Mt Waverley Primary School

Formal education started for me at Mt. Waverley primary school in 1957. That class was known to all as 'Bubs', but I suppose it was Preps officially, as it was when my kids went to school. The teacher was Mrs Longmuir if my memory serves me, a pleasant lady, dark hair. I recall very little of the year except that first day mum walked with me to school and after that I was supposed to go with Jod who had started two years earlier, but I think I went by myself after the first day, Jod didn't want to know his little brother.

I had been to kindergarten the previous year and remember little of this except I didn't like it. The kinder was new if I'm right, a cream brick building at the 11 oclock point of the oval in Sherwood drive. I don't think there was a kinda prior. Jod didn't go to one. A walkway connected Sherwood Drive and Virginia St past the kinda and the progress hall on the Stephenson's Rd corner with Virginia St (a timber building that was used for community meetings and children's club things. I went to a gymnast club thing there a couple of times, later it was used to store mountains of newspapers for a service club before it caught fire and burned down one day) I was a quiet kid and wasn't really into the stuff they wanted me to do at kinda (drawing and cutting paper up and mucking about with clag?}. This is vague recollection, but my strongest memory of kinder is they had a pet frog in an old wash trough in the yard and we were asked to catch flies and bring them as food for the frog. Mum found this amusing but I seriously spent a lot of time one weekend trying to catch flies. When I turned up to kinder with some in a jar, the only kid that did, it created laughter for the ladies at kinder. Not understanding, I was annoyed.

My clearest recall of Bubs was sitting on the floor, with Mrs Longmuir asking questions and putting up numbers and things like letters and words on the blackboard. I always had my hand up to answer the questions when often no others did. This seemed to irritate Mrs Longmuir, she said seeing I was so good with the answers I could go outside and play and sent me out. I didn't realize this was some sort of reward (if it was) and when I got outside I didn't know what to do by myself and just sat miserable on the steps of the class rooms. From memory these were temporary classrooms, three in a row, Bubs first one, then grade one, then grade 2. I wasn't so quick to show I knew all the answers after this.

Grade one the teacher was Mrs Bennett, a middle aged well dressed woman with blue rinse hair and often puffing on a fag in class. She was agreeable and friendly but had a stern side. My only memory of an incident in her class is that she took exception to me twiddling my finger through my hair at the front, She warned me that if I kept doing it she'd put a bobby pin in my hair to hold it down. It was an unconscious habit I couldn't control so she pinned my hair which caused much amusement to the boys as bobby pins were a girl thing. I copped a bit of flack at lunchtime. Grade 2 we had Mrs Nicholson, a large woman with grey hair who had a bad temper and she'd lose it if a kid annoyed her and thump the daylights out of their back with a brutal hand. At the end of grade 2 I got an award from the Education Dept or someone for 5 pounds for being equal top of the class with Howard Partridge.

Memory gets a bit better come 1960, Grade 3. My teacher was a lovely young lady Mrs Lambert. I think her first name was Diane but I may be wrong. She was tall with dark hair and very pretty. I already knew her. The previous year she was a grade 4 teacher and had Jod in her class. Now Jod was always a hopeless student, could grasp nothing, and was defiant to boot. Mrs Lambert tried her utmost to help him. She contacted our parents and offered to tutor Jod at her house. Mum said Ok she would come home from work and take Jod to Mrs Lambert's house but there was a problem as there were two younger ones. Mrs Lambert said bring them too she will give them something to do. So Jod, and sometimes Meredith and me, were dropped at Mrs Lambert's house in Blackburn Rd while she tried her best with Jod. The work she gave me was dead easy so when I had her as a teacher in grade 3 she knew I was well up to speed. Mrs L's husband was a policeman and he came home a couple of times while the tutoring was on and he was a nice man. I'm not sure really if this was after school or on weekends or school holidays, They didn't have kids, being a young couple getting established. I would love to contact them now, I did try to track Mrs L once but no luck. They may well have passed on anyway as I'm now 67 so they would be in their mid/late 80's.

By 1960 the school had grown. I think there were two grade 3's, both large classes. Mt. Waverley was a boom suburb with all the baby boomer generation needing schooling. In the 60's I think it became the largest primary school in the state for enrollment. Mt Waverley was changed from semi rural to totally urban in a short tome. Yet next door to the school we still had a market garden that used draft horses. We had to separate our rubbish from our lunch into food scraps or other as the food scraps went to the pigs the market gardener kept. Outside the grade three four classes some trees for shade with wooden seats beneath and a monkey bar, and a row of large pine trees stretching up to the northern boundary. Under these trees was a toilet block, very old and inadequate, no sewage, pans emptied by night cart, and a bit further up a shelter shed and at the end a maypole and maybe some other play equipment. I may be wrong with some of this detail as we are talking about 60 years ago, so if other ex students stumble on this blog post I apologize for errors. On one side of the pine trees was a sort of fine yellow gravel that extended to Park Lane, on which formal and non formal running races were held and the girls played softball. On the other side of the pine trees was an oval or more a level paddock (across to Marriot's farm where the draft horses often grazed), where boys kicked the footy in recess and lunchtime. There were cricket nets and concrete pitches there, maybe only in the last few years I was there. In front of the buildings on the east side were netball courts on Park Lane boundary. Assembly was held here. (Once a week?) We'd line up in our grades to the flag and the God Save the Queen then march in single file to our classrooms to Colonel Bogey music or some such.  I think maybe some parking for teachers cars too was on that boundary. I have enjoyed reminiscing about this as it has made me remember many pupils male and female that I haven't thought of in many years, too numerous to list.

In grade 3 I had my first love affair, with Janyne Wilcox. Her friend was Marilyn Ryan. My friend Bill Genat was in love with Marilyn.They both lived in East Oakleigh and I think just came to the school in that year. There was a shortage of schools for the burgeoning population which is why Mt Waverley had such a large enrolment. These girls came by bus I think with others of course. The love affair lasted a couple of years. I sometimes rode my bike to Janyne's house after school. I was in the same grade four class as Janyne with Mr Laub. We had graduated to the old original school building now and there were more than 60 kids in the class. No heating except for an open fire in extremely cold weather and it was the era of inkwells and nib pens still. Mr Laub was a good teacher, a small man, quietly spoken and well liked.

This post is going too long and will not be of much interest to people other than those from Mt. Waverley so I'll post this and finish my primary school story another time.