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Neville Smith,
1/39 Noble Str., Clayfield...4011. Q; nevsmith1@optusnet.com.au (07) 3262 1321.
Joseph Axelby, secretary, Bluff Provisional School Committee, which was successful in school approval 1905.
Brooloo School Pupils 1962. Jim Shute was head teacher.
First Europeans, cedar cutters, arrive 1857. Bullock teams and wagons used to stockpile logs for floating to Maryborough. Floating logs travel via creeks and river.
First settlers late-1800s form Bluff Provisional School Committee. Joseph Axelby secretary.
School opens July 15, 1907. Samuel Bridges head teacher.
First train arrives 1915. School name changes to Brooloo.
A man, Bidwell, reports to Imbil land commissioner that he’s found good gold at Breakneck Creek. Find yields little gold.
Grand Hotel built early 1900s as are grocery, butcher and baker shops. A ‘smithy’ begins operation. Work horses and work bullocks in demand. Horse drawn wagons, buggies and sulkies only means of travel. Horses and bullocks beasts if burden.
March 8th 1916, Miss Foley transferred. Tom Bath appointed head teacher. Pupil teacher, Miss Euston, appointed.
Mr. Bath’s reports seven scholarship candidates. Norman Andersen, Eleanor Hawking, Jack O’Leary, Gertrude Smith pass with high credits.
Mr. Bath introduces gold medal for pupils with highest marks. Enid Usher first winner 83.5% from Norman Andersen 82.5%. Mrs. Rosie Doyle continues the tradition when Mr. Bath transferred.
Some children have saddles. Some ride bareback. Others ride with a corn sack thrown over horse. Some horses carry two. Some three.
Pupils drill and march about prior to school ‘going in’. In times before school piano, pupils march in singing tables as they go along.
Jim Shute sets up project clubs with dual benefits. Minutes taken, meeting procedures adhered to. Clubs include Bird and Garden.
Mr. Shute teaches pupils to tell the difference between deadly ‘copperheads’ and ‘taipans’ and ‘red-bellied blacks’, from harmless ‘tree snakes’ and sleepy old ‘carpets’.
Soon after Mr. Shute arrives school pulled down and extended to two classrooms. First assistant, Ada Jackson, who was a pupil in seventh grade when Mr. Shute arrived in 1952.
Country kids are inventive. There are sarsaparilla mines, Burdekin plum hideouts and Queensland nut knuckle dusters, the latter inspired by The Phantom {The Ghost Who Walks}.
Mr. Shute, a very active man, joins in cricket, tennis, rounders (Aussie baseball), vigoro, other sports. Brooloo teams play Imbil, Upper Kandanga, Mothar Mountain, Lower Kenilworth, Carter’s Ridge.
Due to lack of numbers boys play vigoro and girls play cricket. Everybody fields for same reason. Big arguments girls v boys.
Break-up-Arbor Days running, high-jump, broad-jump, ball games. Relays, novelty events -- egg and spoon race, three-legged race, sack race. Most fun is the last event when mums take off good shoes and run against one another.
Kids have one of life’s worst experiences when the school dentist visits. Driven by dentist’s foot on a pedal, drill slowly grinds the offending tooth. Causes immense pain. Gives off pungent smell of burning tooth. When drill hits a nerve pupils almost jump out of chair.
Mischief high on the list for walkers and riders. Finding bird and goanna eggs, throwing stones at fish in Andersen’s Lagoon or at birds, or at those on horseback, or at girls, or just beating each other up with school bags. All in a day’s fun.
Kids sometimes go before the headmaster, who is not only judge and jury, but also hangman. Tom Bath uses cane or belt. Jim Shute uses cane or ruler. Generally, their hearts not in it.
Fancy-dress balls, Christmas trees, Guy Fawkes nights staged for kids. Adults hold hall, school dances to top up coffers. Balls held, socials held to celebrate important occasions.
Jim Shute says of 1952. Brooloo quite different then. Post office, hotel, 29 pupils, railway quarters. Farmers send cream by rail motor to Gympie Butter Factory.
School numbers increase. Jim Shute runs one teacher school of 53 pupils. No aide, no assistant, no wireless, no telephone, no ‘mod cons’.
Jim Shute transferred to head teacher Millaa Millaa. Replaced by Clinton Fisher of Mothar Mountain.
School closes 1970.
Recollections of Brooloo School and district:
Jim Shute, Enid Ross (Bath), Jim Fleming, Lawrie Smith, Damien Axelby, Ray Smith, Margaret Lawler, Muriel Parsons (Thomsen), Ken Smith, Peter Ross, myself, and others, write their recollections of Brooloo District and Brooloo School. Very interesting reading!
Just a few stories touched on in the book.
A first settler Sidney Gardiner Smith.
Pupil of the 1950s, Graeme Usher.
Timber - Brooloo's earliest industry.
Spring blooms and a crooked rain gauge
Neville Smith, 1/39 Noble Str., Clayfield...4011. nevsmith1@optusnet.com.au (07) 3262 132132
