"Bursting at the seams" - a little history of Abergowrie State Primary School and Abergowrie area

 Abergowrie State Primary School, a brief history

The small rural school, Abergowrie State Primary School, which opened in February 1953 and celebrates its 70^th anniversary on 11 November 2023, has quietly and effectively provided educational opportunities to hundreds of students over those years despite the challenges and changes that have assailed it.

Image: Flyer 70th Anniversary Celebrations (Facebook, Abergowrie State School)

The school takes its name from the "Abergowrie" selection, taken up by Irish immigrant James Atkinson in 1883 in the wake of George Elphinstone Dalrymple’s exploration. Atkinson used the Celtic word "aber" meaning confluence and the name of Gowrie Creek, indicating the confluence of Gowrie Creek with the Herbert River to construct the place name Abergowrie. Gowrie takes its name from an ancient district in Perthshire. The word gowrie means gloomy, dull and murky.

Abergowrie township, established as a result of the 1950s sugar assignment expansion, was approximately 40 kilometers from Ingham and so services needed to be provided like churches, shops and a school. When the State Education Department was informed of the number of children of primary school age requiring education and the distance to the nearest state school, permission was granted to open a state primary school. The Department of Public Works pledged £2224 for the erection of a new school. The school adopted a motto to reflect its farming origins: is ‘Nihil Sine Labore’ which translates to ‘Nothing without hard work’.

School logo

Abergowrie State Primary School was opened on Saturday 21 February 1953 by Mr. C. G. Jesson, M.L.A. assisted by the Regional Director of Education Mr. A. Whitmee. The building, which was just finished a week before the first school term began on February 23, was planned for a maximum of 40 students. By March 1953 44 students were enrolled and the school was said to be “bursting at the seams”. By June the enrolment was reported to be 55 students. The teacher was provided with an assistant when the numbers increased. By August the parents had agitated successfully to obtain a new classroom (21 x 24 feet) to cater for the larger enrolment anticipated in 1954. Improvements to the school structure have been effected over the years, beginning with money approved by the State Government for improvements to the school In 1973.

Image: Abergowrie State Primary School 1953

Today, the community has shrunk, and school numbers have declined with parents choosing to send their children to larger schools in Ingham. However, due to the distance to these schools, and the remoteness of some children’s properties the school is kept open by the State Education Department. For the wider community the school is more than an educational facility, it is a community hub providing for example a polling place, a disaster recovery centre and a playgroup.

As of February 2023 the school is listed as offering an Early Childhood to Year 6 education to 11 students. The Cheeky Moneys Playgroup is conducted at the school every Tuesday morning in term time. The students benefit from small class size, individualized tuition and all the benefits of a roomy modern school and a well-appointed nature playground (built in 2020 and created by LEAP Innovations with donations from community members and a grant).

Image: Abergowrie State School playground (Facebook, Abergowrie State School)

The students, small to big, benefit from everything a bigger school has to offer including, swimming lessons at the Hinchinbrook Aquatic Centre, a library/resource centre;  Do Re Me music lessons; sporting opportunities such as the Athletics Carnival and All Schools Touch Carnival  enabled by combining with other small schools to form teams; engagement with other small schools such as Macknade State School; community engagement with fund raising events such as that conducted by the School Council Bike-a-thon to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation; and visits from educational experts who supplement day-to-day learning with new experiences. The list goes on.

Abergowrie State Primary School takes its name from the surrounding area and exists because the expansion of sugar assignments that occurred in the 1950s. The following is a potted history of Abergowrie.

Abergowrie history

Before the pastoral selection of Abergowrie, or Abergowrie State Primary School were ever conceived this was Warrgamay Country. Probably not the first of the Warragamay people’s encounter with Europeans, but the one that would have drastic consequences for them was marked by a monument and plaque at Abergowrie in 1964. The plaque reads:  George Elphinstone Dalrymple explorer and public servant passed this way in 1864, leading the first group of Europeans to enter the Herbert River Valley, en route from Port Hinchinbrook (Cardwell) to Valley of Lagoons, in his steps came settlement. Erected 1964.

