THE closure of the Culgoa school in Victoria will signal the end of an era for the town, writes GENEVIEVE BARLOW
When the Culgoa Primary School roll is called on Saturday, it's a fair bet Myrtle Hooper will be the only one from her class attending.
Her former fellow pupils have gone to the great classroom in the sky but Myrtle, 96, hopes to be at the gathering this weekend to mark the school's closure.
On December 19, Culgoa Primary School No. 3246, will shut forever and its eight pupils will be dispersed to nearby Sea Lake and Birchip, ending 113 years of primary education in the tiny Mallee town.
"Everyone will be sad and disappointed but life will go on," says Margaret Mudge, a former mother's club president whose 10 children attended the school and whose grandfather was among the first enrollees when it opened on a site south of the town on October 23, 1895.
"It's the same as a death in the family. We all get through and life goes on."
The colliwobbles hit when last year started with just five pupils.
To compensate for their small number, the pupils joined with others at Lalbert and Nullawil each month to share lessons and sport.
But two years on and with no sign of enrolments growing, the school council has decided to call it quits.
"We've weighed up the present situation and regretfully acknowledge the closure is now a reality," says president Terry Barry.
Farmer and councillor Reid Mather, whose three sons and father attended the school, says farms have got bigger and families have got smaller since his time there in the 1960s.
"We have families of two, three and four in the area and there are some with six, but I can remember when there were 13 and eight in a family.
"The demise of any small school is a bit like a drought. It's slow.
"There's no one trigger that tells you it's happening. It just creeps up on you until it's no longer viable."
Des Whitney, 67, recalls cold winters and hot summers in his Culgoa alma mater.
"We always had a vegie garden there," he says.
For Myrtle Hooper, school memories conjure up images of the old town that once had a three-room hospital, a resident doctor, a railway station, a butcher, baker, blacksmith, saddler's shop, two general stores, three fruit and vegie shops, two garages, two stocks agents, two golf links and more.
They are dreams now.
In recent years, faced with closure, the town's only general store switched to community ownership to keep it open and surrounding farmers have recorded a third consecutive year of little, to no, crop harvest.
Despite the doom and gloom, there is always hope, Myrtle says.
"I never went past fifth grade because I was a very delicate child," she says. "I was sick a lot of the time, very anaemic.
"Now there's none of my vintage left."
