Winding back to his old school track decades on

A former Bendigo resident has retraced what was his daily walk to Specimen Hill State School to mark 75 years since he began his formal education at the age of four years and three months.

Bruce Chisholm, who is seeing out his retirement in inner-eastern Melbourne, made the short trek from his childhood home in Booth Street Golden Square to Inglewood Street with energy to spare, happily chatting along the way.

He said he remembered his first day well.

“It was a freezing cold winter morning – with a heavy frost and ice in the gutters and puddles – when I left from home and walked to school with two of my cousins, meeting up with other kids along the way,” he recalled.

“I headed off with a brown leather school bag containing a packed lunch – beetroot sandwiches, a piece of cake and a piece of fruit, a small bottle of milk and a folding cup.

“My school bag also contained a slate, a piece of polished slate edged with timber about the size of an A4 sheet of paper – the iPad of the day.”

Chisholm said he took up school unusually young, albeit enthusiastically, to help reverse the dwindling headcount of students at Specimen Hill at the time.

To set the scene, in 1951 it had two teachers and enrolment numbers were falling.

“We lived in an area where everyone knew everyone,” he said.

“There was quite a sense of community, which revolved around the school and the Specimen Hill Methodist Church – they were the two local institutions that most people belonged to.”

He said it was likely that the school would lose a teacher if enrolments continued to decrease.

“Word went around the district that 4-year-olds could be enrolled to boost numbers – no need for the child to attend school every day, just one more enrolment.”

Nevertheless, he never missed a day.

“We used to sit on the wooden floor in front of an open fire and practise writing letters and numbers, which were easily erased with a damp piece of cloth,” he recollected fondly.

“School was exciting.”