Opening of Goomeri State School, 1912

Image State Library of Queensland 

Opening of Goomeri State School, 1912

From “Schooling After the Land Sale”

By Jean Davis as told to Margaret Greer

Mr Joe Heath was the first teacher appointed to Goomeri School, arriving on 2 March 1914. Mr Heath was always interested in agriculture and it was not long before cotton crops were earning the school thirty pounds per annum. 

The recently levelled oval, adjacent to the Highway 17 and Munro Street, was a large horse paddock and the school’s entrance was through a double gate shaded by a huge pepperoni tree near the town’s tennis courts. There were saddle rails and a horse trough for the convenience of the young rider and their Horses. One family came by sulky and another by horse and cart. A very good well had been sunk on the grounds and during the wet seasons, it overflowed. Experimental plots of grasses and other fodder crops, vegetable gardens, fragrant roses and other flowers grew in profusion, Herd testing played a large part in the student education in the 1920s. 

School slates were in use and many a slate pencil was sharpened on any available cement. A huge box under the school stored all the sporting equipment required for cricket vigero, tennis and basketball. 

During the Second World War, the school was used as Army Headquarters for officers to plan the New Guinea campaign which was put into effect many months later. No one was allowed near the school at night and Mr Health had to give the correct password to identify himself to guards before he could enter his own school.