Returning to a New Normal

Junior School Prefects at the Mandeville Crescent gates, welcoming students back in 1961; Diana Schraeder, Angela Ward, Rosemary Hill, Amanda Jones, Jane Fink, Elizabeth St. Ellen, Jill Flanagan (Head).

During Mother Damien McGowan’s tenure [born in Scotland in 1907, music and singing teacher at Loreto Toorak from 1934 - 1945], Loreto Toorak was closed twice for several months during the polio epidemic of 1937–1938, when more than 2000 Victorian children were infected.

The highly contagious disease affected children regardless of their social standing, which was alarming in a society accustomed to disease accompanying poverty. Polio was known as infantile paralysis, as the victims were mainly under 12 years of age. For quarantine to be effective, children needed to be isolated. During the peaks of the epidemic, students were kept at home and were not allowed to play with the children next door or travel on public transport. The students received their school work weekly by mail and returned it in the same way to the teachers for correction. Mother Margarita Farley and Mother Lena Bongiorno, two Sisters in the community who were attending the Toorak Teachers’ College, were isolated from the convent and the school. For several months they lived in the Priest’s Cottage, which was one of the chalets between Mandeville Hall and the gully. After the Easter break in 1938, school life gradually returned to normal routines.

As we welcomed our students back to school in Term 4 of this year, we remember and acknowledge the difficult times in the past when we have been apart.

Years 11 and 12 students returning to school after COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne, Term 4, 2020.