Saving old Grange Primary School

‘Heritage home set to be spared from demolition’. The official report before Charles Sturt Council at that January 2019 meeting recommended that a bid to demolish the 135-year-old Tennyson mansion be rejected. It turned out to be a positive outcome for WACRA and other community groups campaigning to save the house.

Jim Douglas outside Estcourt House (courtesy of Weekly Times Messenger, News Ltd)

Saving old Grange Primary School

Jim Douglas and Richard Smith

The old Grange Primary School, which developed from very modest beginnings in 1880 with 25 pupils in rented accommodation, is located on the northern side of Jetty Street and was constructed in 1885, with teaching beginning the following year. Over the years, the school was expanded on a number of occasions and temporary buildings were also added.

Old Grange Primary School (State Library of South Australia archive)

A Soldiers’ Memorial Hall (School Hall) was constructed in 1957 in honour of returned services people. A community fundraising effort to raise funds to build the hall commenced in 1945 and was completed when over £4,000 pounds ($8,000) was raised, sufficient to build the hall. The School Hall was used as a school assembly space and for numerous sport and craft activities. The floor of the School Hall was made of timber and was specially sprung to allow for gymnastic activities.

The old school, immediately across the road in Jetty Street from the present Grange Primary School, remained open until 1971 when the new school was built. However, the new school continued to use the School Hall for assemblies and a school/community sporting hub with emphasis on gymnastics, mainly managed by the Grange Youth Club.

Between the 1970s and 1990s, the old school site was occupied by Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and named the Grange TAFE. It closed in the early 1990s, all classes being moved to the new Port Adelaide TAFE. The old school was said by the state government to be ‘surplus to use’.

Statements emerged from the state government that the old school site was going up for auction to the highest bidder without any community consultation on what was going to happen to the heritage-listed school rooms or the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall. This was the trigger that angered the community; an action committee, formed to stop the sale and to enter into meaningful negotiations with the state government, consisted of members of the local community, the parents of the kids who were members of the Grange Youth Club, two councillors of the then Henley and Grange Council, and the Henley and Grange Residents’ Association.

A very well-attended public meeting, with significant TV, radio and print media present, was held, at which the community called on the state government to:

• stop any sale immediately • respect the heritage value of the school buildings and the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall • investigate an alternative site for the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall • replace the 50 car parking spaces used by Grange Primary School staff • obtain a ‘Special condition of sale’ for the Grange TAFE site to ensure that any purchaser of the site would be obliged to enter into a ‘land management agreement' with Henley and Grange Council to ensure that the old school buildings would be maintained and protected from demolition.

In addition, a petition placed in almost every retail business in Henley and Grange collected over 1,000 signatures to save the old school. The petition was presented to parliament by the then member for Colton, Steve Condous. On this day the community filled the public and speaker’s galleries! Presentations were made to, and meetings held with, Henley and Grange Council which supported the community’s call.

Letters from the action committee were sent to the Premier Dean Brown, the Prime Minister Paul Keating and the Federal Minister for Defence, Kim Beazley. Because things were moving slowly, the action committee wrote to the state ombudsman, asking him to call on the state government to save the school in the interests of the community; it included a memorial hall

built with community money, much of it by volunteers – many of whom were returned services people.

The ombudsman supported the community call and 'delayed any sale', pending a response from the federal government. We made sure that the federal government would live up to its verbal assurance that it would have a ‘very long look’ at the circumstances surrounding the future of the old school and the memorial hall. With community and political pressure mounting and a state election looming, the action committee wrote and spoke to sitting members and candidates asking them to support our call to save the old Grange Primary School.

Steve Condous, recognising that if he was going to get the community support he needed to be out the front leading the call, organised a number of meetings with the premier and the ministers for education and further education. Offers started to fall on the table, including relocation of the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall to a space on the Captain Charles Sturt land nearby; $205,000 from the state government to extend the after-school care room in the new Grange Primary School; and an independent building inspection of the memorial hall to check its structural strength and building materials. To our extreme disappointment, the building inspection was not favourable as the roof and gutters were made of asbestos, and some of the structure was compromised and too dangerous to move.

The action committee took many deep breaths and decided that there needed to be a replacement gymnasium; we went back to council to negotiate the availability of land on the Henley Oval. We were grateful that council produced a Sports Complex Plan for the Henley Oval; however, the costs were well out of their reach and the state government was not supportive.

Returning to 'good old Steve' and turning the thumb screws, we told him that support for his return to parliament would improve ten-fold if he could find another space and the necessary funds. To his credit, Steve came back to the community and council, announcing that the state government via the Education Department had given land inside Henley High School to build a new multi-purpose sports centre.

We met Steve in his electoral office, sure he was expecting us to give him plenty of back slaps and bear hugs. BUT we didn't – because we wanted a water-tight guarantee that the new sports centre would be open to the public, and we insisted on a sprung wooden floor for gymnastics. It was a great moment to look at Steve's face when we put our position; he jumped out of his chair, came around from his table, shook our hands and gave us a hug –and did what we asked for!

The community can look back and be proud that, as a result of almost ten years of campaigning, the old school building is still there, looking splendid and occupied and heritage protected, the existing Grange Primary School has a modern after-school day-care and vacation centre and assembly hall, the teachers have a car park, and the multi-purpose gymnasium, run by Gym West and several Grange youth clubs, is open to the community.