Clifton Creek Primary students’ big plans for bushfire-ravaged school
Brimming with resilience, the excited kids of bushfire-ravaged Clifton Creek Primary, in East Gippsland, are returning to school with wild plans to redesign their burned campus with trampolines and roller coasters.
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The kids of Clifton Creek Primary have returned to school with wild plans to redesign their burned campus with trampolines and roller coasters.
All ten students from the East Gippsland school, which was destroyed by bushfire last month, arrived for their first day at nearby Nicholson Primary on Thursday, and were quick to head to the drawing board.
Arriving to their own mini campus, the two new classrooms adorned with a “Clifton Creek Primary” sign, they spent the morning creating blueprints for a new school.
Revan, eight, showed his vision for a re-imagined school, featuring a cubby house on the base floor, a trampoline room on the second level and a McDonalds and ice cream parlour up the top.
“What if you didn’t have to pay,” Lilly, seven, pointed to Revan’s ice cream picture.
Mitchell and Jake suggested a treehouse, or even a roller coaster.
Most students agreed that a flying fox was another must-have for their new campus.
“If the school was built the way we wanted it, it wouldn’t be a school,” Mitchell, 12, said.
“It would be a playhouse,” ten-year-old Jake replied.
Some students visited their old school after it was completely destroyed by the fire on December 30.
Jake lives next door to the school and also lost his house in the unforgiving blaze.
Days later, he returned with his family and put out smouldering fires burning in the tanbark at the campus.
“It was like a war zone,” he said.
The basketball court seemed oddly small because the buildings and steps surrounding it had been burned.
The classrooms and kitchen were gone, though the pizza oven stood in the rubble, along with the students’ mosaic sculpture in the middle of the Secret Garden.
“The rooms were full of stuff but now it looks like dirt,” said Mitchell.
Two portable buildings have been brought to Clifton Creek, with the original plan being that the students would be back on campus for the first day of the school year.
But the idea was scrapped out of concern that the charcoal trees surrounding the school could be traumatic for the kids.
Now, it’s still not known when the students might be able to return, or if permanent classrooms will be rebuilt.
The first day of school was bittersweet, with students reuniting with their friends but on unfamiliar ground.
“It’s kind of like when you go to a friends house and it’s nice and all but it’s not your house,” Mitchell said.
New books and musical instruments fill the rooms, and the pupils admit they’ve been stunned by the kindness of strangers.
Jake said he’d been offered four guitars to replace the one he lost.
Principal Sue Paul said she was simply grateful that every student was able to be there on day one.
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“The roll call for Clifton Creek Primary has all been filled,” she said.
“The buildings, they can all be replaced.”
The teaching principal, who all the students call ‘Sue’, said for some of the kids the loss had been “overwhelming”.
“It’s been a devastating process, but onward and upward,” she said.
Meanwhile, Gippsland school Cowwarr Primary burned down on Wednesday night with police still investigating the cause.
Firefighters were called to the school northeast of Traralgon about 9.30pm.
The main building, library and amenities were destroyed.
Anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.