Yallourn – was it part of my imagination or did it really exist?
by Stefan Tomasz YHS 1957
I am always interested to read the reflections of people who either lived in Yallourn or attended Yallourn High School. I wonder if those of my era can relate to my memories?
Today there is scant physical evidence that a thriving town of over what, 4000 people? used to nestle in the Latrobe Valley Sure, bits and pieces of the place – such as the bust of Sir John Monash - can be found around the Valley like relics left on a battlefield, but the town itself, the open cut and the mighty State Electricity Commission (job-for-life) – gone. All that remains as sentinel is the old fire tower at the top of Coach Road Hill. Who would ever have thought this would be the last tangible land mark? When I looked on Google Earth recently, apart from the scar of what was the last of the Open Cut, it was hard to imagine there was such a physical place as “Yallourn”.
Each one of us has our own reality of Yallourn. Much of what I write is personal to my time there – between 1950 and 1964. A great deal of this time I was at school, so my Yallourn, while having a lot in common with other people, may not be so readily recognisable to some. In fact, I am really a ring-in as I actually lived in that free-wheeling suburb of Yallourn – past the rubbish tip, near the swamp and beyond the Prince’s Highway – Herne’s Oak. From where I lived, Yallourn was the houses on Coach Road Hill to the left, the smoke from the Power Station in the middle and the chimney for the Briquette Factory to the right. On a sunny day it was a picture, set against the hills in the middle background and Mount Erica further away. On other days, shrouded in the fogs of May and June and the rain and wind from the West in winter – miserable - is the image that comes to mind. Then there were the hot summer nights with the wind from the East together with the stink of Maryvale and the fine coating of coal dust over everything.
My Yallourn is seen through the prism of school, childhood, teenage years and young adult.
Yallourn State School Number 4085 dominated my life from 1952 until 1956. I always find it easy to remember my school years for in 1951 I was in Grade 1, 1952 in Grade 2 and so on. I find it equally easy to remember where those years were spent – Grade 2 in the Army Huts – freezing cold in winter, saunas in summer. Grade 3 in the Presbyterian Hall (we were the first of the Baby-boomers to come through the system and the crowded under-resourced facilities would follow us all the way through the education system. This was no golden era of education as it might be portrayed today.) Grade 4 in the Bristol Wings – prefabricated and brought especially from England to also freeze us in winter and boil us through acres of glass in summer. Well remembered is the pathetic little pot-belly stoves in the corner, which by midafternoon and glowing red, eventually managed to warm the place us just as we were going home. Grade 5 and 6 – we actually got to be in a regular class room – along with 56 other children.
The school day started with an assembly. In the older primary years this was in the big quadrangle. We all stood in Grade groups, youngest at the front, oldest at the back while our gruff Headmaster, Mr Walton waffled away at us. We chanted the patriot oath, saluted the flag and marched in and out of school to such tunes as Colonel Bogey and Heart of Oak. It was all very strict and martial. In the younger primary years assembly was in the small quadrangle and a quaint old grey-haired woman – Miss Wilson – used to wave a small Australian flag while we all sang “God Save the Queen”.
What I actually learnt at school is a mystery to me. Not much of it stands out. Actual school work was largely boring and repetitious. With classes of 50 or more the concept of individual attention from the teacher (other than being singled out for a misdeed) was unknown. There were lots of “Hands on Heads!”, “Hands in Front!”, rote learning and copying from the blackboard as teachers practised crowd control as much as teaching. The class was so organised, especially in Grades 5 and 6, so the smart kids tended to sit toward the back and the “dumb” (pardon my non-political correct language for “intellectually challenged children”) kids towards the front. Every two weeks or so, intense efforts went into calculating ones current “average” – a single score derived from all the test scores completed in the last period of time.
Depending on one’s average, one was moved backward or forward. The plumb spot was in the back right-hand corner, because the backward and forward shifts were zig-zag with the nominally dumbest kids in the front right seats (under the nose of the teacher) and the smartest kids far away from the teacher as possible – and thereby left alone. Some of my classmates were very smart indeed going on to be scientists, engineers, lawyers, teachers and making money out of real estate. One of them, who always finished his work early, used to spend his spare, bored, minutes reading a dictionary. Needless to say, apart from having gained his PhD and being a highly successful Commonwealth public servant, he is a whiz at cryptic crosswords.
The teachers were another matter - they are well remembered. Miss Collier in Grade 2, loved by us all, Miss Scott of the shapely figure in Grade 3 whose ample breasts I can still remember swaying in front of my nine-year old face, Mr Wilson, dapper little Scotsman who made us do dictation every morning in Grade 4 and in Grade 5 and 6, Mr Bryson – “Sir”, he of the New Guinea campaign, malaria and pipe smoke. If ever there was an individual who was seen as a God by his class, Mr Bryson was it. The greatest of all honours was to be selected by “Sir” in Grade 6 to help look after the school garden on Friday afternoon. Mr. Walton, of course – grumpy and gruff - was the headmaster. He drove green Ford Pilot and whenever you saw his car around town you pretended not to see him. To be ‘sent to the office’ to confront Mr Walton was about as bad as it could get.
The school (apart from the front garden) was not an attractive place to my childhood memory – acres of tar, red bricks and cement and not one blade of grass. As little kids we played “cars” on the wall in the big quadrangle. In summer, cricket was played on the lower playground against the back wall of the toilet. In winter, football was end-to-end in the same place. When it was wet, “British Bulldog” in the large shelter shed. Like many primary school playgrounds, the place was a human jungle – with the biggest and toughest kids holding sway over the smaller and the less tough. It was nothing to bribe big Grade 6 kids with some chips to get one kick of the footy! Teddy Taig and Bruce Webster, where are you now? Lunch time was interesting, with three options available – you could either go home for lunch on the twelve o’clock hooter (few working mothers in those days), take your lunch to school or “go down the street”. I usually went down the street for my pie-and-sauce-on-a-plate or fish and chips from the Yallourn Café. Along with hordes of other kids I lined up while Mr Shaw would scoop up what seemed like tons of chips and delicious fish in batter and put them in bags for us to eat.
After six years at primary school, secondary school loomed for 1957. Boys had a choice – to go to Yallourn Tech to learn a trade or go to High School. The girls had no choice. Late in our last year at primary school those of us deciding to go to High School were sent to do tests to see which Form class we would be placed in. There were three levels – 1A, 1B and 1C. The ones who did best in the tests went into the A class and the rest into B or C. In retrospect it is alarming to think we were put into neat (quite often erroneous) boxes at such a young age – boys, either a trade and destined to work at the Commission, or segregated at secondary school into the academically able and less able. For girls the choices were even more limited. The big thing about High School was you wore a school uniform. This was a real rite of passage. I can remember wearing my school uniform in summer in preparation for the “big” day when we started at High School.
It was at Yallourn High School our world became a bigger place. No longer did I mix with kids who I had been with in the same class from Grade 1 through to Grade 6, but there were “outsiders” from Newborough, Yallourn North and even some as far away as Morwell Bridge and Morwell itself! Not only that, but there were kids from St Theresa’s who, in those days, were as foreign to we State School kids as someone from the moon.
I spent seven years of my teenage life at Yallourn High School, and it is fair to say, that like so many people who belong to YOGA this was a defining era of my life. However, this story is for another time.
….Stefan Tomasz