This article is one in a series of Ivanhoe Primary School Memories (2004)
Extracts from the Supplement to Slab Hut to Red Brick: the history of Ivanhoe Primary School (2004) compiled by Theresa Casteltevetere, Dianne Fox and Louise Ryan, including recollections of former students & staff.
Rhonda Matties: 1960s
The following are snippets of memory from my 6-7 years at Ivanhoe PS:
Remembrance day – some of the children would dress in nurses capes and caps, others would dress in various other uniforms;
The doors opening onto the play area would have monitors on duty at lunchtime to prevent entry back into the school except by those with some sort of emergency e.g. blood nose (I can remember a lot of those). Kids on duty as monitors would feel VERY important;
In Grade 5, girls would be rostered to do tea duty. The classroom was located next door to the staff kitchen on the second floor and three or so girls (never boys!) would leave class early in order to set up the staff tea room and make big pots of tea. This was a plum job and keenly sought. I remember needing to go to the toilet and feeling very daring when I used the staff toilet which was located off the kitchen area. I also remember having a drink of water from a tea cup and chipping my front tooth in the process!
People would also be rostered to ring the school bell and play the marching music. This meant entering the hallowed sanctum of the headmaster’s office which was very exciting;
Games played in the yard included elastics, dutch skippy (with two ropes), swap cards (my friend Sue had an enormous pack of pristine swap cards including the really sought after ones), tunnel ball, cross ball, skip ball, and hitting a tennis ball inside a stocking against the walls of the toilet block whilst singing a certain song that went something like ‘hello, hello hello sir, going to the show sir, no sir, why sir, because……………….’, other games with tennis balls against the brick wall.
Interschool sports were a very big deal and I was in a cross ball team. I was also in the ‘seconds’ net-ball team (goalie). The ‘seconds’ uniform was a light blue tunic, much nicer was the ‘firsts’ uniform of a navy pleated skirt and [?] shirt. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the grade for the ‘firsts’.
In Grade 4 we progressed from messy pen and ink to fountain pens when our writing came up to a certain standard. I got a rainbow coloured fountain pen (Osmoroid I think) which had a little gold number on it. I subsequently lost this at a sports day and was heartbroken.
Loved having tuck shop lunches. Hot meat pies and sauce, ‘favourites’ (which were pikelets) with creamed honey. Oslo lunches were available; I’m not quite sure what these were – perhaps salad sandwiches and other healthy food?
I remember a trip to the MacRobertson chocolate factory. We were allowed to eat a lot of lollies/chocolates and I remember feeling very unwell after that. The smell stayed with me for a long time. Other trips included to the woollen mills and the traffic school.
I know other people who have bad memories of the bottled milk we were given but I only remember nice cold milk which I very much enjoyed. There was a period when flavoured straws became available and we drank the milk through these straws, thus giving it a strawberry or chocolate flavour.
I had a Gerry Gee ventriloquist doll in Grade four and was allowed to have my photo taken with it for the class photo. Still have that photo tucked away somewhere.
Miss Cooper was my teacher in prep or Grade 1. She was lovely. I remember one of us would bury our head in her lap whilst she tapped out a song with a ruler on a chair and if we could guess the song we were allowed to go out to lunch early. I guessed ‘there was a crooked man’ correctly one day and went out to lunch but the down side of this was there was no one else out there to talk to!
