School Children
"When we were connying one or two of
the trailers used to go up to the High School to pick up the girls, and the girls used to
give you a rough time, I'll tell you! If you fell down they'd knock you down, if you
didn't fall down they'd knock you down and hold you with their feet! They were characters,
they were funny. The new fellas were terrified of the girls, it was always the girls that
attacked them, that was the funny thing".
Excerpt from an interview with Les Edwards,
talking about the use of ex-horse tramcars as trailers in the 1920's.
In 1905 the opening of the electric trams in
Ballarat assisted the establishment of both Government and Private schools along the
Sturt St. West tram route making travel over longer distances relatively easy.
Prior to the electric trams, only the Convent school had existed. The new sites used for
the schools were previously undeveloped land and this allowed for large school yards and
playing fields.
On the trams school traffic was very heavy
and even a special stop only for school children existed. The Ballarat Tramway
Museum has the stop sign pictured right in its collection. In the early part of the
century until the late 1920s, horse tramcars were used as trailers after the
electrification of the horse tram lines in peak periods.
Below is a portion of the "Greater
Ballarat Association" map of July 1968 with some additions. It shows the location of
schools in Ballarat and the route along Sturt street relative to Lake Wendouree.