SCOTS PGC welcomed back some of their senior past students on Tuesday 21 June to commemorate the 80th anniversary of its students being evacuated during WWII.
The school was evacuated in 1942 when the Oxenham St campus was commandeered by the Australian Army at the beginning of WWII and used as a base and military hospital.
Following the evacuation, the College established makeshift schools at Kingswood Homestead (on Canningvale Rd) and North Toolburra Station (on the Allora back road), where they remained for the duration of the war.
The evacuation led to the College setting up two makeshift schools on the outskirts of Warwick.
One, named Kingswood, was situated on Canningvale Road while the other was at North Toolburra Station on the Allora Back Road.
Kingswood was home to the junior students and North Toolburra was home to the Senior students. They remained there for the duration of the war.
Many of the students of this era are still very good friends to this day, as the time that they experienced at Scots College, even though challenging, was still a very significant and special time in their lives that formed the people that they are today.
“It’s often said that friendships forged during hardship are strong enough to withstand the test of time and all of the challenges in between,” a spokesperson for the College said. “These types of friendships are abundant among our past students and it was truly wonderful to hear stories from times gone by and reflect on what a different world our students were living in some 80 years ago.”
The original evacuee group have met regularly over the years.
Past students visited both the Kingswood and North Toolburra homesteads on Tuesday 21 June and reminisced about ‘the good old days’.
Past students also took a walk around the College, located their names on honour boards, chatted, laughed and marvelled at how the boarding facilities of today are vastly different to what it was “back in the day”.
The Kingswood home has since been sold and the home itself will be relocated to its new owner. This reunion also provided past students one last chance to visit the property before the home will be moved.
Memorial plaques were put in place in 1992 at a special reunion which at the time, marked 50 years since the evacuation.
