*This is the front cover of Susie Utting’s fascinating book.*

When local writer and historian Susie Utting came across stories about Shoreham State School before its closure in 1950, she was particularly struck by one former pupil’s description of it as “a magical little school”.

Susie decided to collate the accounts into a book to celebrate our community and the sesquicentennial of what is now our much-loved community hall.

Called A Magical Little School…, her manuscript takes us on a trip down memory lane as Susie interweaves memories of the school with poems, pictures and quotations from the Victorian Readers that formed the bedrock of the State’s school literature curriculum.

*This image from the Sixth Book is typical of the early series.*

For Susie this has been a labour of love.

“His bag upon his sturdy back, he goes…” is the first line of a poem titled ‘The Bush Schoolboy’, in the Sixth Book of the series that was first published in 1929. It is a poem Susie learnt by heart as child in a small, rural school where her father was the head teacher.

“I spent all my primary years in Thornton with kids whose ages ranged from 6 to 14 years, all sharing a room which had high windows so we couldn’t look out and be distracted from our lessons. The fireplace was in the centre of the long wall with the teacher’s desk beside it-the best space to be in a Goulburn Valley winter.”

When she and her husband David came to Shoreham in the early 1980s, Susie was struck by the old school building that by then had been repurposed as the Shoreham Community Hall.

“I felt immediately at home,” she says. “During community dinners the fire blazed just like in my old schoolroom.”

Like many others, Susie has loved attending a variety of local functions here, including theme inspired dinners, AGMs, Flinders District Historical Society catalogue and data entry mornings and social events such as Tai Chi classes, Remembrance Day services and U3A classes.

She also appreciates how the building has brought locals together to preserve what is special about our village.

“When the community rallied to prevent inappropriate development of our general store and post office, we first met at the Community Hall.”

Members of the Flinders District Historical Society set up displays in the old classroom to mark the 150th anniversary of the building in 2025.

In preparation for writing her book, she and David, who is also an historian, trawled through documents and hunted down old photographs, paintings and maps.

With a focus on the decade from 1940 to 1950, A Magical Little School… also includes references to our wildlife, such as the resident and migratory birds that come here, to our World War 2 military connections such as the army occupation of ‘The Cliffs’ guesthouse in Prout Webb Road, as well as to the campers and other Shoreham beach lovers who have been regular holiday makers here.

The result is a celebration of the village and its surroundings as well as of the building itself, made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Bendigo Bank.

“The school room has always functioned as a meeting place for community, from a Sunday school venue to tennis clubrooms to a birthday party space for the latest crop of local little ones,” Susie says. “It has served us faithfully for 150 years. I hope that A Magical Little School will be enjoyed by all who know and love Shoreham, especially those readers of ‘a certain age’ who can journey back with a smile, to days of small rural schools and classrooms with high windows and blazing open fireplaces.”

A celebration of Shoreham’s school building

Honora Riley, Shoreham pioneer