History of the Monash Gippsland Campus

Researcher: Meredith Fletcher
Director, Centre for Gippsland Studies

Yallourn Technical College to GIAE

The sharp increase in population in postwar Victoria, with its escalating demands for power, housing and education, soon placed demands on the Yallourn Technical School. Despite its promise, the handsome new building proved inadequate for such a rapidly expanding industrial region that now stretched from Moe to Traralgon.

A new school was planned but there was no room for expansion within Yallourn. Instead, the SEC provided 35 acres along John Field Drive in Newborough. In 1957, long-serving principal, E. Scott, oversaw the move as the first batch of students moved into the new buildings. There was also a name change in 1958 to Yallourn Technical College, which reflected the expansion of courses that the school offered at diploma level. The diploma students remained in Yallourn, however, and did not transfer to Newborough until 1965 when a diploma block was built.

They had barely settled into their new buildings for long when plans for restructuring and expanding tertiary education in Australia were announced. New colleges of advanced education would be formed to introduce a greater range of tertiary courses than the technical colleges offered. A regional college of advanced education was planned for Gippsland, to be located in the Latrobe Valley where there was a concentration of population and industry.

Formed in 1968, the new Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education took over responsibility for the existing diploma courses at the Yallourn Technical College: civil, electrical and mechanical engineering, applied chemistry and business studies. GIAE opened in 1970, its 270 students temporarily accommodated at Newborough while buildings were constructed on the new site that had been acquired at Churchill, ringed by an amphitheatre of hills.

No longer dominated by engineering courses and the requirements of the SEC, and with a mandate to expand tertiary education in Gippsland, what would the new institution offer?