By Holly McGuinness
The Sunshine District Historical Society has received $6,406.10 in funding in a State Government grant to assist with preservation and record keeping of historical documents from the area with a focus on the history of the Sunshine Technical School.
President of the society, Dr John Pardy knows better than most the history of the school and said, “this money is really to put the history together, we’re going to launch a new historical society webpage, and then as an attachment to that with this money we want to put a history together that’s digitally available.”
According to Dr Pardy, the school for the working class was a key aspect in the workforce development and training in Sunshine during the 1900s, he says it was one of the first co-ed schools of its kind in the area.
“Sunshine was quite extraordinary, in the sense that it got this technical school in 1913, and that was because of the efforts of people like H.V. McKay who basically wanted a technical school for his apprentices.”
H.V. McKay was an Australian Industrialist who founded the Sunshine Harvester Works which was one of Australia’s largest agriculture machinery manufacturers.
“What else is significant about sunshine is that girls were admitted here from 1915 and so even working class girls were able to get a secondary education,” said Dr Pardy
The historical society will be working to preserve the history over time and finds this grant to be a significant bonus in regards to the preservation of history. They have also applied to have the two buildings of the Sunshine Technical School heritage protected and with the application recently accepted they are currently awaiting an assessment from heritage Victoria to move forwards.
