page_title: Toorak College, Mount Eliza
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Toorak College, Mount Eliza / History
caption_attribution_description: Image title:Toorak College, Melbourne picture Description: Building of w:Toorak College, Mt Eliza, 1889.
context_page_description: Toorak College is an independent, inter-denominational, day and boarding school for girls years 5 - 12 and co-educational from pre school to year four. The school is located above Port Phillip Bay in Mount Eliza, a town approximately forty kilometres south of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
  The school began in 1874 as a boys' school in Toorak, a suburb of Melbourne, and moved to its current location at Mount Eliza in 1928, as an independent school for girls. The college currently caters to approximately 925 students from kindergarten to year 12, including 70 boarders from years 7 to 12, and offers a range of Victorian Certificate of Education subjects. Toorak College also offers co-curricular activities including a wide range of visual and performing arts and sports. Toorak's co-educational ELC and junior school has been an IB World School since November 2007, and is authorised to offer the IB Primary Years Programme.
context_section_description: Toorak College takes its name from the township of Toorak, where it opened as a boys' school on Wednesday, 21 January 1874. At first, classes were held in the brick hall of St John's Presbyterian Church on Jackson Street, Toorak, but the school soon moved into specially erected buildings on nearby Douglas Street. The founding principal was John Stevens Miller, a Scot, who had been involved in several schools since his arrival in Victoria, in 1854.
  His successor, John Thomas Craig, was also a Scot and consequently the school maintained a nominal association with the Presbyterian church for some years. During his years at Toorak College (1877–1895), Craig built the school into one of the largest privately owned schools in Melbourne, and he had a reputation as a fine educationist. After the prosperity of the 1880s, the economic difficulties of the next decade reduced enrolments dramatically. Craig, whose health had never been strong, leased his school to Margaret Oliver Tripp.
  Margaret Tripp was a lady of many educational interests and long teaching experience. Assisted by two of her sisters, she took over Toorak College on 4 February 1895. She figures prominently in the school's history, because, in 1897, she changed Toorak College from a boys' school to a school for girls.
  Toorak College was a very small school when its next principal, Ellen Blundell Pye, arrived late in 1899. She encouraged the playing of a range of sports such as tennis, basketball, athletics, cricket and rowing. Slowly, the number of pupils increased and a school spirit developed, expressed in the "Games Song" written during this period. The original building and the Red House, built by Pye to house junior boarders, still stand on Douglas Street as part of Glamorgan School, now the Toorak campus of Geelong Grammar School. 
  Ill health forced Ellen Pye to retire at the end of 1907, and the three Hamilton sisters came from Alexandra College, Hamilton, to take her place. They remained for nearly thirty years. Isabella and Robina (Beanie) were co-principals and Barbara had charge of the boarding house. Although new buildings were erected, the site at Douglas Street was no longer adequate. In 1919, the school moved to Mayfield Avenue off Glenferrie Road, DOIST Malvern. A severe influenza epidemic delayed the opening of classes that year until 10 March.
  The parents and "old girls" of the school came to its rescue late in 1926, as it was proposed to close Toorak College.  Many felt that the loss of the college and the influence of the Hamiltons would be detrimental to the education of girls. After speech night, in 1926, a committee of parents was established for the purpose of continuing Toorak College as a private company. The school was moved into temporary premises known as "The Towers", on Lansell Road, Toorak, while a new home was found for it.
  Late in 1928, the school moved for the third time, this time to its present site in Mount Eliza. For the next fifteen years, during which the Hamiltons retired and the country suffered another economic depression and then a war, enrolments were very low and the school continued only because of the support of its pupils, past and present.
  One sign of a recovery in Toorak College's fortunes was when Mrs Wardle (headmistress 1943–1958) established junior classes.  These were held in places as far apart as the "Long Walk" (new year nine block), the "Elephant", and the "Dolls House", until 1957 when, due to the gifts of Sir Reginald Ansett and Sir Norman Carson, two benefactors of the school, a separate junior school was built on Charles Street, and named Wardle House.
  By the time Wardle retired in 1958, the composition of the pupils at the school had begun to change dramatically from the country boarding school as visualised by the Hamiltons. The growth of the Mornington Peninsula as a residential zone created a demand for education for day girls, and the years Lillian Bush spent as headmistress (1961–1966) saw great developments in facilities at the school. Wardle House gained a hall and an extra classroom; the Norman
caption: The College at Toorak, 1889
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