Lower Light School

**Fast Facts**
Type of organisation:	Government
Town or locality:	Lower Light
Date established:	The date "c. 1860" was not understood.
Ceased operation:	1963
Business or purpose:	School

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Although these early settlers were well educated themselves such was not the case with the children. Coming to an area which was unsettled where homes had to be built, a living to be made and with their time and means thus expended, a school was a distant vision on the horizon. However, to overcome the difficulty Mr Jimmy Johnson at Korunye employed a governess as did Mr Town at Lower Light. Local children attended at these homes and a fee was charged for each child taught and this helped with the salary of the governess. Secondary education was rare until the early twentieth century.

Early in Lower Light's history there was a small wooden structure, built in the 1860s, on the church grounds. It was used for church, Sunday school and day school. From 1874 until 1890 the teacher's fees were paid by the parents, the children each taking so many pennies to school on Friday. A combined school and residence was established by the Education Department in 1881, the total cost being £505, 16 shillings and 3 pence.

In 1891 the first salary from the Education Department was received by Mr Alfred M. Stapley when a Bill was passed through parliament introducing 'free education'.

Children had attended at these schools as far away as Frosts in the Dublin area, from the Mallala road, as far as Mr Arthur Pratt's and all along the river to the west.

**Lower Light School Teachers**
1876-77	Daniel Coleman	1923-30	Phyllis M. Fisher
1878	Manton Jackson	1931-37	Harold J. Donnelly
1880-89	Duncan McNaughton	1938-40	George Geddes
1900-09	Alfred M. Stapley	1941	Florence Bigg Leonard Vickery Dulcie Battain
1910-12	Ada Langdon	1941-45	Dorren Ware
1913-18	Kate M. Kaine	1945-49	Sylvia Schwalbie
1919	Andrew G. Brown	1950-58	Joseph Costello
1920	Victor Slee	1959-62	Kenneth Clare
1821	William J. Hahn	1963	Closed 5 February 1963
1922	Alfred W. H. Lockyer

Sources

Life around the Light: A history of the Mallala District Council area compiled by Two Wells. Mallala and District History Book Committee. Community Development Board of the Council District of Mallala. (Mallala
S. Aust.) 1985.
Mallala Museum research notes