BUILDING AND THE CITY
Camp Hill School
Private Collection.
The
Central State School (Camp Hill) was one of the Schools
along with Gravel Hill, Golden Square, Quarry Hill and Long
Gully which opened in the early 1870’s following an
Act making education free, compulsory and secular. This
Act was instigated by local member of parliament, Angus
MacKay. |
When the gold seekers arrived at he Bendigo Diggings, their shelter
consisted of a tent or a rough bark hut. Similar constructions
served as public offices including the police office and the post
office. Improvements went on at a rapid rate with new buildings,
many of brick and sandstone, replacing tents and slab huts. Richard
Larritt was allotted the task of surveying the township of Sandhurst;
the tracks formed by wagons were straightened and the first land
sale of town allotments was held in August 1854.
Subsequently,
many architects and builders have contributed to the design and
construction of structures in Bendigo and these remain as features
of Bendigo’s streetscape – the present refurbished
Town Hall, the Wesleyan and Congregational churches in Forest
Street, the Masonic Hall in View Street (now known as the Capital
Theatre, the Anne Caudle Centre in Barnard Street
and the Alexandra Fountain in central-city Charing Cross. Industrial
buildings are represented, among others, by the Bendigo Gas Works
(1860) and the Grimsby Roller Flour Mill (1873) on the corner
of Wills and Edwards Streets. Many of these heritage
buildings can still be seen.
Schools in the early days were likely to be primitive canvas
structures with rough seating and few teaching aids. Tents gave
way to timber slab and canvas structures and by the mid-1850s
the Wesleyans had built their first stone school and scattered
across the Bendigo goldfield and into the surrounding countryside
to serve the spreading population were numerous state run and
Catholic schools. Camp
Hill Primary School, built in Rosalind Park in 1877,
and at one time known as the Central School is a fine example
architecturally with its fire lookout belltower. The Corporate
High School, which opened as a municipal school on the Camp Reserve
in 1870, is now Bendigo
Senior Secondary College. The Sisters of Mercy, the
Vincentian Fathers and the Marist Brothers initiated Catholic
secondary schooling locally - now integrated as Catholic
College, Bendigo.
Adult education was not forgotten and in 1856 the Sandhurst Mechanics’
Institute and Literary and Scientific Association was opened to
provide a lending library, reading room, museum and a room for
lectures. By 1870 the Mechanics’ Institute had assisted
in the foundation of the School of Arts and Design and later,
in 1873, initiated the development of the Bendigo School of Mines.
These early adult-education facilities developed in complex ways
across time through to the technical
and further education facilities and university association of the present day.
When gold was found ‘on Bendigo’ in 1851, numerous
tradesmen and professional joined the rush of diggers, including
a surprising number of ‘medical’ men with or without
qualifications. The first hospital was built as soon as 1853 in
Short Street (it blew down in a storm but was pushed up again).
A new hospital with a substantial stone and brick building was
established on the present site in 1858 and another substantial
building was erected nearby in 1860 as the Bendigo
Benevolent Asylum to care for the needy poor and
for women in childbirth. This institution and architectural gem
is now known as the Anne Caudle Centre and is amalgamated with
the Hospital in the current Bendigo
Health Care Group.
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