Information

The Seventeen Mile Rocks State School was once located on the western side of Goggs Road, near what is now a shopping precinct. The school opened in early 1878, replacing an earlier school slightly to the south (opened 1870). The new school was a one teacher school with all grades seated in the single classroom. The site contained a school house, schoolroom, shelter shed and two external toilets. Because of the low population in the local farming community the school had few pupils and at times was threatened with closure, and actually closed for a while during the early 1940s before reopening. The school building was also used as a community hall on occasion. The number of pupils increased dramatically as the suburb of Jindalee developed during the 1960s, and a larger school was required. The school closed at the end of 1965. Sir Hercules Sinnamon purchased the school building in the late 1980s and had it moved to a site on his land on Seventeen Mile Rocks Road, where it now forms part of the heritage-listed Sinnamon Farm precinct. The school house remained on the original site for many years and was used as the Jindalee District Girl Guide Hut.

Citations

Meg Gordon et al, ‘When River Was Roadway’, Centenary Suburbs Historical Society (CSHS), 2011, pp 96-110; CSHS, ‘Seventeen Mile Rocks State School – School no. 98’ (https://cshsoc.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/school.pdf), sighted 24 July 2017; Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, Queensland Heritage Register, ‘Sinnamon Farms’.

Image Citations

School buildings, Seventeen-Mile Rocks, 1950s. Gladys M. Bailey Collection. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Record number. 21124389320002061.

Map References

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