My Tasmania No 5.... The Country School House?

This has to be one of my favorite My Tasmania posts so far..... i have been saving it and loving looking at the pics as my screen saver.... it is just off the road in the middle of the Lilydale township smack in the middle of a paddock ...you know how i told you that i feel that these building give off their energy...like sad and gloomy etc...Remember that these ramblings are not necessarily factual so don't take them as so......Netties Ramblings is more like it!!!!!
Well i felt that this building had a happy life and it was ready to retire...not sadly though... i think it may have been the local school house and then the district dance hall and function centre in its Hayday...Now it might be a store for animal fodder like hay and to store farm machinery....these are my thought but i am waiting to find out for sure from a lady who lives out that way and knows a lot about the history of the area ....so i will post the facts and dates at a later date hopefully but for now just enjoy.....

Just look at those magnificent windows and that doorway(if you look close i think the original door was arched just like the windows and this one has replaced it) That door would have welcomed those revellers to the dances after the school desks had been neatly stacked somewhere safe...peeking in those cobwebbed windows was hard ...I think the building wanted me to use my imagination because i could not see in at all..i wandered back to the car visualizing the inside of that building with those wooden lift up desks with inkwells and bench type seating and the clatter of the laced up leather boots on the girls with their long plaits and calico pinafores...the strong farm boots of the prangster boys ....ringing out on the wooden floor...the middle aged spinster teacher in her pinch waisted floor sweeping dress and her hair pulled back in a tight bun trying hard to keep a watchful eye while writing her lesson on the blackboard (not at all like you Wendy).... a large room with chalk dust floating in the shafts of sunlight penetrating that room....oh my mind was going there ...... then after the school finshed and the weekend came around it was time for the whole community to get together every saturday night....those monumental country dances....the dancers with the pretty coloured dresses on those rosy cheeked girls and the braces on the white shirts of those tanned farmer boys...the smells, the dust, the music and the country suppers made by those bucsom ladies all chatting around the heavy laden tables filled with 6 inch high creamed sponges and jelly cakes, sausage rolls and homemade tomato sauce, lamingtons.......yummmmmm...But now it was all silent....that building was so contented to just sit there in the sun ...retired.... it had served the community well.........

Those turrets where air vents to cool the building in the summer and allow the heat to escape ...during the winter there would have been a fire pot /stove fuelled by wood and or coal and that would have been vented through these perhaps......

This was more than likely the wrought iron front gate...long since replaced by timber corrale type structures to hold in the cattle who have been grazing around the perimeters of the building.
Cobwebs adorn the windows now isnsted of those brown roller blinds or heavy drapes that would have kept out the cold when it was the local school classroom.

A later addition of corrugated iron cladding to close this section of the building off against the elements has not lasted the ravages of time like the rest of the building..... it is like the building has rejected it as foreign and allowed the wind and weather to peel it off.

This collecction of vintage machinery sits in this sheltered shed to the side of the building like an old man asleep in his chair ...waiting ....for what????

And these pieces are in the throws of death as they lay waiting for the killer rust to take them from this century by the ravages of weather and time....... served their master well but now neglected and no longer of any use.