School set to celebrate history

WITH many of local state schools seeing milestone birthdays throughout this year, the Invermay Primary School community will soon be next in line to celebrate.

The school’s staff, students, and parents and friends committee is getting ready to mark the institution’s 150th birthday with an event on Friday 17 November.

Principal, Justin Marshman, said much of the day will be a varied celebration.

“We’ve got about an hour of formality but our parents and friends wanted this to be something for the kids to enjoy too,” he said.

“There’ll be ice-cream and coffee vans, plus some giveaways for them, adornments of our 150th anniversary for them to keep. It’ll be a bit of a fun carnival atmosphere for them as well.”

The celebrations will begin with a formal assembly at 1pm after which open classrooms will be held as well as historical displays, photo opportunities, and kids’ activities.

Interviews with school alumni are being undertaken by the junior school council’s 10 students, the results of which will be presented during the event.

Following the day’s activities, the celebrations will continue at the Invermay Sports Club from 4.30pm.

The school is set to be adorned with more than 100 archival documents and photographs courtesy of the Invermay Local History Association.

Mr Marshman said the event will be a deep dive into the school’s establishment.

“We’ve got documents from the State Library of Victoria, copies of the original letters from families trying to get the school built in the four, five years before Invermay Primary,” he said.

“They were asking for a school in what was then known as Dead Horse Gully which is what the area was called before it was Invermay.

“The first school here was Dead Horse Gully Common School.

“We’ll have those documents blown up and displayed of some of those original letters from families and committees were forming.

“Invermay State School number 882 was formalised and approved by the State Government with the 1872 Education Act for all areas of the state to have secular, compulsory and free education.”

The school’s entryway is set to be overhauled prior to the anniversary, to include a wrought-iron gate, a silhouette of the current grade 6 group, and updated fencing which alumni are encouraged to have their names engraved into.