A Trip Around Yallourn High
David Drane YHS 1960 wrote: I was a student at Yallourn High from 1960 -1964 and have many good memories of the time that I spent in Forms 1C, 2A, 3A, 4A and 5B. I’ll try and take us on a trip around the Classrooms that we spent so much time in. I’m sure that others among us will have similar memories of time spent in these “halls of learning”.
Room 1 was the art room. Located in the boys quadrangle between the Cookery Centre (Home Economics these days?), and the Science Room 2. For a number of years, I had a locker that was just outside this centre of drawing and painting and could never master the “art” of producing anything that Miss Mobsby (?) could consider markable. Room 3 was the Library just near the Staff Room. Room 4 was the typing room, a girls’ only enclave located in the main quadrangle. Room 5 was another science room while Room 6 was where we learned to hone our music skills. Room 7 doesn’t have any significance for me except that it was in the corner of the quadrangle near the Cloakroom and the walkway through to the office from where Mr Ellis and Mr Coulson ruled. Rooms 8 & 9 were those two rooms with the dividing wall mentioned in Steve Gray’s article in the last newsletter. They were near Mr Worrall’s Book store, and were the rooms in which Mr Dooley taught us French and Mr Brown for Geography. Rooms 10 & 11 were the two “portables” near the bike racks which completed the four sides of the main quadrangle. Room 10 has special memories as it was the Form Room for Form 1C - so different from our lives at St Therese’s Primary School. Room 11 next door housed our friends in 1D. Room 12 was a tiny classroom used by Form 6’s. 14,15,16 & 17 were rooms out in the yard and who can forget that old building on the far corner of the School grounds on the corner of Latrobe Avenue and Strzelecki Road that housed Rooms 18 & 19. It was in these rooms that either between periods while waiting for the teacher take the long walk and arrive, or when we had our free periods in Form 5, we first discussed new world breaking groups such as the Beatles and raved about other influences that were to go on and change our lives. I don’t remember there ever being a Room 13, but I seem to recall that Room 20 was the Common Room for the Forms 6s and the Prefects.
At the end of Form 5, it was time to leave and go out into the wide world and earn a living. But I took many memories with me that still remain with me today. The names which appear in every edition of this newsletter complement these memories and go towards my recollections of happy times spent at YHS.