The Drummond family came to Yallourn at the end of 1923 and the five girls started the 1924 school year in a little weatherboard cottage shell at No 4 Hillside, boosting the numbers considerably. The cottage served as a school during the day, a meeting room at night and the three churches took it in turn to hold Services there on Sundays.
There were about 20 children at the school when we arrived, with Mr Tyson as teacher and a young girl assistant, Miss King. Soon, Mr Bill Eddy took over from Mr Tyson and Miss Alice Firmin (daughter of a well-known Yinnar pioneering family) joined the staff. It was a happy school. I remember a wonderful Operetta produced by Mr Eddy - "The Old Woman in the Shoe" (Dot Drummond) with all the nursery rhyme characters. There were concerts, fancy dress parties, folk dancing, sport contests with Moe, Morwell Bridge and the Brown Coal Mine. I don't recall much school work. Miss Linda Wigg (who became Mrs Jack Alston) and Miss Bavinton, Infant Mistress, had joined the staff as school numbers grew with construction work at the new Power Station, Open Cut and Briquette Factory.
Tents strectched all the way from the town to the Works area, there were the Eastern Camp, the West Camp, South Camp and Staff Mess for single men, while houses in the town were being built and filling rapidly. Soon the school outgrew No 4 Hillside and a second cottage behind it and facing Latrobe Avenue was brought into service. I remember one day a bush fire came over the hill and we watched in fear as the flames licked to the school fence.
By the end of 1926, a new brick school (the nucleus of Yallourn High School) was built on a 5-acre block extending from Maryvale Road to Latrobe Avenue and facing Hillside. What excitement, with the opening of that State School No 4085!
The year we got our "Quali" - sixth grade Qualifying Certificate, secondary classes were developed, Yallourn Central School wtih Forms F and E; and then as we passed "Merit Certificate", we blossomed into the Yallourn Higher Elementary School up to Intermediate standard. The State School by then was overflowing and so we were moved into two more weatherboard cottage shells in Narracan Avenue. The Technical School occupied one on the corner of Reservoir Road and the Higher Elementary School the next along Narracan Avenue. There we studied (and played) until 1930, when a new Junior School was built in Fairfield Avenue, and we could move back into the extended brick school with the first Principal, Mr Charles Adkins, assistant Miss Marie Rigby, Miss Marge Cunningham and Mrs Edith Sagar, whom we all loved. The school even then was bursting at the seams and our "C" Form was crammed into the Teachers' Staff Room, with a small table at the sid for three students going on to Leaving Certificate by correspondence. These were Heather McCrae, Kitty Drummond and Bill Graham, pioneers of the Yallourn High School that was to become one of the leading educational establishments in the State.
"From tiny acorns, mighty oak trees grow...."
The two cottages in Narracan Avenue and the one in Latrobe Avenue were restored as rental houses, while No 4 Hillside had an interesting career, RSL Clubrooms, Library, Youth Club, Air Training Cadet Centre during the War years and later moved to the Latrobe/Strzelecki Road corner of the High School grounds to take some of the overflow.
Yallourn Primary School 1920-1930 YPS