Image: George Elphinstone Dalrymple 1964 (monumentaustralia.org.au)

Despite its use for grazing and farming by European settlers, Warrgamay people were still endeavoring to live and hunt on Country till the 1940s. Traditional Warrgamay ownership was recognized in the 2021 native title ruling by the Federal Court of Australia.  In recognition of this the school opened a yarning circle in the same year to connect its school community with the traditional owners. The yarning circle is used for staff meetings, student council, and a safe place for children to talk, reflecting the traditional use of a yarning circle by Warragamay elders for conversation, the sharing of knowledge, and discussion of important issues.

Image: Yarning Circle (Facebook, Abergowrie State School)

Prior to and during World War 1 Abergowrie-Coldwater lands, which had been resumed from the Atkinsons proved valuable to growing small crops. Cultivation and experimentation were boosted in response to appeals by the wartime authorities for food and the need to supply products which were no longer obtainable because of the war. One of the best-known growers was Primo Capra who successfully grew large crops of potatoes, watermelons, tomatoes, and pumpkins for an interstate market. Small crop growers struggled for lack of labour and transport facilities for their crops. Later land on which small crops had previously been grown were converted to sugar growing with the resumption of sugar expansion. Though other cash crops such as tobacco were tried, sugar dominated because of its suitability to a variety of soil types and climatic conditions and the fact that its processing and marketing were handled by a large corporation, the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR).

Construction on a road access to Abergowrie began in 1933 under the relief scheme for the unemployed during the Great Depression of 1925-1935. Road access was vital to St Teresa’s College, Abergowrie, a rural boarding college for boys which opened in March 1934 by the Christian Brothers.

 Prior to World War 2 the Lands Department had refused to open further Abergowrie lands to selection because of a belief that it was of poor quality for farming, a supposition which was later disproved when after World War 2 the lands were opened up for selection for sugar cultivation.

The Abergowrie State Primary School was opened to educate the children of farming families who moved to the area to take advantage of CSR’s Abergowrie cane expansion scheme. The area had been earmarked as early as 1946 when a Royal Commission toured the north and the Abergowrie area was investigated for its potential for sugar growing. The local sub-branch of the Returned Soldiers League (RSL) suggested that the area should be divided up into allotments to be taken up exclusively by ex-servicemen for sugar cane cultivation. Though at this stage it was envisaged the area would have its own mill. A new central mill for the district had been agitated for since 1886. James Aitkinson had even suggested that one be established on Abergowrie lands in the 1880s. While the Government decided that there would be no further mills it was decreed that there would be an increase of three percent in the sugar peaks to accommodate some ex-servicemen who chose to take up farming after the war.

Image: Young soldier settler cane farmers in the Abergowrie district (The Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited, South Pacific Enterprise)

This scheme came to fruition because of a marketing agreement between the United Kingdom (UK) Government and the Queensland Premier, the Hon.  E.M. Hanlon in 1949 in response to a post-war demand for Australian sugar. In order to be able to fulfil the agreement the Australian sugar industry needed to increase its production markedly. There was still plenty of room for expansion of sugar growing in the Herbert River Valley and so it was proposed that the Victoria Mill be duplicated. This proposal together with one for land in the Abergowrie area to be opened to soldier settlement was approved in March 1950 and so Abergowrie township and the largescale sugar growing area came about.

It was envisaged that opening up Abergowrie to sugar growing would attract 200 growers and their families, 300 additional cane cutters, loco drivers, navvies, etc (and their families) together with a number of field hands, basically the establishment of another ‘sugar town’.

CSR duplicated the Victoria Mill’s mill train in order to handle the additional cane supply the Abergowrie farms would produce. Abergowrie land was taken up by returned soldiers under the soldier settlement scheme which the Hinchinbrook Council and the RSL had championed rather than small areas along Ingham Line. Streets with names like Tobruk andTarakan attest to the war experiences of these returned soldiers.

By 1951 118 assignments had been granted at Abergowrie. On 1 July 1953 the first cane from Abergowrie went to the mill.  By 1954 all assignments were under cane. Once more new immigrant families and new farming families lived a pioneering lifestyle alongside the progress that was being witnessed in other parts of the Valley. Many first lived in sheds and barracks before proper homes were built courtesy of low interest government loans.

A town plan was approved by the Minister of Lands in 1952, which included provision for 40 township blocks, and to include provision for churches, businesses, playground, a tennis court, a school, a sports reserve and laneways and streets.

