A SNAPSHOT OF AVILA’S HISTORY
written by Avila’s longest serving staff member, Mrs Pat Hall, whose association with the college spans more than 40 years as a teacher, parent and grandmother.
Avila College has experienced an incredible journey since it’s first year in temporary classrooms in the grounds of St Leonard’s Catholic Primary School, Glen Waverley in 1965.
From an initial enrolment of 110 girls in Form 1 and 2 (Year 7 and 8) the College has grown to become one of the largest Catholic secondary schools in the state with an enrolment of about 1100 students.
Avila moved to its current location in Charles Street, Mount Waverley, in 1966. The school community fitted into what is now only part of the Middle School.
The actual building of the classroom block was still being completed in the early weeks of first term in 1966, with the occasional blue welding flash seen under a classroom door and the loud clatter of rivet guns heard from the corridor. Quite simply, the only buildings on the school land were the classroom block and the toilet block.
The classroom block was much smaller then; at this stage there was no Home Economics room nor the classroom and Co-ordinators’ offices opposite. Sr. Adrian’s ‘Principal’s Office’ was in the north entry way opening on the present covered way, and the lay ‘Staff Room’ was in reality the tiny fitting room attached to the Craft Room. The surrounding environment was natural indeed! There was not a centimetre of asphalt or concrete outside the building to prevent the famous Mount Waverley clay clinging first to shoes and then to the tiled floors once winter began. The students wore ‘indoor’ shoes, expensive brown ‘slip-ons’, which they hated and which after a while gave the rooms a pervasive odour of feet! Our beautiful gum trees were there of course, but the rest of the grounds were basically still the farm paddocks they had been, with a range of small wildlife, including the occasional copperhead snake.
From its modest beginnings, Avila has now grown into a vibrant, outward looking Catholic secondary college, always pursuing standards of excellence as it searches to give meaning to its motto ‘Ecclesiae Filia’ (Daughters of the Church). The College is a dynamic learning centre with about 1100 students and 100staff. The buildings are extensive and the grounds a tribute to staff and students who have worked tirelessly to establish and maintain the native gardens.
The College is proud of its tradition of developing strong and capable leaders and it is pleasing that so many past students maintain contact with the school through staff, Old Collegians association and regular publications.
Avila has benefited from two distinct eras of leadership since 1965 – those of the Presentation Sisters and lay principals:
Sister Patricia Carroll (1965 – 1970)
Sister Raymonde Taylor (1970 – 1973)
Sister Josepha Dunlop (1974 – 1979)
Miss Patricia Ryan (1980 – 1986)
Mrs Maureen Thompson (1987 – 1995)
Ms Filomena Salvatore (1995 – 2005)
Ms Liz Gleeson (2006 – present)
