Mypolonga Primary School

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (15:21): I rise to talk about the Mypolonga Primary School, a great little school in my electorate. The Mypolonga Primary School was established in May 1916 with an enrolment of 42 students. Today there are 140 students enrolled.

Over the last 100-plus years there have been a number of improvements and additions to school facilities, including the building of a bike shed, clearing of ground for the tennis court and cricket pitch and the establishment of the famous Mypolonga School Shop. Back in 1921, the school purchased waterbags for all its students. More recently, in 2006, the school purchased water bottles for each student.

The school is situated near the riverbank at Mypolonga, which provides a beautiful location most of the time, just not during the 1956 and the 2022-23 River Murray floods. In 1956 the floodwaters entered the school grounds, so the decision was made to move furniture and school equipment to the Mypolonga Institute up the hill until the water subsided. According to records, the furniture and school equipment were transferred back to the school grounds on 18 November 1956.

Volunteers have been a vital part of the development of the school, working overtime assisting with things like repairing the school during the war years, grassing the oval, tree planting and helping with elective programs.

The Mypolonga School Shop has been operating since 1995 and celebrated 30 years last Friday. The shop has been very instrumental in educating students in financial literacy and how a business operates. The idea of a school shop came about following the closure of the Mypolonga Post Office, which was located across from the school. A student suggested it could be turned into a shop selling handmade crafts by the students and other locals.

At the time, the Proud Mary nature tours, which ran a boat cruise along the River Murray, heard about the shop and added it to their itinerary and they still continue to visit the shop every Friday. This is a partnership that, as I said, remains today.

Various products were trialled by the school over the years such as dried apricots, jam, chocolate-coated oranges, herbs, vinegar and postcards, but it was ultimately decided that the market mainly wanted chocolate-coated apricots and lemonade, which we sampled the other day. Along with crafts made by students and locals, the school currently sells recipe books, plain apricots, choc-coated apricots, choc-coated almond apricots, pens, lemonade, magnets, bookmarks, key tags and greeting cards.

Each week, the year 5/6 students work in pairs on one of eight rotations. The rotations are: choc-coating the apricots; bagging the apricots for sale; selling the apricots; making the lemonade; staffing the inside counter, which involves selling items on consignment and retaining a 20 per cent commission from each sale; staffing the outside counter, which involves selling products made by students; being the tour leader for visitors; and reconciling the books.

As I said, it was the 30-year book launch of the Mypolonga School Shop last Friday and the mural unveiling. The mural was unveiled by former principal Rita O'Brien and former staffer Anne Martin. It is just so good to see this lovely little school and its 140 students. People do all they can to get their students enrolled at this fantastic little primary school. It is only about 15 kilometres outside of Murray Bridge and it is such a great place for learning and the students did such a great job when they were assigned to escort us around the school and show us all the projects and all the things that they were making for the school shop.

It was a proud moment for me, just before the peak water came through with the 2022-23 floods, to work with a few people but mainly former head of the department of environment John Schutz to make sure we had a 700-metre levee bank built across in front of the Mypolonga School, and parts of low-lying Mypolonga, to protect those facilities so they could keep operating appropriately and save all the objects at the school so they did not have to be moved again, like they were in 1956.

Again, I salute the Mypolonga Primary School and everyone who has anything to do with it because it is a fantastic school and I wish it well for the next 100 years.