Before roads were systematically sealed, beginning in the 1950s, and wooden bridges replaced by cement structures, a trip to town by Abergowrie residents, for instance, could be a whole day’s undertaking. Though a high-level bridge over the Herbert River did not come to Abergowrie until 1971 and in flood time the road can still be impassable. As the road improved and family motorized vehicle ownership became commonplace Ingham became more accessible and most services except the school closed. The community and offices at the large rail infrastructure at McKell’s siding too closed down, though the siding remained. It had once been the base for four locomotives, 10 loco crews, one six-man rail and navy gang, a traffic officer and two cane inspectors. Structures at the siding included barracks, eight employee’s cottages and two staff houses as well as an office and locomotive shed. Accordingly, the population of Abergowrie has declined from 1954 when the population numbered 700 individuals.

Image: Abergowrie Township 2022, (property.com.au)

According to Brother V. M. Doran who wrote a history of Abergowrie College “Telephone communication with Ingham did not come until 1945 when the college boys cleared a line through the forest area and using the most suitable of the fallen timber for poles, strung a line to Elphinstone Pocket. The college became the exchange for the first people who moved into the area and acted as the "Civic Centre" until the Abergowrie township was set up.” Then in 1955 the telephone system was extended with an initial 78 subscribers being hooked up. The exchange was transferred to Hann's store in Abergowrie township where postal business could also be transacted. In 1957 the area was connected to electricity.

From 1964, the Abergowrie landscape changed yet again when the Forestry Department indicated that it would be commencing surveys in the Abergowrie area for land whose soil suited the cultivation of plantations of softwoods, namely Caribbean pine (Pinus caribaea var. Honduras). Abergowrie State Forest was cleared and planted with Caribbean pine in 1981-2. The State Forest now has pine plantations alongside tropical rainforest and open eucalypt forest.

Abergowrie is not immune to flooding and cyclones and received some of the brunt of Cyclone Yasi sustaining damage to houses and cane crops. When flood waters rise Abergowrie residents can still be flood bound for days despite the modern day convenience of bitumen roads and high concrete brideges.

Today abandoned tobacco drying sheds, cane cutters barracks and farmhouses testify to a past that is hardly remembered. Stands of pines outline a horizon the Traditional Owners would not recognize. The sugar expansion into the Abergowrie area brought prosperity and people but with the end of manual cane cutting and increased mechanization of all processes the population of Abergowrie and its needs have changed. Abergowrie township once envisioned to become a bustling civic centre has fallen into a long sleep. One constant, however, has been Abergowrie State Primary School which still rings with childish laughter and enthusiasms and still provides a vital learning space for Abergowrie’s children.

Sources:

Abergowrie State School 1275, https://schoolsdirectory.eq.edu.au/Details/1275

Andrew M. Burton and Penny Olsen, “Management of exotic pine plantations in northeast Queensland for goshawks,” Australian Forestry, 63:3, 174-180.

: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00049158.2000.10674828

“New School Buildings,” Cairns Post, 7 November 1952, 5.

“Abergowrie development,” Daily Mercury, Thu 8 January 1953, 13.

“New school,” Daily Mercury, 5 March 1953, 6.

“George Dalrymple,” Monument Australia. https://monumentaustralia.org.au/search/display/90356-george-dalrymple-

V.M. Doran, A History of Abergowrie.

Nathalie Fernbach and Dwayne Wyles, “Small Queensland schools treasured by teachers, families and students,” ABC News, 14 September 2020.

‘Ingham District,” Townsville Daily Bulletin, 30 April 1952, 3.

“Abergowrie School Already Too Small,” Townsville Daily Bulletin, 14 March 1953, 5.

“Herbert River,” Townsville Daily Bulletin, 5 March 1953, 5.

“Good C.C.S. Content In Macknade,” Townsville Daily Bulletin, 10 June 1953, 3.

Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui, The Herbert River Story, (Ingham: Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 2011).

Janice Wegner, “Hinchinbrook The Hinchinbrook Shire Council 1979-1979” (M. Arts thesis, James Cook University, 1984).

Dwayne Whyles, “Traditional owners guide north Queensland school's yarning circle,” ABC News, 4 December 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-04/traditional-owners-guide-abergowrie-school-yarning-circle/100670126