The More Things Change,
THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME By Melissa Walsh Photos Gary Sissons
A
ngelo Taranto strolls over to the Tyabb Railway Primary School from his massive 200 acres across the road where he has run Taranto Farm for decades. The walk to the school is a familiar one for the grandfather, who started there as a young lad in 1947 when the whole school consisted of 20 pupils and each year level was together in the same school building. These days, Angelo drops into the school to visit his twin grandsons. Three decades before, he would walk over with his own kids. As the children play outside in the playground, laughing and giggling as they test out their Indonesian buggies for Indonesian day, Angelo sits in the school that is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year, and recalls a time when life was simpler. “I was five when we came down to Tyabb. It was soon after the war finished and dad wanted to come down here, that’s when I started at the Tyabb Railway Primary School,” says Angelo. “There was the wooden school building and the little enclave
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where we hung our coats and hats. A massive gum tree stood outside that was so enormous but was cut down. The two big oaks which still stand there were planted when the school opened and looked as big to me then as they do now.” From memory, Angelo says it was the Cole family that owned the whole block from Frankston Flinders Road to the Crescent, and what is now Dandenong Hastings Road, but was called Cranbourne Road then and was made of gravel. “Old man Cole donated this land for the school and the church back in the 1800s from what I’ve been told,” he says. “We only had the building and little annexe and there were about six kids in grade one and two.” Angelo says the average school day was probably not much different to today, still doing school work and being in class for many hours every weekday. The difference began outside with the rules and regulations not as stringent as in days gone by. “When we were little we would wait out the front on certain