Caulfield South State School
Caulfield South Primary School
I became a pupil, briefly, at Caulfield South Primary School when I was five but then spent some six months at home with a variety of illnesses including mumps, measles, chicken pox and rheumatic fever. I returned to the school and remained there until grade six when, at just 12 years of age, I was turfed out and went to Brighton High School which had only been open for a year or so. I remember the final three teachers very well, Mr Mitchell, Mr Taylor and Mr Feehan.
I used to walk along back streets to get to primary school and still, fifty years later, have dreams about those streets. At that time, in the 50's the school was backed by a huge open area.
In the 1880’s a private railway line, called the Rosstown Railway, had run down that huge vacant allotment from Rosstown, now called Carnegie, where there was a sugar beet processing mill, to Elsternwick. The mill never produced sugar and the railway, apart from a run by a ballast rain in 1891, was never used. The railway was eventually removed around 1916 and what was left behind was an open area that acted as a playground for countless children. At school we were all told the story of the Rosstown Railway and I was convinced sugar beet was simply beetroot by another name.
Although we did not have a uniform at Caulfield South Primary School in those days, (they do now), we did have school colours which were blue and gold and our motto was Play the Game. During my early years at school I understood this to refer to school breaks when we played all sorts of games. It was only in my later years that I truly understood the meaning. Today the motto has changed to Children come first at Caulfield South, but it doesn’t have the same ring as our motto did.
The school was a double storey brick building, as above, which to a small child was most impressive. Even now, as an adult, the building leaves most schools for dead. I remember the huge stone steps between the first and the second storeys and continue to have dreams about them although often the stairs flatten out and it is impossible to get to the higher floor.
Today the school has moved into the technological age and has a website on the Victorian government education portal. There is onsite child care and all classrooms have networked computers. A new hall and staff rooms have been built, in my day we didn't have a hall but met on the bitumen area. There are also relocatable classrooms and plans for a new building with six classroms.
We had an annual school fair which consisted of a few stalls set up on the large bitumen area. I remember the awful toffees in pattycake papers, and the fact we could take decorated bikes and go in costume. We also had an end of the year function held in the Caulfield Town Hall. As far as I remember I only went to the one in sixth grade, which would have been in 1956. I danced a solo, Sugar Plum Fairy, and then took part in the grade six performance/dance of "Oh how we danced on the night we were wed!" Not the most appropriate music for twelve year olds.