ELPS P&F oval-pavilion history

The P&F owns and administers the pavilion and oval located in Oxford Street, East Launceston. The land where the oval-pavilion is situated was originally a market garden. In the early 1930s the owner had intentions to subdivide and sell off lots. As East Launceston Primary School had no green play area, the parents and Education Department formed a partnership and purchased the land from the developer. During the Depression, volunteer labour cleared and levelled the ground to create the oval and in the 1980s the current pavilion was built. (Source: P&F letter to parents, 2008)

That original 1930s purchase was a two-part process. Parents raised the money to buy three quarters of the land. The Education Department bought the other quarter. Those boundaries remain today – more than 80 years later. The Education Department owns the section of land at the Ann Street end of the block, which includes the basketball courts. The P&F has never sold or given away any land. The land was not a gift, the parents in the 1930s raised the money themselves. The P&F has improved the facility (including digging the oval) in following decades. The oval is leased to the Education Department for use by students during school hours and is open to the community outside of school hours.

The pavilion that fronts Oxford Street (and used by the school and community groups) is not the first building on the site. The P&F originally built a pavilion on the opposite side of the oval to where the current pavilion stands. But it was demolished and the current pavilion built in the 1980s. The current pavilion was built using a combination of volunteer parent labour, P&F fund-raising and a state government loan. The P&F paid off the loan for many years, until the state government about eight years ago said it would no longer continue with the loan. So the loan ended, with around $40,000 remaining on the loan. (Source: P&F treasurer and committee member 2005-2014 Daniel O’Shea).

The oval and pavilion has played a critical role in the life of the school. In 2012, then  ELPS principal Judy Pill wrote a letter in support of P&F financial negotiations to improve the oval and pavilion. In that letter Mrs Pill wrote: This venue is a critical part of our school and the current arrangement whereby the Education Department lease (of) the complex enables us to provide a substantial green play area and, to use the pavilion as a centre of our PE program.

… To this end the Parents and Friends have continued to maintain the oval to a standard that allows us to have a quality green space for our students’ recreation and physical education program. Indeed it is the oval and pavilion use which has given us continued options as our school population has grown. The school and the Education Department acknowledge the outstanding role that the Parents and Friends Association have played over the years to ensure that the students of East Launceston Primary School have had access to this excellent facility.

 (Compiled by P&F secretary Michael Lowe in May, 2016)