Lysterfield Primary School – the early history

The new Lysterfield Primary School will be constructed this year on the Lakesfield Estate and will be ready for the commencement of the 1997 school year. However, it will not be the school’s first year of operation. In fact, 1997 will mark the 120 th anniversary of this great little school thus making it by far the oldest institution in the district. (The next oldest is the Rowville Fire Brigade which was founded in 1942.)

The Directorate of School Education has decided that the present site in Wellington Road will be sold by public tender that closes on 27 March, despite the fact that the school will operate until December. Why the haste? After all, there are many unsold schools throughout the state that have been unused for two years or more. The Rowville-Lysterfield community needs time to consider the future of the Wellington Road site and the 76 year old building. It is a priceless part of the heritage of every person who has lived in Lysterfield. I hope that this brief history of the early years of the school will help you appreciate that fact.

Agitation in the 1870s for a School

Following the passing of the Public Education Act by the Victorian Parliament in 1872 that made education “free, secular and compulsory”, the settlers in the area now known as Lysterfield began calling for a school to be established. The District Inspector of Schools recommended a site north of Narre Warren Road (now Wellington Road) on Charles Head’s land. At the time the property was subject to litigation and so the most progressive of the district’s landowners, William Saurin Lyster, donated two acres on the south side of the road in 1874. The two acres were part of a 293 acre property that Lyster had purchased in 1870 for one pound per acre.

Three years later in 1877 School No. 1866 opened there with Mr Edward Pitfield as the first schoolmaster. The school was named Narre Warren North State School.

In 1879 a public meeting was called at which the residents decided that the school’s name be changed in honour of William Lyster. The name gradually came to be used for the whole district including most of the area of present-day Rowville.

William Saurin Lyster

Like many of the landowners in the area at that time, Lyster was a well educated and cultured person. He was born in Dublin into a well-to-do family and his unusual middle name came from a relative, Hon. William Saurin, who was Attorney General for Ireland.

Lyster first arrived in Australia as a lad of 15 and later in life conceived the ambition to establish an opera company. He left Australia to travel the world gathering singers and his dream was realised when his company presented their first season of opera in Melbourne in 1869. Prior to this in the early 1860s, Lyster first discovered and fell in love with the beautiful valley of the Monbulk Creek that runs to the east of the present Lysterfield Road.

In 1867 he decided to make his home there and took up 400 acres that ran back from the creek to Wellington Road. He called his property “Narree Warran Grange” and with his customary enterprise and energy set about developing a farming estate that would be a model for others to emulate. He employed aborigines to drain the river flats and to realign the creek bed and so brought the previous swampy land into production. He developed a stud of pure-bred shorthorn cattle whose milk was converted to excellent cheese.

He had the original hut enlarged to a comfortable homestead adding a music room for his many theatrical visitors who included Australia’s favourite actress/singer of the time, Nellie Stewart, and Armes Beaumont, a well-known tenor. Tragically Armes was badly injured while out on the estate with a shooting party, losing most of his sight.

The School Closes – For the First Time

Unfortunately, within only a few years of its opening, attendances had declined to such an extent that in 1884 the school was temporarily closed.

Eventually the school was re-opened but on a part-time basis and the new teacher, Edward Warriner, was instructed to teach at two schools on alternate days – one day at Lysterfield and the next at Menzies Creek. He did so for the early part of 1887 but most unwillingly as there was a three hour ride on horseback to be made between the two schools. Later in the year, however, he was permitted to teach full-time at Lysterfield.

After only a few years, numbers once more dropped and in 1893 the school was closed for the second time with the remaining pupils having to transfer to Mulgrave, Scoresby and Ferntree Gully.

Some years later Mr Warriner acquired the disused school building and according to old Lysterfield identity Fred Williams, had it removed and converted to a residence on his (Mr Warriner’s) property in Kelletts Road. In 1949 Mr Williams wrote: “Nothing remains on the old site but pine trees and an underground well. It was a favourite place for campers and shooters”.

Another Building on a Different Site

Lysterfield continued without a school until 1907 when Robert Elsdon whose father had bought the Lyster property surrounding the school successfully petitioned to have the school re-opened but at a more central site on “Hynam Park”, a property west of the present Major Crescent. One of the pupils at that time, Nellie Gill, remembered the school as a one-room, weatherboard building. The teacher was Miss Hales and the school was known as Lysterfield State School No. 3573. Nellie recalled that apart from herself, her sister Molly and brother Reg, some of the other children were Daisy and Hugh Clyne, Daisy Roberts and her brother and the three Sealy children with the unusual Christian names of Vosper, Honor and Dell. Mr Sealy was the owner of “Hynam Park”.

Sadly, in 1912, the school burned down so once again Lysterfield children had to find places in other schools.

Back to the Old Site in a New Building

Mr and Mrs Josiah Hobbs arrived in Lysterfield in 1917 with their young family and Mrs Hobbs petitioned for the school to be re-established – yet again.

In 1918 classes started in a small Church of England building in Wellington Road near the corner of Powell Road, with Robert Scanlan as Head Teacher. In 1920 the pupils moved up the hill into a brand new building on the original two acre site donated by William Lyster.

Eve Greenland who was a pupil then can still recall her feelings on that day: “We thought it was paradise”.

Mr Scanlan was a much loved teacher who remained at the school for ten years. In 1928, following the formation of the Lysterfield Progress Association, the school became the venue for fund-raising activities for the proposed Lysterfield Hall. Concerts put on by the pupils made a significant contribution to the 700 pounds raised by the community to buy materials with which to build the hall.

From its earliest days the school was the centre of the community, a place for meetings, entertainments and Church services. The first mail to and from the district was dropped at the school where the Head Teacher, Edward Pitfield, gave the inward mail to the children to take home. One of the pupils became a mail contractor at the age of 12. He was George Breen and he attended morning classes at Lysterfield then carried the mail bag to Ferntree Gully State School in time for the collection by the coach driver who took it to Oakleigh. After that George had his afternoon lessons at Ferntree Gully. He was paid six shillings a week.

As you can see, Lysterfield Primary School has had its ups and downs over 120 years but its future seems assured with its relocation to an area where the population will grow considerably over the next decade.

It is hoped that the traditions of the school will not be lost and, equally important, that the 76 year old school building on its Wellington Road site (that must surely have established a warm place in the hearts and memories of hundreds of pupils, parents and teachers over the years) will be retained as public property for the benefit of the community.

Bryan Power