Floods and fire have loomed large over life in eastern Australia in recent times. Both have also occurred at Ormond in its almost century and a half.
Floods are rare in Ormond’s history but at 3am one day in 2013, an errant football hit a sprinkler in Main Building and set the water flowing through the building into the Master’s Office, at that time home to 675 of the College’s most precious heritage books, some of them over a century old. Total disaster was prevented by the library and other staff and students who extracted and dried the books in the hours before mould set in.
Books dry in the Kaye Scott Room after the Master’s Office flood.
2013 was a year of disasters: there was also a fire in Main Building. This was once commonplace in the building: in Ormond’s first century there were many fires, partly because open fireplaces were the main source of heating for many decades.
In the 1950s, chimney fires and fireplace blazes so often brought the fire brigade to Ormond that fires had their own news column in the Chronicle, sometimes finding students unprepared to receive visitors.
Ironically, the only Ormond building to be destroyed by fire was the swimming bath and science laboratory building, which caught fire 1898, five years after it was completed.
After being gutted by a second inferno in 1908, the building was not restored and was eventually demolished to make way for McCaughey Court.
In the 1950s the College commissioned a report on fire prevention in Main Building and worked to reduce the hazards of open fireplaces.
The ruins of the swimming baths, with Main Building in the background.
Since the 1980s, Ormond has invested in significant fire prevention infrastructure, including closing the Tower for an extended period until it could be made safer. Apart from the occasional mishap and a 1991 chimney fire, things have been much better ever since.
Flood was never common at Ormond, and fires are now vanishingly rare too.
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Every Ormondian has their own unique experience of College life, and their own story to tell. What Ormond moment stands out in your memory? Whether on the sporting field or the stage, in the JCR, Dining Hall or on Picken Lawn, share your favourite story of life at Ormond College.
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