought children from as far afield as Iona and Nar Nar Goon, Modella and Neerim. A school train ran between Pakenham and Warragul, each way each school day, perhaps the only such train in Victoria.
The six classrooms were not enough. The Methodist Hall, the Mechanics Institute (which has had many iterations) and the Scout Hall were pressed into use. The urgent need for a whole new school was obvious.
In 1956 building was begun and at the start of 1957 Drouin High School was in operation on its own site. Technically, there were 19 classrooms, but they were not all complete. I can remember that in the 'laboratory' between the two science rooms, teachers walked on the bearers because the floor was not yet laid.
There were only 232 children to come over from the "central classes" to the new site, but the 1957 enrolment was 344. The form one cohort was therefore about 112, and a slightly bemused lot they were. I was one of them and I remember it well.
In our new uniforms we went to the bus stops or the railway stations without any great guidance from teachers or parents, there met a whole bunch of strangers among the classmates we knew. The school train was met at the Drouin Station by a convoy of the old grey-with-a-maroon-stripe Warragul Bus Lines busses. There were teachers there to direct us and the same teachers rode the busses with us to the new school on the South Rd.
We were told which groups we were in (having a name that started with a W I was inevitably put in Form 1D) and to which rooms to report, and the school year was under way. There were no visits the year before, no induction, just a 'get on with it', and it worked. The orientations of today must serve a purpose but I'm not sure they are really necessary, especially now that we seem to be able to teach resilience as part of the curriculum. Back in 1957 life itself did that.
My wife was picked up at the front gate of the farm on Murray Rd, Iona, by a bus which went out through Modella and up to Drouin South. It picked up some primary school children for Drouin South as well. There were no bus-stops as such. The bus stopped wherever there was a child to be collected and the whole journey took a bit over forty minutes.
The enrolment at Drouin High School grew steadily for a time, as did the row of busses in the semi—circular driveway every morning and every afternoon. The teachers parked on the other side of the road. In 1959 the enrolment reached 502, more than twice the 232 that came over from the central classes, but then the growth tapered off. In 1969, ten years later the net enrolment was still only 642, an average growth of only fourteen students a year.
More classrooms were added in 1959 and 1960. In 1961 the High School was able to open its own swimming pool, something no other school in Gippsland could boast. This was the result of a huge and concerted local effort, and that same effort has been visible in the many developments since.
Barnes, Storey, Wilson, Oliver, Whittaker, Cawthorne, White, Huddleston, Haysom, Dixon, Williams, Finch, Fricke, Phillips, Stoll, Wells (Bloomer), Adair, Russell, Jacobs, Harmer, De Vries, Revell, Baxter, Haysom, Tholen, Fraser, Keating, Barton, Weatherill, McLachlan, Webber and James – the memories of all those teachers from the early days come flooding back, some as vague outlines and some quite sharp and detailed. They were not all on the original staff but they were all there between 1957 and 1963, and they helped shape the lives of hundreds of students.
Many of you will remember others, and some of you will remember the same teachers but in different ways. They were a mixed bunch at a time when it was not easy to find enough teachers for a country high school but they all played a part in widening our lives.
The late 50s and early 60s saw a huge social change and the High School was a major player in that.
Where the girls had been expected to get a job in the town or, if they went on to forms five or six, to become nurses or teachers, by the mid-60s Drouin and Warragul High Schools were seeing their students head off into a much wider world. Going on to University was no longer a rare outcome. Boys had the same wider options and many families struggled with the relatively new idea of so many of the young people moving away.
We think of secondary schooling now in somewhat different ways, as we should. Nonetheless, we should be aware of the huge growth of those naïve country kids of the late 1950s and the huge role played in that by Drouin High School. It might properly be called a college now, but it was a good school.