The shoe factory where the first lessons took place for teenaged children in Rosewood.
Inside the slipper factory, desks and blackboards… the only indication this was a place of education.
The first cohort of students at the Rosewood school.
A photo taken from one of the many reunions.
THE first cohort and foundation members of Rosewood High School have been attending annual reunions since the school’s 50th anniversary. Foundation student Fay Morris said everyone enjoyed the 50th reunion so much they’ve kept on having them. Someone special to the class of 1962 is their teacher (front middle) Val Burton.
IT IS 1962 and a group of Rosewood teenagers are seated behind desks and before blackboards in the confines of an old shoe factory.
Classrooms are sectioned off by partitions and the youngsters are required to cross a train track to get to some lessons at the neighbouring junior school.
This is what life was like for a group of Rosewood residents who were the first to attend Rosewood High School.
Fay Morris is one of the school’s foundation students.
She said before Rosewood Secondary Department was formed, students travelled by train to Ipswich High School.
Rosewood was a growing community and that community called for a high school closer to where students lived.
“You had to have a certain number of students to call it a high school, that’s why it was called a secondary department at first,” Fay said.
“It was so unusual, we weren’t in a normal high school, we were in the old slipper factory building.
“We turned that into three classrooms just with dividers.
“We’d go over the railway line back to the primary school to do woodwork and domestic science.
“We’d even carry our typewriters across, the situation was very unique.”
That first year Fay and her classmates were the only students in sub junior level, that is below Year 10 in today’s vernacular.
“When we moved up to junior, we had another sub junior class below us and that’s when we had enough students to call it a high school,” she said.
The motley crew of teens going back 62 years were on the cusp of figuring out the adventure’s life had in store for them.
They all went their separate ways until the school’s 50th anniversary loomed, then Fay started to pull as many back in as possible.
The group of past school mates were older and some a little wiser.
As the first cohort reconnected it was decided annual gatherings were in order.
“Our first reunion was a big one, the 50th, and we enjoyed it so much we wanted to do it again,” she said.
“Now we do it every year, we usually get at least two thirds or more of the class will attend.”
Not only inception year students go to the reunions, someone also very special to them all turns up, too.
“The lady sitting in the middle of our reunion photograph was our teacher, she was straight out of teachers college,” she said.
“She must have been just 18 or 19 years old when she took on all of us.
“She was what was called our commercial teacher.
“Val is now 81 and she comes to all of our reunions.”
