The school that was to become Dutton Park opened on Monday 1 September 1884, as Woolloongabba State School. The site was cleared and the school house constructed by prisoners from the Boggo Road Gaol. Built to accommodate 400 pupils, it soon had an average daily attendance of 555.
Within two years the original school (bordered by Merton and Park Roads) was renamed the Woolloongabba Girls’ and Infants’ School, and the Woolloongabba Boys’ School had been constructed on the current school site At their peak, the schools had a combined student population of 1292.
By 1910, the schools and the surrounding suburb had been renamed Dutton Park. In 1935 the Boys’ school became Dutton Park State School, and an Opportunity School opened the following year on the Merton Road site.
The book created by the school community to celebrate 125 years, gives fascinating glimpses of school life over the decades. From swimming lessons in the Brisbane River at the turn of the 19th Century to growing vegetables on the school oval for the war effort, from the fire that destroyed half the school buildings in the 1970s to the construction of Palm Alley.