On September first 1874 State School 1447 Diggers’ Rest opened with Walter J. Bee as Head Teacher. He stayed four months.
School was a bluestone room 24ft x 16ft, with a shingle roof; about 40ft behind a stable and a four roomed cottage. It was rented for 5 shillings a week. However, rent doubled and the room became dilapidated, disputes continued about where to shift the school to and in August 1877 15 pound was paid to the Minister of Railways for the station site. No move was made however and the attendance declined. From 10th May 1880 SS1447 Diggers Rest worked half time with SS1933 Kororoit.
Two acres at O’Briens corner Diggers Rest was purchased for 30 pound and the portable building at Kororoit 1933 was removed there at a cost of 58 pounds 10 shillings. SS1447 had been struck from the State roll on the 9/5/1880 and been worked under the same number as Kororoit (1933) which was struck off on 18th June 1882.
From the following day then, Diggers Rest was given the number (which it holds today) 2479. Its first Head Teacher was William P. Best and it became a full-time school. The school was again moved in 1888 to the site at the railway station.
Diggers Rest remained a one-teacher school until 1956. It did not have running water (connected from Sunbury) until 1968. Parent organisations constructed an oval in the school grounds in 1967 and another room had been added in 1960.
In the Herald Sun of Oct 19th 1994, Caroline Van de Pol (once a local) reported how the Diggers Rest Lions Club with the help of Stan Payne and with Charlie Watson locating and gathering the collection there; restored the old school used in 1912. Myra O’Leary, then 90, was pictured as she recalled her school days with fondness. You can see her as a girl pictured on the pony (right of picture) she rode from her grandparent’s to school.
The school was opened in its current Plumpton Road location in 1990.