Mary Small wrote a wonderful children’s book called Lennie’s Ride about local boy Lennie Gwyther. Lennie rode his pony to Sydney for the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. He was 9 years old at the time and became quite famous. The book is on sale at our Society for $15 plus postage.

Activities for 2011

The Society holds a monthly meeting on the 2nd Wednesday of each month in our Mechanics Institute rooms. All welcome.

The rooms are open to the public on Thursday and Friday of each week from 12 noon until 4pm  or by appointment.

January

The theme for our exhibition is Summer Time

On display will be items and photographs about summer sports and activities.

Leongatha Swimming Club is 50 years old and part of the exhibition will be devoted to the history of this club.  .

February

At the meeting on Wednesday February 9th  we are inviting some early members of the Leongatha Swimming Club to speak on the club’s history.

March

Geoff Michael is planning a bus tour. Details will be published later.

Mary Small the author of Lennie’s Ride is coming to run a children’s workshop. Details will be published closer to the event.

April

On Wednesday April 20^th members are welcome to have dinner at the Leongatha RSL

The dinner will be followed by a speaker and a tour of the items on display.

May

At the meeting on Wednesday May 11th  we will show some of the movies of local history we have on DVD and Video.

A Bair Street Walk is to be planned with the assistance of Jack Edney. 

June

Wednesday 8^th General meeting  guest speaker

July

Wednesday 13th     General meeting

August

Wednesday  10th       Annual/General Meeting

Daffodil Festival Theme  “Lets get a Head”

The “Lets get a Head”  including photos of people, hats, shaving things, hair dressers, hearing aids, scarves, dental, dentists, hair dressing appliances. Spectacles

The Sloyd room is believed to be the last one in a secondary school in the state. These rooms were once common and were used for the teaching of woodwork. At the rear of the Sloyd room is a metalwork room which has a brick floor.

The 1934 building was erected as a replacement for the original 1912 school. This building was similar in design to the original but was larger. There are very few early weatherboard high schools left in the state and none in Gippsland. The original Warragul High School was demolished some time ago and the original Sale High School c 1910 was built of brick.

The oak tree was planted in 1912 when the school was opened and has been a landmark feature of the school ever since. Countless students will remember it fondly.

The Jubilee Park was planted to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the school.

There were some beautiful exotics planted in the park and the majority are still there. Some died and were removed, some others were removed for the building of Mesley Hall and the recent Mesley Hall extension. It was considered a planting of significance because it marked an important event in the community’s history.
The buildings and the trees belong to our community and need to be preserved for the future.

Correspondence can be sent to:

The Secretary
Leongatha and District Historical Society
P.O. Box 431
Leongatha 3953

The society’s phone number is:

03 5662 2492

The newsletters feature information on the society, updates on new and ongoing projects, historical articles, and reports from guest speakers.

The newsletters were prepared in MS Word format and saved as PDF (Adobe’s Portable Document Format) for easy viewing on the web. If you don’t have the PDF reader installed, a link is available from the archive page to download the reader.

The archive will be kept up-to-date, and newsletters will be freely available as new issues are published.

(Please note: As the original was photocopied for distribution, and some images were pasted in at the time of photocopying, there may be some blank spaces on pages where photos were later added.)

By John Murphy

One Bag in Six — $20.00

No Parallel: The Woorayl Shire 1888 to 1988 – $20

The Meeting Place: The Leongatha Memorial Hall 1924 to 2004 – $15

The Leongatha Labour Colony  –  $10

Leongatha Mechanics’ Institute and Free Library 1891 to 1991 – $6

Knox’s Rockhill Farm – $5

Faith of Our Fathers – $10

Town Water – $15

The First Century : 100 Years of the Leongatha Butter Factory – $15

By Ellen Lyndon

Mossvale Park – $6

By Eulalie Brewster

Looking Back at Inverloch – $5

By Mabel Sharrock

Stories of Waratah and The Ten Mile – $6

Also available

En Avant: Leongatha High School 1912 to 1987,  by Lynette Skillern  – $6
The Significant Trees of South Gippsland  – $15
Gathering at the Mount, By Pat Spinks  – $20
Stony Creek, a history – $6
Lord Brassey Lodge No 180  – $5

Send a cheque and request to:
Leongatha and District Historical Society,
P.O. Box 431,
Leongatha 3953

Postage and handling  – add $5

References used in the kit include “The Land of the Lyrebird”, published by the Korumburra Historical Society; and “Mountain Forests of Gippsland”, by the late Phyllis Reichl, published by Nelson Australia Ltd in 1968, and now out of print.

Work on preparing the Pioneering kit for this website was performed by Andrew Cantwell.

As with any work, there may be some errors or omissions, or the information may be awkward to access — and we need your feedback to make it better.

Please make your comments and corrections through the form below, and we’ll make the changes needed as soon as possible.

Funding for the website has come from the Local History Grants Program of the Public Records Office. The society is sincerely grateful to the PRO for the grant.