The Gabba...
the home of my heroes, the Queensland Sheffield Shield team, and occasionally the home of my super-heroes - the Australian cricket team.
The kids at this school could walk into the Gabba after school and see three hours play. Plenty of time to see a Slammin' Sam Trimble century or a Peter Allen swing bowling display. Or, if the Gods were generous, a visiting state side, having been put in on a Gabba green-top in the sweltering Brisbane heat, struggling to reach a satisfactory score before the obligatory afternoon thunderstorm. To make matters worse, I don't think those kids had to pay! Meanwhile, I would have to race home on my bicycle to turn on the wireless (that means radio!) and listen to Clive Harburg or Alan McGilvray describe the action. At least I could go to the Gabba on the weekend to soak up the action, and I did that many, many times.
The East Brisbane State School was built in 1899 for £1800. There must have been a degree of embarrassment when the school opened though - the state government had estimated that it would need to accommodate 350 students, but on opening day in July 1899 there were more than 800 pupils; by the end of that year the number was in excess of 1,000!
It was clear that extra room was required, and a further £2,323 was spent over the next two years to add more classroom space as well as the bell tower visible in the photographs. The bell tower contains the bell from the SS Melbourne, donated to the school by the shipping company AUSN in 1910.
The school continued to grow in the early twentieth century, with an infants' wing being added in 1910-11 and further classrooms constructed at the end of the 1930s.
The suburb surrounding the school has changed over the ensuing decades, and so has the school. The school's web site says that the current enrolment is about 240 students from 35 different cultural backgrounds.
Click here for a Google Map.
tff
Although the front of the school is covered in trees, the main building looks terrific. That suggests it was either designed nicely back in 1899 or it has been well renovated recently. Yet the number of students has gone down to a quarter of its peak. Have young families moved into other suburbs?
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you are saying about childhood passions! When my children were young, we lived half a k from the StKilda football ground. Every home game they could walk to the ground and get in for free, as long as they waited until half time.
I was surprised at that number too.
ReplyDeleteThe houses in this area are small. The original subdivision had allotments as small as 12 perches.
East Brisbane was always known as a working class and light industrial area, but like most near-city suburbs, it's gradually being gentrified. I guess that means DINKs.
Interesting story--thank you!
ReplyDeleteLife is just not fair, is it? I live near the Gabba, but would much rather live in Teneriffe--my favourite suburb!
Regards,
Veronika
My two Sons both went to East Brisbane, when my eldest son started back in 1997, they had bought in a principle for the year, who was known for coming to schools to help them transition. That is close them down. Back them the student numbers were about 160 if I remember correctly and expected to fall. Luckily the parents put a good fight and the school was saved as a going concern. Of course every year after 1998 the numbers going to the school ticked up as young families started to move into the area for its closeness to the city and charm of the concentrated numbers of Queenslanders in such a confined space around Vulture st,Stanley st and Wynnum Rd in the suburb of East Brisbane. Exactly the opposite of what the various state government bureaucrats argued would happen at the many meetings held through the year.
ReplyDeleteOn things to be jealous of, each year's sports day was conducted on the Gabba. The year Steve Harminson bowled his famous first ball to second slip. My husband, our two sons and I were in the crowd, but more than watching the cricket my second son,who was by then in grade four or five had the most fun at little lunch and big lunch, shouting down to his mates who were stuck at school. Finally the belfry was restored when our kids were there and each student at the school got a chance to ring the bell once all the work was done.
@Veronica: the grass is always greener, I guess! :-)
ReplyDelete@Katherine: thanks for those comments - great to hear from someone who has personal experience of the suburb.
Unlike you, I did attend EBSS, but a bit earlier than you could have, 1948-56. The BCG was wasted on me, as I had no interest in cricket then, and what interest I later had dissipated after the tied test against the West Indies, and when Queensland finally won the Sheffield Shield (by which time I was living in Canberra). Others in the school were otherwise inclined; teachers could and did see into the cricket grounds from the back verandah of the upper storey, and some boys entered the grounds during the lunch hour through an opening in the corrugated iron fence and emerged via the gate with a pass-out that enabled them to return 'legitimately', after school, through one of the public entrances.
ReplyDeleteIn my last year there, I got to be one of the bell monitors, climbing half-way up the helical ladder in the bell tower, at half-hourly intervals to pull the bell rope to toll a change of period or the end or the beginning of the school day. There was a room at the top, accessible only via that ladder, unless you were a pigeon. I never saw it used for anything, perhaps for obvious reasons.
Mervyn Doobov, Jerusalem, Israel
Regarding the fall in students, I would guess that as well as the gentrification of the neighbourhood, acceptable class numbers would have fallen dramatically since Victorian times. They would have crammed 60 or 70 to a class back then, easy. With no air conditioning or fans... and they were the lucky ones!
ReplyDeleteReally interesting post and comments. Love it!
I went there in the 1970s (1971-77), following my brother and sister (1958-1967), my father (1930s) and my grandfather (1901-1908). Now my Japanese-born stepchildren are there, discovering a new language and a new culture.
ReplyDeleteThe school lost 12% of its land area to the cricket ground redevelopment in the late 1990s, and became a specialist school for ESL. I'm told by teacher friends of mine that it is the best primary school -- public or private -- in Queensland for ESL education.
Student numbers there are now capped at 285. The school cannot have any more than that number.
Until the 1990s, the cricket ground was largely off-limits for the school. We would watch through the cyclone-wire fence as the GPS schools held their sporting carnivals on the cricket ground, but we had to march up to Raymond (Pineapple) Park for our sportsdays.
But we were able to go and watch the final session of Sheffield Shield and Test Matches (on Monday afternoons) for free, as the gate between the school and the cricket ground was left open at that time and the ticket booth was unstaffed for the final session.
And the cricket ground's practice nets were next to the school, so we could watch through the fence as the home and visiting players (this was the era of Lillee, Thompson, Viv. Richards, Geoffrey Boycott et. al) perfecting their craft.
Now the school is overshadowed by the tall and bare back wall of the cricket ground's eastern grandstand, and the school's truncated sports field is used as a vomitorium for the cricket and football ground's spectators.
Hi, did anyone go to this school in the 1950's? If so please contact me - I now live in London. Lucia_aroma@hotmail.com I was there around 1952 - 1957 approx. Then many years after as a student of home science (cooking etc., ) went there from Greenslopes State School for our cooking class. I in particular would like to find Maria Christie, whose parents owned the Christies Café. Would love to hear from anyone who was there then.
ReplyDeleteL.Braithwaite