YARRA FLATS COMMON SCHOOL No.956
The first school in the Yarra Glen district is believed to have been a one-room building which served a dual purpose as the Presbyterian Church and a schoolroom. In November 1866 Mr W. Watkins wrote to the Board of Education saying that the Local Committee had built a school. In a letter dated 6 October 1868 the building was described as 36 feet by18 feet with weatherboard walls, a shingle roof, pine floor and lining boards. It had a fireplace and held three desks and eight forms as seating for students. It was set in grounds of half an acre close to the Woods Point Road (now known as Melba Highway). There is strong evidence that it is the same building which now stands at Gulf Station, although the latter is smaller in size. A list of the children attending in 1868 states that Agnes and William Bell (of Gulf Station) lived half a mile distant from the school. Therefore the school was not at Gulf Station at that time. An investigation by the National Trust in the early 1990s concluded that the School Room building now at Gulf Station had been relocated from another site and rebuilt.
Although the Yarra Flats school was said to be operating in 1866 it was not officially opened until 1 April 1868, when it was officially designated the Yarra Flats Common School No. 956. In 1878 the land on which the current Yarra Glen Primary School stands was purchased from Thomas Armstrong as a site for a new school building. In 1878 a new school building measuring 24 feet by 16 feet was erected by John Nicholls. It consisted of three school rooms and living quarters for the teacher. The old school building on the Woods Point Road is said to have been used as a meeting room for men. It is then believed to have been moved to Gulf Station in the early years of the twentieth century. After the township changed its name to Yarra Glen the school became the Yarra Glen State School.
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G. L Blackburn, History of the Yarra Glen district (developed and published for the Yarra Glen State School Centenary celebrations} March 29 1968.
Helen Watters, 'The school house at Gulf Station', Trust News, Nov. 1991.
